Villain or misunderstood hero?

Villain or misunderstood hero?

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He opened up China which was a huge milestone in Western growth and American influence

Both

>He opened up China which was a huge milestone in Western growth and American influence
how

it's hard to quantify just how bad watergate was and how much damage it did to to the presidency as an institution, how much distrust and disillusionment it brought into politics

if nixon hadn't been so convinced he /was the Senate/ he'd have been in the top three of every president forever

He's complex. On one hand he started the war on drugs that ruined a lot of lives, but he did start the EPA which cleaned up a ton of shit. He was president when we put a man on the moon, but also escalated the war. He opened relations with China while undermining faith in the American presidential office.

He was the first US President to meet with the Chinese since 1949. He spent a week touring with them and generally being a nice guy.

This gave Americans the first images of China since the people's Revolution. And the trip generally went a very long way in warming the Cold War. This all led to some of the largest trade partnerships ever written.

It was famously "The week that changed the world".

>This all led to some of the largest trade partnerships ever written
>some

I largely agree with these three. Here's my "quick rundown" on why Nixon was great.

>won the Vietnam War
>started the EPA
>successfully severed the dollar from gold allowing the "Great Moderation" to happen (link below)
>successfully fissured China and the USSR
>appointed Rehnquist

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moderation

In economics, the Great Moderation was a reduction in the volatility of business cycle fluctuations starting in the mid-1980s, believed at that time to be permanent, and to have been caused by institutional and structural changes in developed nations in the later part of the twentieth century.[1] Sometime during the mid-1980s major economic variables such as real gross domestic product growth, industrial production, monthly payroll employment and the unemployment rate began to decline in volatility.[2]

It feels like there has not been a US President in these 50 last years..or ever, that has not done a gigantic blunder, even if their presidency could be considered a step ahead for the country, is funny.

>ever
William Henry Harrison

Has there ever been a single (de facto) leader of a major civilisation who has not perpetrated some kind of blunder, and doesn't have an obviously embellished history from which any such record has obviously been stricken? Human beings aren't perfect, especially when they're under a lot of stress or given access to uncontested power.

If anything the fact that leaders seem to be getting worse overall is probably due to an increase in literacy and decrease in privacy (including for elected officials), so more people know about every little mistake their politicians make.

...

Hero? No. Villain? Maybe. Misunderstood? Absolutely.

>On one hand he started the war on drugs that ruined a lot of lives
That's just the thing though, he started the war on drugs as a response to the fact that so many people were being incarcerated, therefore the problem of mass incarceration existed prior to the war on drugs. Nixon's original plan sought to put people in rehab, not prison. The war on drugs exacerbated the incarceration problem once policy shifted during the Reagan years.

What did he do that was remotely villainous?

Teddy Roosevelt did nothing wrong.

The whole Watergate thing wasn't exactly virtuous. Neither was that really bad thing he did in Cambodia.

>Neither was that really bad thing he did in Cambodia
The invasion? We were invited. The only "bad" part about is that he didn't tell the U.S. public until after the fact and quite frankly, they shouldn't get to know about covert fucking military operations.

>won the Vietnam War
Seriously nigger?
I mean, it's fair to say he ended the war, but then he did deliberately prolong it for electoral reasons...

>but then he did deliberately prolong it for electoral reasons...
You realize that has never actually been proven, right?

Nixon won both his elections by landslides. i like how democrats like to pretend he somehow "cheated" to win the election. like they were close.

Hi, non american here, can someone give me the quick rundown on Richard Nixon?

Obama was pretty clean I thought, especially if you compare him to the current shit show

They conveniently forget the proven voter fraud that may have given Kennedy the presidency in 1960.

>Fast and Furious
>Loretta Lynch pleads the fifth
>IRS targetting
>completely swept under the rug
>Benghazi
>has Susan Rice blame a youtube video to win re-election
>Wikileaks reveals entire '08 cabinet was chosen by donors

Easily the most dubious of all modern administrations. No one can be bothered to acknowledge any of this because the establishment media (who have been caught redhanded colluding with the Democratic party) gave little, if any, coverage to these scandals. The media drives what is considrered controversial in this country.

Hero and he and Kissinger are the reason China isn't a juche-tier shithole. human rights abuser right now.

Just watch this. He opened up China to the outside world.

youtube.com/watch?v=0cM_lSJOGbs

Actively making weed illegal and uses it as a weapon against certain communities

>War on Drugs/seeds of US police state
>Deliberately prolonged Vietnam War
>Supporting coups against elected democratic governments
>end of Bretton-Woods

1968 was very close and Humphrey likely would have won without the peace talk sabotages.

While weed should be legal, those communities could have just stopped possessing the weed.

>Actively made weed illegal so he can condemn, demonize and harass these communities
>lol just stop using weed bro!
That really doesn't excuse his underhanded and malicious maneuver

The biggest mistake ever.
Now the Chinese are going to overtake America.

This is your brain on Presidency

Oh yeah, because claiming Nixon WON the Vietnam War is clearly a definitive, widely held view.

A crook

>dying