What does Veeky Forums think of Richard Nixon?

Watergate was fucking stupid.

The 1972 general election was one of the most one-sided blowouts in the history of the electoral college and he still felt the need to do risky, illegal shit.

That singlehandedly doomed South Vietnam.

That said, something like Watergate was necessary to get Congress to crack down on the FBI and CIA.

>Watergate was fucking stupid.
It makes perfect sense when you look at it in context. The GOP was still extremely leery of the Democrats after the 1960 election which had mass voter fraud in favor of Kennedy and LBJ (though had it been counted correctly, Kennedy still would have won but by an even narrower margin). That they would pull a stunt like Watergate in response is understandable. That Nixon would attempt to cover up Watergate, as the loser of the 1960 election, is even more understandable. Watergate was simply a response from the shady politicking that the Democrats had been doing since fucking Jefferson was President.

Also, re-reading my post, I don't mean to imply that Republicans weren't guilty of doing the same since the party creation either. The difference is that the Democrats were nationally caught, it was swept under the table, and Kennedy got away with it because his brother was Attorney General. It was a giant dickslap to the face for the GOP.

>I'm indifferent towards Nixon and think he's a fucking weirdo, therefore I should be shot

the kennedys are unscrupulous at worst.

You deserve to be shot because you sucked a treasonous snakes cock in the same post. The penalty for treason is death, senpai.

hmm, wow, a biased list of accomplishments. someone could whip one up for buchanan too.

look, nixon was by no means the worst president, he was average. I respect his resignation a great deal (cough clinton cough). but to imply that he was great or should be remembered for anything other than watergate is just contrarianism.

that's enough Veeky Forums for me today

Watergate.

>but to imply that he was great or should be remembered for anything other than watergate is just contrarianism.

While I don't think Nixon was great (he fundamentally misunderstood that the President is supposed to be likable to the people), it's way too early to say that it's contrarian to argue against Watergate defining his legacy. Realistically, it was a minor hotel break in that he had some awareness of. It has definitely affected the American people's trust in their politicians, but COINTELPRO under J. Edgar Hoover throughout the 60s should probably have been a bigger scandal. For whatever reason, it wasn't. Nixon's foreign policy, the good and the bad, will probably increase as a part of his legacy as time wears on, as will some of his socially liberal reforms in navigating the end of the Counterculture era.

Proof that the US should have an elected council rather than just the president and VP. And most importantly, all on separate tickets. A true oligarchy, not the capitalist one.
>but congress
In the executive branch, in key positions. Imagine if Nixon had been given Presidential-level abilities, but only for Foreign Affairs.

That sounds like a recipe for disaster with each sub branch fighting in congress for funding

Team bobby for ever. would like to have seen kennedy blow out nixon for a second time.

Overhyped. Not even the worst thing he ever did.

Absolute Madman, but a good president.

However his ending of Breton Woods sits ill with me. On the one hand it was inevitable, Keynes even predicted it long in advance. On the other, it did end the closest thing to a good economic system we've had in a long time and replace it with the wage-stagnating job-exporting policies of the present day.

he wasn't that bad.

if he had not banned drugs, gone to fiat currency, and did gun control. He would have been perfect.

>legalize drugs
>ban guns

This logic doesn't even make sense.

Specifically:
>banning one but leaving the other unbanned
>or legalizing one but not legalizing the other

>why_are_we_fighting_it_instead_of_taxing_it_Bill_Mauldin.jpg

not ban drugs and not ban guns. while maintaining a gold backed currency.

this is what i am saying.

The way he handled Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union, not to mention Kissinger, will have a growing appreciation as people become more aware how minor Watergate is in the record of political scandals.

Americans trusted their representatives and thus Watergate was a wake-up call more than a truly grave matter.

>Worst president in US history
Only a nut would think that
Bush or Obama were the worst

was hounded out of office for something commonplace today

Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ, or Andrew Johnson.

>Forgetting James Buchanan
at least you got FDR right for starting the precedent of having too many executive agencies.

not mentioning Warren G. Hard-on.

The only competent thing that this man did, was talking about his penis and trousers