Posted on 07/07/2019 9:54:04 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
FULL TITLE: Geoff Shepard: Yes, Trump and Nixon are alike in many ways -- just not the ways Trump’s opponents would like
A lot of people like making comparisons these days between President Trump and Richard Nixon – most of them in connection to the Watergate scandal and Nixon leaving office before his second term was up. And indeed, there are several similarities between the two presidents. They are, however, not the ones those making such wishful-thinking claims would like to see.
As someone who served on Nixon’s White House staff for five years – mostly doing policy work with the Department of Justice, and also as deputy counsel on the president’s Watergate defense team – I know a whole lot about what went on behind the scenes as the Watergate scandal unfolded. All I know about Trump is what I read in the newspapers, much of which is difficult to take at face value.
Nevertheless, there are several rather surprising (and somewhat eerie) similarities between the two:
Both were classic outsiders. Nixon and Trump both ran as agents of change and won very close elections in hugely divisive eras in American history.
Nixon won at the tail-end of the rebellious ‘60s, marked by massive opposition to the Vietnam War and the horrifying assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Universities were brought to their knees by student takeovers and protests, and there were bloody riots on some nineteen cities.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The RATS can offer NOTHING but reliving the past. Absolutely nothing for the future of REAL America but destruction, chaos, and radical socialism.
Has this country not learned from the big cities they have destroyed???
A lot of people were turned off to Nixon because he won the election. If he had been elected 50 years later, what he did wrong would have been considered admirable. It was for the Clinton administration.
But Nixon’s strong point was his foreign diplomacy. Trump is excellent in understanding the actual problem and determining the best, and easiest, way to handle it. Obama was terrible in foreign work and he further complicated his mistakes by sending H Clinton out there to further fumble the ball. Trump does his own work as he is hands on. That’s what a middle tier leader does that does not have full authority to do things unless he can trust someone to accomplish it. With the way his own party is handing the situation of his administration, I can’t see anyone like that either.
rwood
Ask any of the Vietnam POWs what they thought of Nixon. I know a couple.... He rates just ahead of Abraham Lincoln.
He was very good on certain things, others not so much.
Abandoning the gold standard and enacting wage and price controls were two of his not so great actions.
BTW, notice how Nadler and Schiff have STFU about “impeachment” as have the owners of the Dem Party, the dying lying leftist fake stream enemedia?
The toms-toms sent out the message for everyone to focus on the Dem primary because “impeachment” was a distraction this close to the election ... it’s funny how all of that works, isn’t it?
The Texas A & M Colodny Collection documents are amazing and completely destroy the total frauds that are John Dean, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Richard Ben-Veniste and the corrupt mainstream media of that era.
In the sense that Nixon and Trump were completely unique in their time, they are exactly the same. And so another holiday weekend editorial deadline is met.
Nixon won the popular vote with a plurality of 512,000 votes, or a victory margin of about one percentage point. In the electoral college Nixon's victory was larger, as he carried 32 states with 301 electoral votes, compared to Humphrey's 13 states and 191 electoral votes and Wallace's five states and 46 electoral votes
Yes was successful, reached out to our enemies, ended the Vietnam Ear and passed the Clean Air Act, established the Environment Protection Act: ‘ During his first term in office, Nixon pursued reforms in welfare, heath care, civil rights, energy and environmental policy, on the belief that such policies had to be based on national standards, not the idiosyncratic whims of 50 states. While Congress defeated his welfare and health care programs, Nixon created the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Energy Policy for advice on oil policy and supported the Clean Air Act of 1970. In addition, he established the Environmental Protection Agency.
He insisted that Congress broaden the U.S. Civil Rights Commission mandate to include sex discrimination and signed all civil rights legislation passed by Congress, including Title IX, which banned sexual discrimination in educational benefits. Most important, the Nixon administration expanded enforcement of affirmative action. He also supported the Constitutional amendment lowering the voting age to 18. Nixon used the “peace dividend” from reducing troops in Vietnam to finance social welfare services and enforce civil rights through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. As a result, from 1970 to 1975, spending on human resource services exceeded spending for defense for the first time since World War II.
When I asked Nixon in 1983 what he considered his most important achievements in domestic policy, he included the more thorough desegregation of Southern schools, environmental initiatives like the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the pursuit of international cooperation in space, as well as his declarations of war on cancer, illegal drugs and hunger.
These achievements were even more important than the foreign policy initiatives for which he has received wider praise — innovative attempts to diplomatically engage both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, and to attain modest arms control through the anti-ballistic-missile agreement with the Soviet Union.’. NYT article
Nixon was also a patriot...
“Nixon was also a patriot...”
I’m afraid it depends on which side of the aisle you sit. If you’re a conservative, you look at his achievements and the directions he was taking his administration when he decided to step down, even when he didn’t have to, taking full responsibility for his actions. If you’re a liberal, all he ever did was be a crook, lie to the public, and destroy the office of the president. Everything else was swept under the rug.
Now 25 years later into the 90’s we had a president that harmed the office nationally and internationally more than any combined group of presidents up to that point and he was lauded, Clinton. And the US doesn’t know half of what he did and got away with from murder to sex crimes. Doesn’t seem right does it?
rwood
Agree - Nixon ended up paying for Johnson’s sins (and those who may have thought they were “helping”). Now the Dems are blatant about what used to be “covert to cover our asses with plausible deniability” issues...and the Klintons are the ones that pushed them around that corner.
Astute.
rwood
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