Was he really as much of a monster as people today like to make him out to be? Why or why not?

My contrarian nature compels me to like Nixon. He wasn't so bad y'all.

That's the official GOP party line.

If you wanted to be a real contrarian, you'd come up with an intelligent viewpoint through critical thinking.

It's the only thing you can be guaranteed that nobody else in America will do.

Permanently destroying the faith of the American people in the US federal government completely negates all his other achievements. Vietnam shook the people's faith, but Nixon was the one who shattered it.

>Permanently destroying the faith of the American people in the US federal government is a necessary and productive task

FTFY

For real though, I think trusting the government is a terrible idea.

Nixon was the fall guy. If he hadn't been caught, then the American's people's faith in the US federal government would've shattered around the Carter or Reagan's years.

>it was inevitable so his actions don't matter

Not an argument.

The American right had already lost all faith in the government after the Kennedy voter fraud scandal. Nixon just butchered the left's faith.

>advocated national health care
>created the EPA
>oh but he covered up the most minor scandal ever

The thing that frustrates me is, he did do some good and the Pentagon papers proved he was really bad, but he's mostly remembered for the biggest nothing to ever have occurred in politics. 2nd only to the Clinton email stuff

>he's still ignoring the fact that Kennedy won Texas by too large of a margin for vote rigging to be plausible, and that was enough to guarantee him the White House

Besides, that was a tiny scandal compared to "who lost China" and the second Red Scare.

>implying it was only Texas
Illinois says hello.

Also:
>big enough that the fucking FBI gets involved
>tiny
Yeah, nah. Kennedy apologist, pls follow your leaders and die a horrible yet deserved death.

Hunter S. Thompson:

Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I’ve regarded his existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn’t imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn’t quite reach the lever on the voting machine.
What we are looking at on all our TV sets is a man who finally, after 24 years of frenzied effort, became the President of the United States with a personal salary of $200,000 a year and an unlimited expense account including a fleet of private helicopters, jetliners, armored cars, personal mansions and estates on both coasts and control over a budget beyond the wildest dream of King Midas . . . and all the dumb bastard can show us, after five years of total freedom to do anything he wants with all this power, is a shattered national economy, disastrous defeat in a war we could have ended four years ago on far better terms than he finally came around to, and a hand-picked personal staff put together through five years of screening, whose collective criminal record will blow the minds of high-school American History students for the next 100 years.

Texas was all that mattered.

If Nixon had won Illinois, he still would have lost the general election.

On top of that, there's evidence of vote-rigging for Nixon too. Kennedy just never bothered to follow it because he'd already won.

Take your nirvana fallacy back to weenie hut.

>it was okay because the state didn't matter ;_;
>pls let my favorite historical figure get away with vote fraud ;_;
>he wuz a good boy ;_;
>he dindu nuffin ;_;
>his brother too! ;_;
Literally get shot in a hotel kitchen

ugly piece of shit only matched by Kissinger

>he thinks all presidential elections prior to the Voting Rights Act and stricter federal monitoring didn't have partisans on both sides stuffing ballot boxes for their man

>he thinks that makes it okay
Literally get shot from the third floor of a book repository

Who considers Reagan one of the best presidents? Literally never heard that one before.

Didn't he create the US's infamous private-insurance based healthcare system as we know it today?

Pretty much every neocon republican got force fed the WE WUZ REAGAN meme back in the 2000s had to play severe mind games to justify the Bush league hyjinks.

There has been no good US president after the 70s when neoliberalism started to grow.

>he judges historical figures by modern standards rather than contemporary standards
>not improving things quickly enough is the same as shitting them up

pls stop

>Judging Kennedy for a scandal that occurred both before and during his Presidency is judging from a modern standard
Literally drive your car off a bridge

None of that is good. You're an idiot for posting that image.

I agree.

Incidentally, fuck the Founding Fathers.

Slave owning cunts.

Didn't he plan to have a reporter killed just before Watergate exploded?

One of his dudes wanted to.

Nixon was ranting about a reporter and one of his guys was like "consider it done" and then left with a pistol.

Some aide had to track him down and stop him.

>all this projecting
>all these bad vibes
you are honestly the worst person I've seen on this board in a long while, and yeah that's saying something.

Opening up diplomatic relations with China has to be one of the greatest examples of foresight in history, and hugely positive for everyone involved. The Democrats sure as fuck wouldn't have done anything so creative.

The saddest part is that this is the third time I've had this argument with the same poster.

They were pretty chummy together on that airplane ride they shared, talking about nothing but football.

He dindu niffin

He was a fucking genius

This, Kissinger and Zhou should also be credited though, I think diplomats as skilled as them aren't around anymore or are limited in their agency

Apart from a few serial killers nobody is as much a monster as people make them out to be

Dude, it was fucking 50 years ago.

Corruption was a big thing even then you retard

Nixon was a sneaky son of a bitch from day one

Political genius with a bit too much thirst for political intelligence.

The guy managed to go from vice president of an extremely popular president and carrying california in the 1960 election to losing the same state in the 62 governor's race and almost leaving politics entirely, to becoming president in 6 years.

Imagine if Al Gore won the presidency in 08. That's the equivalent of Nixon's gaining the highest office.

Reagan had a lower approval rating than Obama.

But at least Hillary isn't a racist Nazi xenophobe who hates LGBT women and went bankrupt thrice like Trump! :^)

People were naive back then and Nixon was the first president of the modern era that did something demonstrably illegal. So the boomer manbabies took it badly.

Aside from Watergate, he was arguably a good president. A very good president, if you think retreating from Vietnam was a good idea.

Obama's approval has remained pretty consistent since early 2010 after the usual early presidency popularity boost wore off. His approval doesn't fluctuate as much as that of H.W. Bush, Reagan, Truman or Carter.

Take Bush Sr. for example. His approval was at 70+% for the first half of 1991 (At one point his disapproval rating was under 15%). In the first half of 1992, his approval was in the low 40s and upper 30s. Then, from a low of ~28% in early August of 92, his approval went to around 55% when he left office in January of 93.

He had great foreign policy (as the saying goes "only Nixon could go to China") but at the same time he was a corrupt scumbag. Worst of all, he was a corrupt scumbag who got caught (unlike most other presidents who weren't). He probably could've kept his presidency if he hadn't tried to cover for his buttbuddies too. Also sabotaging the peace talks for the Vietnam War was a huge dick move.

Reagan is worse

I can tell your a Reagan fan how edgy are you user.

>saved israel
>a good thing

>helping Israel
>Good

...

My nigga
When will the goyim learn?

He also ended the draft, created the EPA and signed the Clean Air Act.

This. I don't care much for american modern history but what the fuck I hate Nixon now.

The funny part is that Nixon was full on /pol/ about the juice.

He never let Kissenger have anything to do with Middle Eastern politics because he figured he'd be working for the other side.

He probably did it in an effort to get the global Jewish conspiracy on his side

>ironically, America was then fucked by the global Arab conspiracy

>Clinton emails
>nothing
Christ even Veeky Forums isn't safe from CTR

>“He’s like a Spanish horse, who runs faster than anyone for the first nine lengths and then turns around and runs backwards. You’ll see; he’ll do something wrong in the end. He always does.

>implying the Clinton campaign would waste resources on a shitty contrarian Taiwanese watercoloring website
Fucking hilarious when anyone cries "CTR!" at any opinion remotely unlike their own.

>implying the Clinton campaign would waste resources on a shitty contrarian Taiwanese watercoloring website
>all but outright named in speech
>directly linked to by their media mouthpieces
They not only wasted resources, they straight up pointed a gun right at us and pulled the fucking trigger.

an entire section of the country fought a war over their lack of faith in the federal government. having faith in it is a pipe dream.

>Supported Israel
Fucking DROPPED
R
O
P
P
E
D

Veeky Forums is unimportant. No politician ever gives a damn about anything here.

>hating on based John and Bob

Its okay user they died for you.

He had a unique nose.

>they straight up pointed a gun right at us and pulled the fucking trigger.

oh noes someone hurt your fav website!

Thanks for Recording the Correction. 1 (You) has been deposited directly into your account.

One tendie has been deposited directly into your basement.

Go back to /r/the_donald