DU Historians: Was Nixon really a liberal? comparatively speaking

I keep hearing people say that compared to many recent president's--Nixon was the last liberal liberal to hold the office of president. What do you think? and what examples would you give?

I have NEVER heard anyone refer to Nixon as being liberal in any possible sense.

His big accomplishment that's still touted is establishing relations with China. No hardcore conservative of the time would have done that.

He signed into law the creation of the EPA, the NEA, and several other programs that, ironically enough, Bill Clinton ended up slashing.

Nixon was the last president of the USA's postwar liberal period, so in some ways he was more liberal than Bill Clinton.

In many ways especially environmental ways he was Liberal.

Nixon was a good diplomat, in some ways. He thought we could win Vietnam, and once he realized we couldn't (and he was a lame duck), he did end it as soon as he could.

He was better than Reagan, who was better than W.

By today's standards, he was a moderate. By the standards of the time, he was somewhat to the right of center, depending on the issue.

price freeze and trade with china are two examples...didn`t seem like it at the time but he was more liberal than most of the thugs in power today

Carter, Clinton, Ford and perhaps even the old Bush were a lot more liberal than Nixon. He just had a couple of things he did, like the EPA, that appear liberal today. But he was to the right of most of the GOP (apart from the Reagan/Goldwater wing).

the last liberal president."

the pov of the late 1980s..when China started to trade really heavily and opened up. Easy to forget he was an ***hole. In those times. When the desire to have communist countries come over to Liberal policies was such a big dream.

He was a conservative in his time, and I'm sure he'd be just as wacko as W now. Right and left are directions, not destinations.

And they have certainly been twisted in these last few years. Conservative to me really isn't a bad thing. It would mean someone wanting to conserve (water, air, natural resources, etc), not the religious wacky's that have taken over what isn't really a bad thing.

work to take people out of their context of time and place most of the time.

To take an extreme example, if we look back on the Founding Fathers knowing they owned slaves, we would have to conclude in the context of today's politics, values etc that they were a bunch of immoral, hypocritical creeps.

But we give them credit, we allow for the political, social atmosphere of the time.

Simlarly Nixon back in his time was clearly right of center with fascistic tendencies.

Leave it to Dub to make him look like an amateur.

I believe Nixon also imposed a price freeze on gasoline prices at one point. Am I wrong in how he implemented the freeze?

Note I am not saying he was a liberal. I'm merely citing a few examples of things he did that may appear to be liberal.

He did impose a price freeze on the price of oil/gasoline in 1972 or 1973 I believe...

but starting from a political center of gravity that was far further left than is the case today. Back then he was still standing in the shadow of FDR.

For that matter, so was Reagan. But he was not a Liberal.

Although he ultimately rejected the idea.

Compared to Bush, Nixon was a flaming liberal. No doubt.

Who persued power for himself to the point of imperiling both himself and the US. He also had some fascist tendencies, but when push came to shove he abidicated power albeit grundgingly.

Unlike today's neo-cons however, he was a true conservative, and even in many ways a visionary. His groundbreaking work with China and Soviet Union laid the basis for a more more peaceful world. Sadly that effort has now been thrown away by the neo-cons. And he actually did believe in a smaller governement, and a balanced budget. And he stayed true to the root of conservative by enacting the EPA and Endangered Species Act.

However I never thought I would see a more evil president than Nixon. His abuses of power, and paranoia were not only legendary, but really quite threatening, both to individuals and the country as a whole. Sadly though, a scant thirty years later we are now seeing a much worse president in Bush. Bush embodies all the negatives about Nixon, a love for power, a love for secrets, a fascist bent of mind, without any of the positives. Never, ever did I think back then that there could be anybody worse than Nixon. Damn:banghead:

Not to mention that he tended to get along better with the his liberal contemporaries than most conservatives seem to be able to do.

If the left is always defined by the right, today he would be very progressive-liberal. Chomsky is correct.

Look at his policies.

He would make today's middle of the road democrats look like Grover Norquist.

I lived through that era.

He was a crook and a scoundrel and obsessed with power and ruining anyone who challenged him, but he was not stupid and understood how to implement policy wisely, for the most part.(VietNam excepted from good decisions)

.....but I was surprised to hear John Dean say that he is a Goldwater Republican.
He also said that, by today's standards, a Goldwater Republican is left of center.

That was a shock to me that Goldwater would be left of center!!

especially in his later years of service in the Senate almost too honest to be a politician.

A conservative who speaks honestly and without guile kind of turns the line around until he meets up with his liberal counterpart at degree 360 of a circle.

...whether or not you agree with his politics.

These guys in charge now would do anything if it meant they would win.......and there's absolutely nothing to respect about that!

an honest politician of any party or belief!

In 1996 he told Bob Dole "I never thought that you and I would be the liberals of the Republican party."

I remember when I was a kid.........Goldwater seemed to be the radical of the group, now he's considered a liberal!

Who would have thought that day would ever come.....

dedicated to "Barry Goldwater, a conservative with conscience"

Pro-Choice for example. I also saw an interview with him and the reporter asked what he thinks about the X-tian right taking over the Rep. Party and he said something like "I'm a conservative. I believe on low taxes and small government, but I'm not one of those people." :rofl:

still the aftermath of "The New Deal." Assumptions in general about government were different at least for most people.

Since we won a war (WWII) and pulled out of a horrid recession, it was assumed that it was the function of the government to act in such ways.

Which I wholeheartedly agree with.

It is only now * et al have grabbed the Federal guvment and tried, like some American Taliban, to turn the clock back.

But the neoconservatives and radical religious fundamendalists have been actively working towards a massive alteration of and injection of hatred into the national dialogue for decades.

Without that purposeful intervention, a more natural progression of political, social thought would have yielded a nation that would be unrecognizable when compared with where we are now.

We old hippies expected that was how it would be. What a shock it has been to see what has instead happened.

Nixon gave us OSHA, the EPA, the Endangered Species Act, wage and price controls, the Clean Air Act, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, affirmative action, detente with the Soviet Union, relations with China, the end of the draft and a lower military budget.

If you take away Vietnam and Watergate, Nixon was not such a bad president (though that's taking away a lot).

shoveled a lot of money into drug treatment, something that has not continued to this day. Now we just throw'em in jail.

of Chile's President Salvador Allende, starting before his election, and, after his death during the assault on the Presidential Palace, Nixon's support of Pinochet's ungodly, bloody regime and torture, and murder of huge numbers of suspected "leftists" in order to enforce his brutal dictatorship.

Please take time to look at the military dictatorship of Argentina, the torture, slaughter, disappearance of more than 30,000 suspected "leftists," going even as far as to keep female political prisoners alive long enough to deliver their babies, which were parcelled out to military officers' families, before murdering them, too. There are more than adequate first-person confessions from military people who took part in flinging these tortured people out of airplanes into the ocean.

There are declassified papers on all these things which can be located in internet searches.

Oh, yes, one more thing: he also supported the murderous regime of Luis Echeverría, the Mexican President wholeheartedly.

That's just SOME of his brutal machination. There's so much to consider, concerning his VietNam, Laos, Cambodia, etc., etc. decisions.

Take time to read on his remarks from his White House tapes, revealing his unquestionable racism. There's a lot to learn about this guy.



On edit: adding photo of Preston Bush, grandfather of the current pResident, and Richard Nixon.

It is Prescott.

As in trading with the enemy (Nazi Germany), war profiteering (with German companies) grand daddy *

He did pursue some liberal seeming policies, but that was political expediency required in a time when many more people considered themselves liberals. He went as far to the right as he felt he could get away with and still win elections. There was nothing liberal about Nixon's character.

If he were running the country today, he'd be at least as right wing as Busholini.

A Democratic Congress passed some decent laws that he was unable/unwilling to veto. He was a monster who started his career working with McCarthy to build fascism in the US, and he remained true to that ideology. The most vile of today's neocons trace their heritage to that same trend in US history.

during that time period. He truly believed in the research behind it. This was more than anyone has done since...

he might even be considered a Green (although Barbara Boxer who was with him at the time stopped him there : p ).

As far as his foreign policy his wanton bombing of brown people was right up there with today's thugs.

revenge.

The red Rover cut his teeth in the Nixon camp.

"Dirty tricks" came into our national life as a phrase and as a practice under Nixon.

Hard to be liberal no matter what else one does if you're at heart a fascist.

Among the young liberal folks at the time, he was not respected, liked, or barely tolerated.

There are no liberal Republicans, just moderates some great some mediocre at best.

would be considered liberal. Some of the things he did would not get passed today.

IMHO

Nixon used price controls. Clinton did not. Nixon has a top tax rate of 70%. Clinton only had a top rate of 40%. Nixon never started a war. Clinton initiated military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nixon appointed 2 pro-choice justices. Clinton also only appointed 2.

:D