If Watergate Hadn't Happened, Would Nixon Be Viewed as Great President?

I don't know enough about his overall record to make a conclusion. I think his Vietnam War conduct should disqualify him from that kind of thing as it is.

But what are your opinions? If not for Watergate would he be regarded as a great president? What would the world be like today? In the book "What If?'s of American History" a historian writes that had Nixon stayed president, we may have had Universal Health Care. Would the Fundies have not seized control of the Republican Party?

Any thoughts?

I think if Watergate had never came out and some of the other things over the years from his recording I think he would be viewed as an excellent president maybe not great but his stature would have been pretty high in history. As to the fundies I don't think they would have gained control under Nixon. Nixon would have controlled them or destroyed their power base because they could have been a threat to him.

Examining Nixon's record even a fervent Democrat must give credit where credit is due, and as the years pass, we must view Nixon as the last true Republican. What has passed for republicans since him is a bizarre melange of religious fanatacism masquerading as Republicanism.

Yes, the early 70s had a point where a health care system could have been done, there were other things that could have been done to create a manufacturing base that we would still have, and communism would have disintigrated earlier. With the Warren court things would have been a lot different in America..

So yeah --I think things would be better now.

Nixon seriously discussed the idea of a mandated living wage. That's something you'd never see now from either side of the aisle.

a bit of credit, IMO, for his work on thawing relations with both China and Russia. Moreover, he had a wonderful social record. He's one of the most tragic presidents in my book. If he hadn't been such a paranoid egomaniac, he could have been something amazing.

His man in Paris, Henry Kissinger, was there in 1968 ostensibly as an adviser to Johnson. but he reported back to Nixon everything that happened. Then kissinger all but sabotaged the peace negotiations that Johnson had opened...he told the North Vietnamese they'd get a better deal if they waited until Nixon was president.

he came in, believe it or not, as a peace candidate and then escalated the war into officially neutral Cambodia and lied about it...the Americans were about the only ones who did not know that the U.S. was bombing the living hell out of Cambodia...Nixon and Kissinger picked targets that intelligence told them had little military value but would result in the deaths of many civilians.

after four years the administration accepted roughly the same terms that had been on the table when johnson was president.

he had kissinger come out and say 'peace is at hand' right before the 1972 election to seal the sabotage of McGovern. and the bombing resumed by the end of the year in the "Christmas bombing" of hanoi. A hospital, Bach Mai, was leveled.

roughly 25,000 of my generation died under Nixon, along with untold numbers -- probably hundreds of thousands -- of Vietnamese.

no. the man was pure evil.

I thought it was pretty weak compared to the first two books in the series. It seemed that their was a lot more personal opinion involved in the "What Ifs" than there was before. Especially as the essays got closer and closer to the modern day. I was really disapointed in it.

I just read that chapter in a library the other day. I found that chapter interesting, but I intend to buy it.

I really liked the first two. However, I'm expecting that I'll find it inconsistent like the first two. The best essays are ones in which the historian explains the situation as it happened, then describes why it was important, then actually writes an alternate history. In both the first and second books the most disappointing ones were ones in which the entire essay was just analysis about the significance of an event but maybe one or two paragraphs were devoted to any "what-if" speculation. The one on Henry Wallace in the last book was really disappointing in particular. Raised a lot of interesting questions - implied that a Henry Wallace presidency would have been a disaster (an opinion I share, despite my respect for the man) but then never actually constructs a counterfactual.

The one about the Cuban Missile Crisis is the exact opposite its totally counterfactual and has not on shred of analysis. Actually it looks like it was written as a short story for a collection of fiction. The "Whale and the Wolf" is the same way except its author wasn't as good and it more or less useless from a historical and a fiction standpoint. Another shocker was Caleb Carr's essay never saw him as such a Anglophile. Basically his summation was that the worl would have been much better off without us winning the Revolution.

I don't really mind those. I really liked the Teddy Roosevelt one in Vol. II - even though his conclusion is that everything would have turned out pretty much the same.

Only quibble I had with that one is that he left out thing that may well have changed had Roosevelt won in '12 - what about a war with Mexico? Mexico and the US at this time nearly came to blows, even under Wilson, and TR was much more militaristic towards Mexico. He badly wanted to go to war and what would the effect of a war with Mexico have been?

Anyway, thanks for the advance notice. I'll probably still get the book and I'm sure I'll find a few essays that are good - I always do.

and probably would not have been regarded as a great president even if Watergate hadn't happened. He did some bad stuff --especially escalating Vietnam after saying he'd end the war and generally lying through his ass about the whole thing. He did some good things, though, too, like create the EPA and open up relations with China. Even so, the only reason it's possible to suggest Nixon could have been a great president is that compared to the Chimpinator even he looks pretty damn good.

... with the possible exception of our current resident in the WH.

When the FOIA came to Johnson's desk for signature, he hated the legislation, screamed bloody murder about it, but he signed it.

Nixon was pretty much in the same category with the EPA and similar legislation--he had no vested interest in it, except that he would've looked like an idiot if he didn't sign it (and other similar pieces of legislation).

Over time, historians will have verified the really shady things done in his administration besides Watergate--the overthrow of an elected government in Chile, the dirty deal he did with the Vietnamese to prolong the war before the `68 election, and the secret bombing of Cambodia, as evinced in the Pentagon Papers, his hatred for Latin America after his humiliation there in `56, and likely more that we don't know about yet.

His scurrilous attacks on his early House and Senate opponents presaged the sort of "win at all costs" attitudes which the Republicans have lately taken to heart (particularly his attacks on Helen Gahagan Douglas, branding her a communist sympathizer), so I think historians would have their hands full with Nixon even without Douglas.

As for national health care under Nixon--not a chance. Nixon wasn't for it, despite the talk--Nixon was pushing HMOs as a part of that plan (and look where that got us).

And, I should have added a bit about the "imperial" presidency--Nixon got that reputation because he'd thoroughly pissed off Congress--people forget that he was prolific with executive orders to re-organize government with an eye on consolidating executive power, using executive orders to embargo funds for spending bills he'd signed, etc. Nixon gave future presidents the model to follow if they wanted to further consolidate power to themselves.

Altogether a nasty piece of work.

Cheers.

After all the illegal crap he was doing in Vietnam, lying about a campaign violation is what brought him down. Says a little something about the nature of this country and why we shouldn't be particularly surprised Bush is getting away with so much.

And the subjugation of Chile to a military junta forever disqualifies him for consideration as "great."

Also, while he didn't start Vietnam, his campaign did intervene in the Paris Peace Talks in the fall of 1968 to persuade the South Vietnamese delegation not to sign a peace agreement prior to the presidential election.

Had such an agreement been signed, Nixon would have been doomed to a solid defeat.

(The worse part was, Johnson and Humphrey both had proof that Nixon's people had sabotauged the talks and refused to go public with it.)

he has China as a plus. And he was quite knowledgeable on foreign policy. Not to mention that I loved the quote that Hunter pulled from one of his last books, saying that to stop war we'd have to take the profit out of it.

At least in the Nixon era, the country was run by adults. If I had to decide between W and Nixon in an election, I'd put on the old "Nixon Now" button that I found at a rummage somewhere, and campaign for ol' Tricky.

Nixon would have carried out his assurances to Thieu and Ky to use American air power to prevent the Anschluss that occurred in May 1975. Would it have been enough to prevent the slow conquer of South Vietnam? Probably. The 1972 Easter Offensive was repulsed by a combination of South Vietnamese ground power and American air power. If he could have managed to continue material support of South Vietnam, which is likely when the mandate of 1972 is considered, the answer changes to almost certainly. If that were the case, it's quite possible that, over a period of several years, the North Vietnamese could have been forced into stalemate.

Would this have changed the geopolitical situation? That's a harder question. I have my doubts that air power alone would have forced the USSR and China to cut off their client. He would have been more likely to break China off because, at this point, it was becoming readily apparent that North Vietnam's future was as a Soviet satellite.

If an indefinite stalemate could have been achieved, which is asking for a whole lot, then I can say, with much more assurance, that certain events would not have happened. The 1975 airlift of Cuban mercenaries to Angola would have been unthinkable. The primary reason for the Soviet boldness was America reeling in defeat. Without the reeling, the Soviets would have been much less willing to overtly sponsor revolution. It's also unlikely that the wave of Marxist-Leninist revolutions in the Third World would have occurred. Soviet support would have been less simply because the Vietnam issue would not have been settled definitively in their favor.

What of American politics? This is a hard question. My feeling is that the Reagan Democrats, primarily interested in his anti-communism, would have swallowed a generation of bitter hate and supported Nixon. Would this have split the party? I just don't know. I'm inclined to think it would have split the New Left out of the party, which was where they began. An ascendant New Left is just unthinkable in a world where America is not acquiescent in Soviet imperialism. American politics would have become might interesting, for sure.

Here's the most unlikely scenario, given the above, though still possible (in the sense that anything in possible). One of Nixon's stated goals was to prevent the Reaganite takeover of the party. He wrote this in volume one of his memoirs, which were published in 1978, a time when Reagan was becoming more apparent as the GOP heir presumptive. Without Watergate, Nixon would have held the high ground in the GOP. He would have contested the slow conquest of the Reaganites, without a doubt. The question is whether he would have succeeded. I'm inclined to think that he couldn't have pulled it off. Why? The Reaganites wanted a firebrand. They wanted a challenger to the New Deal, not a man who'd mostly made his peace with it (Nixon's initial campaigns were as a 'practical liberal'). What would have this meant?

Here's the really crazy idea, not likely at all, but still fun to picture (like all alternative histories). There were hints sprinkled through the first volume of the memoirs that Nixon was willing to take the chance, if he was forced, to form a new party. This party would have been Gaullist in nature and maybe in execution as well. A Nixon without the baggage of Watergate would presumably have had the political capital to break off enough of both the traditional GOP and the FDR coalition to create a majority, or near majority, party.



Anyway, the above scenarios are really nothing more than an exercise in speculation. I left out a ton of events, people, and places simply because I'm posting on a message board, not writing a book. I tried to stick to the major issues of the day and tried to not wander too far out of the realm of possibility. The only exception I made, as far as the realm of possibility, was the scenario of the new party.

By the way, if you guys want a really fun exercise in alternative history, pick up The Great Republic by Winston Churchill. It's a grab bag of writings and speeches he made that contains a section that looks back at Gettysburg from the standpoint of Lee having won.

of course, it was a series of events (and behaviors) that are still only partly known to the public. If, for example, 80% of the original criminal activities are known, that still leaves much unknown. But it is my guess, based upon years of study, that we know less than 1/2 of the original crimes.

So the question might better be asked as Kissinger asked,"Can you imagine what type of leader Nixon would have been if anyone had loved him when he was a kid?" Because then we might have seen his strengths without his tragic weaknesses.

Nixon was not particularly talented in domestic policy. His grasp of economics was poor. He did have a couple interesting things: he started the EPA and had progressive environmental ideas, though he mocked environmentalists in private; and Nixon actually did more good for traditional Native Americans than any other president.

His foreign policy was a mixed bag. While he opened the door to China, he was brutal in Vietnam. And his behavior in Central America was evil. Was it simply "business as usual" for the USA? Yes. But he had the opportunity to do better. He was willing to do anything to meet his own agenda's goals.

In that sense, Watergate was more a part of Nixon than were his feet and hands.

Richard Nixon, the second most paranoid man to ever occupy the White House, as a great president?

And in hindsight, you may be on to something.

To think that there would come a time when people on the left would look back at Tricky Dick, and think he wasn't "that bad" compared to the person in office now! My God, what has happened to this country? I think that Cheney is the only man who could make Agnew seem relatively charming.

and the right remember the days of price controls (an anathema to them) and stagflation, and opening the doors to China.

Nixon made one or two major mistakes outside of Watergate, but also did some really good things, like open relations with China and take some early steps toward ending the cold war with the USSR. He kept the economy in line and he ended the draft. He also did eventually get us out of Vietnam, a mess which LBJ had left for him to deal with. He was far more liberal than Reagan or GWB, more on par with daddy Bush. Some would argue Nixon was more liberal than Clinton.

His biggest policy mistakes were bombing Cambodia and ensuring the assassination of Salvador Allende, thus allowing Pinochet to lead Chile into decades of a brutal dictatorship that tortured and killed dissidents.