Went to the Nixon Museum & Birthplace

[MisterP]

mainly to look at the White House model. It was a rather surreal experience for me. And there was a real moon rock, worth more than the rest of the museum...

[UpsideDownFlag]

1. nixon is a fascinating political figure.

brilliant politician, too bad he was completely insane.

[olddem43]

2. That he was brilliant is a crock - he was lucky at times but not

especially good at politics. As an incumbent VP, he lost the presidency to a relative unknown, then proceeded to lose the Calif. Gov. race. His early career was built on smears and he used dirty tricks throughout his career. He benefited from the voter's dislike of the Viet Nam war by saying he had a secret plan to end the war. 4 years later, it was still going on. The man was a crook and was hated as much as Bush. That hardly qualifies as brilliant.

[Wapsie B]

3. I went a couple weeks ago.

It had the feeling of old money upper-class fatcat America. I was reminded that he wasn't one of us but one of them, built by the aristocracy to suit their needs.

[Smarmie Doofus]

4. I went there around '92....

and thought it was pretty interesting, actually. More than the White House model I remember the birthplace... restored ( so they claim)to it's original state. Modesty of the place was interesting... actually came from a sears-roebuck catalogue, if I'm not mistaken, and they put it together on site. Didn't know that was done in those days.

Interesting character, Nixon. Intelligent, articulate... personable candidate. Compares favorably in these respects to any major party figures of today, certainly those of his party.

Also demagogic and opportunistic in the classical Republican way. Full of malignant personalitiy traits... vindictiveness, jealousy, paranoia and the rest.

Hard to assess how he would govern were he in Bush's place today.

Most interesting thing about the birthsite is the transformation of the surrounding area from subsistence level farming to sprawling generic S. Californian suburb.

[MisterP]

5. oh, the WH model is on tour--it's only there temporarily

and the campaign material looked like those airplane gewgaws you always get: "Fly PanAm" belts, whatever. And an Apollo 11 spacesuit (though I think it was one of the "dress" backups, not a moon artifact--those are in DC)