Review President Nixon

[Doctor Omega]

Despite the cloud he left his office under.....

At the end of the day, was Nixon a good or bad President?

 

[Amyghost]

Overall, he was a bad president because he had no respect for the law, the Constitution, or the public except on those occasions when it suited his agenda. On the other hand, he was a master pragmatist who was willing to compromise, able to give ground on areas where he was pretty much philosophically opposed (his creation of the EPA being a good case in point of this), so he sometimes did good in spite of himself. There's no question he was highly skillful in foreign politics, Vietnam notwithstanding, and certainly it's doubtful anyone else in the office could have normalized relations with both China and Russia to the extent he did, ironically so in the face of his Commie-witch-hunting past (and probably in part due to exactly that). Trump clearly aspires in a number of ways to be another Nixon, but since he's Tricky Dick minus the charm, charisma and wit he's likely to meet Nixon's ultimate political fate a lot sooner than Nixon did.