Richard M. Nixon’s legacy will forever be tainted by one word and all the connotations it carries: Watergate. But unlike George W. Bush, whose legacy will forever be tainted by the word Iraq and all the negative connotations it carries, Pres. Richard Nixon’s legacy has far more that can and should be written about. The excesses and criminal acts committed during the Nixon administration should never be forgotten-just as those committed during Dubya’s administration should never be forgotten-but more people should be aware of what this most complex of US Presidents accomplished during his one and a half terms.
Recently, it was noted during a History Channel special about Richard Nixon that he could never secure the Republican nomination for President today because, ironically, he is too liberal. No doubt those words caused more than a few Yuppies to choke on their granola bars. Back when they were hippies the very idea that Richard Nixon would ever even tangentially be considered liberal would have seemed like a bad joke. This was, after all, the man who rose to power as a more intelligent and less abrasive comrade of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Nixon, at least politically, was as rabid an anti-communist as existed in the sphere of federal politics at the time. Unlike Tail Gunner Joe, however, Nixon had brains as well gall. Still, the fact remains that when you look at the first term of Pres. Richard Nixon, he actually does appear to be the maverick Republican that John McCain falsely sold himself to be.
The GOP, with the backing of southern Democrats who would eventually switch to the Republican Party, insistently fought against Civil Rights legislation that enforced school segregation. From the 1950s and into the 1970s schools across America and throughout the south especially found themselves being forced to allow access to black students. In the case of Alabama, many times the Governor himself stood on the steps attempting to block this access. (That Governor was a Democrat by the way, George Wallace.) Do you know what year during that time period witnessed the forced desegregation of schools more than any other? 1970. Just two years into the Presidency of this allegedly fascist President, Richard Nixon.
Academy Award darling Al Gore is now the poster boy of environmentalism. The Democratic Party-after the Green Party and several smaller third parties, of course-is the only viable political party for anyone seriously concerned about environmental protection. But did you know that the Environmental Protection Agency was actually established during the Presidency of Richard Nixon? And this isn’t merely the case of Nixon ruefully giving in to the power of the environmental lobby. Nixon actually spearheaded the creation of the EPA-in fact, he originally wanted it to be a Cabinet-level agency-over the objection of many powerful members of Congress from his own party. No one is claiming that Richard Nixon was the first environmentalist President, but when one looks at the rollbacks to environmental laws undertaken by his bastard child in the White House today, it serves to underline just what an unusual leader Richard Nixon was. Whereas Bush’s commitment to castrating the EPA resulted in Christie Whitman becoming the first of many Republicans to run screaming from the White House before her political career was irreparably ruined, Richard Nixon was committed-on one of his multiple levels-to what was best for this country, not simply what was best for his rich friends.
It was a Republican-Richard Nixon-who enacted this country’s first tough Affirmative Action laws. It is known as the Philadelphia Plan and the goal was to require fair hiring laws in the construction industry in Philadelphia. Any government contractor would be legally bound to hire qualified black workers. Most importantly, it did not impose any quota, but let contractors determine hiring goals based on local statistical averages. I’m not a big fan of Affirmative Action programs now; I think the effectiveness has run its course. But without Nixon’s initiative they would probably be more necessary than ever today and, of course, far less likely to get implemented.
One of the pet projects of the GOP has always been welfare reform. Or, to be more precise, welfare annihilation. For some reason, conservative politicians hate the idea of people who can’t live on minimum wage deciding instead to accept welfare to put one meal a day on their dinner table. Never mind that the big business saves every year as a result of corporate welfare could pay for three square meals a day prepared by the chefs on the Food Network for every single family in America. Ronald Reagan’s attempts to “reform” the welfare program effectively painted every person who is welfare as a leech on the great system of American capitalism with his made-up story of welfare mothers living like the wives of CEOs. Richard Nixon took a realistic approach with his Family Assistance Plan, a bona fide radical program with the intent of replacing the welfare system as it was in place at the time with a system that guaranteed a minimum income for poor families. Economists of all stripes supported the theory that this would strengthen the incentive to work over the incentive to stay on the dole because those who qualified would benefit by virtue of a lessening of the tax burden in which they would be able to keep more of their income than they could keep under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Act. In other words, just like corporations get welfare benefits in the form of tax relief, so would poor families. Unfortunately, a combination of Republican dilution and Democratic abandonment resulted in the Family Assistance Act never being implemented.
Perhaps the most surprising revelation about Richard Nixon that has nothing to do with Watergate is that twenty years before Bill and Hillary Clinton tried to do something about it-and thirty years before Pres. George W. Bush even found out it was a problem-Richard Nixon intended to fix the nation’s health care problem by introducing a comprehensive health insurance program. The program included such things as private employment-sponsored insurance as well as a massive federal program to provide health insurance for poor families. The delivery of health programs would be through HMOs. Most radical of all, perhaps, is that Nixon’s plan included paid coverage for not only mental illness, but also drug abuse and alcoholism programs. If a Democrat were to introduce such a health insurance program even today he would be attacked as a communist by people like Rectal Noun and Bill O’Really Not. In short, Nixon’s ideas for overhauling this country’s failing health care system even before it devolved into the overpriced for-profit enterprise it is today was so radically liberal that it stood no chance of passing even a Congress in the hands of Democrats.
If it hadn’t been for some sloppy Cuban burglars, Richard Nixon’s legacy would rest on two words: Russia and China. It was his shocking decision to visit both those countries and open diplomatic channels that may have been his most influential achievements. Ronald Reagan and Pres. George H.W. Bush love to take credit for bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the push to open China’s massive population to such things as Walmart and Starbucks, but if you really wanted to pin a medal on any American President for having the largest part in those things it would be Richard Nixon.
Like any other elected leader, none of these initiatives would have been undertaken without some kind of political expectation. Precious few American Presidents have ever launched any radical change in government simply to help as many citizens as possible. Yet it is an indication of the difference in character between Nixon and George W. Bush that even in the midst of an unpopular war, economic instability, cultural upheaval, a shift in moral attitudes and having to deal with his own peculiar psychological demons Nixon still managed to find ways to create positive change out of political expediencies. Alternatively, when handed a blank check by the American people in the form of historically high approval ratings, and in the midst of only overhyped crisis facing the country, Pres. George W. Bush saw it as an opportunity to immediately set about a course in which he followed not the leadership that Nixon showed, but the darkest and most paranoid tendencies to corrupt the office of the President that Nixon showed. Given the most golden opportunity in the history of Presidency George W. Bush chose to ignore the needs of this country and focus on forcing this nation to follow him on his own delusional path down the Yellow Brick Road. The destination, it turned out, was not the Emerald City, but an unexpected hard right turn down young Alice’s rabbit hole into a world where we are told black is really white, failure is really success, and traditional American dissent is really treason.
It is the ultimate insult to compare the Presidency of George W. Bush to that of Richard Nixon. Yes, both Bush and Nixon violated their Constitutional oaths. Yes, both committed impeachable offenses. Yes, both wielded their considerable power to destroy those who dared to disagree with them. But when one looks back on the presidency of Richard Nixon one sees more than just Watergate, one sees a list of accomplishments that cannot be denied. When one looks back on the presidency of George W. Bush one sees only a gloriously wasted opportunity and a string of failures. More important and distressing is what one doesn’t see. George W. Bush has been in office now longer than Richard Nixon, yet has not produced one single initiative or program that can be termed visionary.
History records the Nixon administration as one of the worst in American history. Interestingly, however, it has been consistently rising upward over the past two decades. Immediately after his resignation, only the Presidencies of Warren G. Harding, James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson consistently ranked below Nixon. Today Nixon, while still mired near the bottom, typically ranks above as many as a dozen other Presidents. In one 1994 poll, Nixon actually almost made it into the top twenty and was ranked a mere three positions behind Ronald Reagan. This trend upward will probably continue the farther away from the events of Watergate history takes us. By contrast, it can almost certainly be expected that as the consequences of George W. Bush’s misguided policies take shape, his place on those lists will drop consistently. One suspects, in fact, that in another fifty years, George W. Bush will looking upward at the Presidents who oversaw the Teapot Dome scandal and who looked the other way as the South prepared for secession. By then, Richard Nixon will probably at long last have cracked the top ten, where he belongs.
