Nomination for the greatest president: Richard Nixon

The Digital Collegian ^ | July 5, 1994 | Jeff T. Gorman

[reg45]

I voted for Nixon twice and, to this day, don't give a damn about Watergate.

Ditto!

[Terpfen]

TR's definitely in the top 5, but I'm not sure if he beats out Reagan or Jefferson... well, maybe Jefferson. Jefferson's actions didn't generally outline American behavior for a century.

[My2Cents]

I think there's a biography of Geo. Washington entitled "The Indispensible Man." I'll concur with you; Washington is key. If it weren't for him, there wouldn't have been a Lincoln or a Reagan...the nation itself might not have survived into the 19th Century. And I'd put Lincoln second. He saved the union, the "last, best hope" of the world, assuring that the experiment in republican government would succeed, moving the nation to fulfill it's original promise in a "new birth of freedom." Reagan is right up there, because when you consider the abysmal condition of the nation in the '70s, it's amazing that he was elected in the first place, and he went on to transform American politics, not to mention winning the Cold War.

Washington - Lincoln - Reagan. They're all indispensible men, in all honesty.

[Mihalis]

Clinton would have given a helping hand to keep the monster alive.

Reagan is the greatest, a true hero.

[John Valentine]

SQUID is parroting the New York Times/Washington Post line that just can't manage to credit Ronald Reagan with anything.

Mr/ SQUID ought to invest a bit of time and money into a read of Ann Coulter's Treason.

[John Valentine]

SQUID is parroting the New York Times/Washington Post line that just can't manage to credit Ronald Reagan with anything.

Mr. SQUID ought to invest a bit of time and money into a read of Ann Coulter's Treason.

[Pharmboy]

That is the name of one of his bigraphies...by Freeman, who also wrote a 7-volume bio of the General. He not only was the key for the Revolution, but he set the tone for the Presidency and the country with his courage, honesty, class, intelligence and compassion (among other things). There was no other like him.

Best,
PB

[SQUID]

amuzing

[SQUID]

Kennedy showed how weak

[stop_fascism]

Really. How? During his short term the following occured: Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missiles, Vietnam, withdrawing missiles from Turkey, and the Berlin Wall. Kennedy was a serious anti-communist, just not an effective one.

[laconic]

Kennedy showed how weak the Russians were? Khruschev got exactly what he wanted from Kennedy -- the complete withdrawal of American missiles from Turkey. I don't call that a sign of "strength". Perhaps you forget the Bay of Pigs, the massive increase in the US forces in Vietnam, and the sanctioned murder of the Diem brothers that ensured there would never again be a stable government in South Vietnam. Why is it, by the way, that the Kennedy archives are the only presidential papers not open to the public and when bits and pieces are opened up, its at the discretion and after the review of such "distiguished neutral historians" as Arthur Schlessinger? What have they got to hide?

[SQUID]

1) In 1962, the Soviet had fewer than fifty bombers and missiles that could hit the United States. We had more than five hundred.
2) the crisis was resolved because the United States forced the Soviet Union to back down.

3)27th October – Before Kennedy could reply to the first, a second letter from Khrushchev was received demanding that USA removed their missiles from Turkey. Kennedy refused to remove the American missiles in Turkey because he felt a deal over the missiles would damage American prestige. Instead he replied to the first letter promising to lift the naval blockade and not invade Cuba as long as all the missiles in Cuba were removed and none more installed there. The presidents brother informed the Russian ambassador (evening of 27th October) that the president had considered removing the missiles from Turkey for some time.
4) So, neither the Turks nor NATO wanted them out, so action had not been taken to get them out. But in a critical meeting in the president’s office a small group of six or seven of were present -- they all agreed that they, the missiles, were a pile of junk militarily and they should get them out of there, but because of the way in which action to remove them under the threat of Soviet pressure – the way in which that would be interpreted as weakness by the Turks and by NATO, they could not make it part of the agreement.

So the president agreed, and he told Bobby to tell Dobrynin that he agreed to pledge he would not invade Cuba in return for Khrushchev taking Soviet missiles out of Cuba. And, in addition, Dobrynin could tell Khrushchev that unilaterally – not part of an agreement, but unilaterally -- he was going to take the Jupiter missiles out of Turkey and replace them, in effect, by Polaris submarines off the coast of Turkey. So that was the deal. It was not an agreement; it was a statement of unilateral action.

[laconic]

However you phrase it, its the same agreement and effect and no amount of apple polishing and semantics by the incompetent McNamara, waterboy Sorenson and the other hagiographers from the presidential staff will make it other than what it was. It is well accepted that it was a one-for-one agreement: withdraw your missiles in Cuba and we'll withdraw ours from Turkey (this by the way, was a little detail that only appeared in the public domain months after the supposed "back-down" splashed all over the media in time for the 1962 congressional elections). I don't dispute the US 10-1 missile advantage, which with the promise on removing the Turkey missiles probably spurred Khrushchev to agree and would have made any war with Russia a bit one-sided; but then again, wasn't it JFK who campaigned in 1960 on the supposed "missile gap" caused by the Soviet numerical "advantage" over the US? I grant that the overall result could have been much, much worse but it was hardly the "winner take all staredown" that the press and the JFK legacy keepers like to project.

[stop_fascism]

So, communism got a permanent base in the Western Hemisphere which it has used to foster revolution in South and Central America. You see this as a victory?

[Austin Willard Wright]

Foreign policy good? When Nixon made his deal to end the Vietanamese war in 1973, he did it on the same terms which were available to him in 1969. Meanwhile, tens of thousand of Americans died in the interim.

[SQUID]

All of this is what you were told is the truth.

[laconic]

No, its empirical fact. And just who was it that said in his inaugural address: "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, go any place ... in the defense of liberty" while his sycophants have spent the past forty years slavishly covering up for his very substantial role in making Vietnam a debacle?

[laconic]

Richard Nixon didn't PUT 525,000 troops in Vietnam; they were there when he took office from a self-described "tough guy" (LBJ who was once quoted, "these are all MY helicopters, boy", apparently ignoring the fact that the taxpayers foot the bill, not corrupt lifetime politicians) who panicked over the failure of his and McNamara's strategy in March 1968 and ran out of the White House back to Texas with his tail tucked between his legs.

[Austin Willard Wright]

I never said he "put" them there only that he passed up a deal in 1969 (on the same or even better terms than the one in 1973) which would have allowed us to withdraw then without losing additional thousands as we did between 1969 and 1973. This has been pointed out by Christopher Hitchens. If you think, Hitchens is wrong, I am all ears. If true, however, it certainly ranks as a terrible foreign policy failure.

BTW, I don't disagree that much of Nixon's other foreign policy decisions were good.

[laconic]

I stand corrected; my apologies.