Nixon vs trump. What do you think of Nixon now?

[denem]

Yes it's a twee question. Every president, even MF15, was better than trump. But hear me out.

My parents hated Richard Milhous Nixon. Not disliked, hated. Nixon, like COVID-19, was a disease who kept coming back. "You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore. Because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." he said in 1962. Six years later he was back, ready, willing and able to kick the stuffing out of the Constitution.

For those with a clear recollection, did you hate Nixon? How do you rate his failings and crimes? Does the monstrosity of MF45 change your perspective? Are crimes against the Constitution relative?

I am asking not as provocateur. These are terrible times, but America is not at war. How bad was the Nixon presidency?

[randr]

1. Bad enough

He only lacked the cooperation of the Senate to stay in power.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. He Was Scum

Now we have scum with Congressional enablers.

[denem]

4. The only time I heard my Dad swear

was when he was talking about Nixon.

[ProfessorGAC]

5. I Can Imagine That

Really bad people can trigger visceral responses.

[denem]

12. 'He's an evil shit'. I remember it to this day.

We were watching TV. Mom said nothing. I was shocked.

[ElementaryPenguin]

3. Nixon was a ruthless crook, but he was Abraham Lincoln compared to the Orange Plague!

[eleny]

6. A sneak preview

[captain queeg]

7. Nixon was a flawed president. Trump is an abomination of reality TV.

[npk]

21. agreed

Nixon was a crook and obviously someone who craved the kind of power of total authority that comes with being president, but he was at least sane and could actually manage to run a country and understood the basic principles of the three branches of government. Trump has never even read document he swore to uphold and is not capable of managing the office of the presidency.

[Cartoonist]

8. Campaign slogan

Don't change dicks in the middle of a screw
Vote for Nixon in '72

[Aristus]

9. Still an asshole.

Comparing him to Trump doesn't make him better. It just reminds us all that the Republicans looked at Nixon and realized how much further down they could still go; they saw the potential. They came close with GWB, but the veneer of a New England clan with generations of public service (even if some of it was for the Nazis), ruined their squalid, tawdry dreams of absolute Presidential fecklessness.

They needed someone as utterly worthless as Trump to fulfill their putrid vision for America...

[denem]

11. The Nixon's Southern Strategy was the beginning of the end

... of the party of Lincoln. I'm thinking Nixon was the 'whatever it takes' guy. He, not Goldwater, is the godfather of the cesspool.

[npk]

25. I blame Goldwater for that shit more than Nixon

Goldwater started that whole ball rolling by convincing many Southerners that the Republican party would aggressively oppose the Civil rights legislation that Johnson had signed into law. The Deep South hadn't voted for a Republican since before reconstruction era, and Goldwater knew that he could play to their racism and get just enough votes to un seat Johnson. Fortunately he failed. Turns out the rest of the country didn't want to roll back the Civil Right Act that had just been passed. But sadly the SOB showed Nixon the way 4 years later. God I hated Goldwater.

[denem]

29. thank you

[Paladin]

10. trump makes Nixon look like Winston Churchill.

For all his vast failings, no one ever accused Nixon of being a stupid man. And no one ever accused Nixon of being anything short of a master politician. And when it finally all came down, Nixon did the right thing and vacated the office---trump doesn't have enough character to ever do that.

[liberalmuse]

13. He should have been imprisioned.

When Ford pardoned him, all it did was convince the criminals under Nixon to get better at propaganda and concealing their crimes, and it lead to where we are right now.

[Chainfire]

15. Nixon was an lightweight

crook compared to Trump. I despised Nixon, but I did not hate him.

[denem]

16. My parents hated Nixon.

They are not around for me to ask them why. So I posted this OP.

[Ferryboat]

17. Its taken me 45 YEARS

To admit to myself that Nixon wasn't all that bad. Of course I'm comparing him to other Republican presidents who have turned out to be much worse.

We can thank Tricky Dick for the EPA for one. Hard to think of any other programs that were beneficial to average americans. Opening up to China got us some pandas for the national zoo.

And he did inject political awareness into a clueless 18 yo. Hunter S Thompsons coverage of the 72 campaign was a huge part of waking up.

[Mc Mike]

18. Fair enough.

But follow the trend line. Harding (a repug) was the most corrupt president in history, no one came close, until Nixon's horribly corrupt administration. Raygun, the next repug elected after Nixon, outdid Harding in indicted Administration officials, and made Harding and Nixon look good. Then li'l bush (a repug) came along, and made Raygun look good. Then tRump came along and made li'l bush look good.

None of them were good, all of them sucked as bad as they could, all built on the criminal conduct of previous repug admins, all pushed the envelop back as much as possible. Then the next repug pushed it back more.

The latest horror show repug prez doesn't make the last one actually look good, just because the last one looks relatively good by comparison.

Nixon ran a shadow foreign policy op during Johnson's admin. Treason. Nixon was a nazi. Openly hated Blacks and Jews. Nixon had the fascist Huston Plan for a military take over of the US. Nixon was in bed with every sleazy wiseguy crook imagineable, from BeBe Rebozo to Howard Hughes to Robert Vesco, his scandals ran the gamut from ITT to the milk fund.

Nixon's political appointees ran competing goon squads, he had a 'mugging, bugging, burglary and prostitution' operation while he was president. He did good things, like the EPA and Cultural Preservation Act, but just as a distraction so he could keep the Vietnam War going.

He bombed a children's hospital in N Vietnam, on Christmas.

Nixon was buddies with the mobbed up lawyer Roy Cohn and used Manafort and Stone as political operatives. Just like tRump.

He was more dangerously evil than Raygun, because he did a lot of work plotting and scheming, and unlike Raygun, Nixon had a brain.

[denem]

20. thank you

[Mc Mike]

22. No problem, den. Take care, nt.

[WhiteTara]

19. Had he been forced to pay consequences

then we wouldn't have had *co or this nightmare. But the pukes let them slide in Nixon's case and dems let them slide on Iraq War.

[MineralMan]

23. Same as I did then. Asshole.

Different years; different assholes.

[denem]

24. As I said in my OP - my parents hated him.

Not disliked, hated. They are not around for me to talk to them. Hence the post.

[MineralMan]

26. Nixon was a racist, antisemite, and a lousy excuse for a President.

I remember him. I even met the man once, back in 1969, while in the USAF. I hated his sorry ass then, and have not changed my mind about him over the last 50 years.

Different reasons for hating Nixon compared to Trump, but they were both assholes.

[gratuitous]

27. Still glad he's dead

Nixon was one of the Johnny Appleseeds for the Trump administration.

[nolabear]

28. Two different forms of madness.

Nixon knew he was incompetent and tried to cheat in some ways knowing the price, and the anxiety drove him nuts. Spanky thinks he’s a little god who can make everyone not only dance to his tune but buy his bs. He won’t let himself feel any of those things that drive Nixon crazy. I’m not sure he ever will, or can, but if he were to fall he’d fall big and I wouldn’t let him near a sharp implement, let alone a seat of power.

[if..fish..had..wings]

30. Ummm

[denem]

32. I think that graphic is too complimenty to to Reagan.

He was a animitronic neaderthal.

[Stuart G]

31. Ok here is the truth..Nixon promised a secret plan to end the Viet Nam War. That was a total lie.

That lie resulted in the deaths of thousands of American lives. Maybe tens of thousands of lives and permanent injuries. That number of deaths does NOT include deaths of North and South Vietnamese people. We never count those deaths. Therefore, who killed more? Clearly Nixon killed more and injured more far more. So, in that context, Nixon was worse far worse. Nixon killed hundreds of times more than Trump. Yes, hundreds of times more than Trump
...In that context, and that context alone, Nixon was worse..You don't believe..look up the numbers killed in Viet Nam War. Also, look up Nixon's promises during the his first election as president..(Yes, he did promise a ...secret plan to end the war, but he had no plan to end the war.

[denem]

33. and W killed more again.

[edhopper]

36. No he didn't

25,000 Americans and upward to 1 million in Viet Nam and Cambodia.

[Stuart G]

38. Nixon killed more than 1million (see above numbers, post 36)....That says it all

Iraq War...Bush Jr............................................................

460,000 deaths in Iraq as direct or indirect result of the war including more than 60% of deaths directly attributable to violence. 110,600 violent deaths. 183,535 – 206,107 civilian deaths from violence. 109,032 deaths including 66,081 civilian deaths.

[denem]

39. 'At Iraq Body Count, we estimate that 2.4 million Iraqis have been killed since 2003'

https://www.iraqbodycount.org

[edhopper]

34. Nixon commited treason before the election

he lied about ending the war and prolonged it. He bombed Cambodia, which lead to that country's destabilization and eventually the Khmer Rouge. He has the blood of millions on his hands. Domestically he was a criminal who helped out friends and allies why turning the Government into a Stalinist attack dog on his enemies. He gave us the bigot asshole Rehnquist as the Chief Justice. He stole an election.
He was an awful man who completely abused his office.
Just because Trump is so bad doesn't make Nixon any better than he was.

Is Kim not a bad guy because Hitler was worse?

[denem]

35. ...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

37. Like John Dean recently said - Nixon was corrupt, but Trump is evil.

I loathed Nixon. I remember how furious I was over the Saturday Night Massacre, and how I watched his resignation speech with glee and relief. At the time I thought it wasn't possible for a president to be worse than Nixon.

Silly me.

Nixon was corrupt but he was competent at the day-to-day work of the presidency. While he and some of his appointees used their power for malign political purposes (and Spiro Agnew was corrupt in a venal, personal way), Nixon did not intentionally hollow out the government by appointing incompetent stooges and toadies, and his personal greed extended mostly to taking some improper tax deductions (the reason for the "I am not a crook" speech), but not to the use of the federal government as his personal slush fund. He was neither lazy nor stupid nor ignorant. He was a bad president and a corrupt person and I still hate him and offer no excuses for him. But Trump is worse. Worse than I could have ever imagined a president would be.

[Stuart G]

40. Nixon killed more on lies, A thousand times more than Trump ..see posts 34,& 36..

...When you kill a thousand times more than Trump, you are worse than Trump.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

41. By the time Trump is gone he will have outdone Nixon.

And he will have done far more structural damage to our systems of government. As a country we survived Nixon because he didn't destroy those systems. Trump is actively trying to do just that, and if he succeeds we're done.

[edhopper]

42. This is just a Stalin vs Hitler thread

they are both horrible, evil people.