Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
All the bad stuff that Nixon did -- his paranoia, his thin skin, his dog whistle campaigning, his coup-happy foreign policy coup, Watergate -- still remains true. Bear in mind.
Nixon's administration in terms of policy oversaw the shift from the gold standard to fiat currency which is basically the monetary system still in place today with the Dollar being the value the global currency is pegged on. He created the EPA, and he was pretty close to introducing a health care system that would have been far more advanced to Obamacare and give people the public option back in the '70s. Medicare For All is even more radical of course.
He also started the trade partnership between USA and China that remains in place though honestly I am not sure if that's entirely a good thing on record. The idea that capitalism would make China democratic never happened and indeed the Chinese have bent capitalism to a form of tyranny and social bribery and they are swallowing places like Hong Kong and eventually aim to take over Taiwan.
Absolutely, the French dictator Robespierre during the Reign of Terror while he guillotined people around him also played a part in abolishing slavery for the first time. Castro is a hero to Nelson Mandela and the people of South Africa for his help in ending apartheid even if he is a dictator in Cuba who imprisoned and killed people, and had an anti-LGBT policy (granted his dictatorship on balance is less murderous than other commie tyrannies or Pinochet's government in Chile, and he reformed and apologized for his homophobia...but that's a pretty low bar that doesn't cancel out burying democracy for the people of Cuba).
So yeah, Nixon belongs to that category of interesting, flawed, figures with good and bad on their ledger. A bit like Doctor Doom. I mean Richard Nixon is very much like Doom -- intelligent, insecure, ashamed of his looks, thin-skinner, and resentful of how much people like that idiot JFK...errr RIIICHARDS!!!!!
If you look at it objectively, it's hard to find any substantive good done under his administration. The tax cuts for the rich...lol. That's basically his big domestic policy accomplishment. Then there's the stacking of judiciary for the service of one party done by McConnell...yeah, more oligarchy. In Foreign Policy, there's stabbing the Kurds in the back and basically handing the Middle East peace policy to Putin (his premature withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan will also help with that). I suppose Jared "Peace in the Middle East" Kushner will boast of recognition of some gulf states and Sudan of Israel but mostly that's confirming what's already happening and it doesn't rise to the status of the Camp David Accords or Oslo Accords (done by Jimmy Carter, who no joke, was exemplary on Foreign Policy), and indeed it's mostly undone Oslo, what with recognizing Jerusalem as the capital. There's not much here you will like or recommend unless you are a die-hard Republican. A democrat can praise Eisenhower for Brown v. Board and sending the troops to enforce it, for the infrastructure stuff he started (though that came at the price of public transport and probably a big question mark these days), and for DARPA (which created the Internet eventually) and NASA.
This kind of policy is mild, mediocre, and banal and it doesn't compensate for the great harm and evil done by his administration in terms of walking out of the Climate Accords, turning a blind eye to Bolsonaro's bats--t insane polices in the Amazon, cozying up with Kim in North Korea, alienating and angering the EU and the NATO alliance pushing them towards China (recently Germany and others signed a trade deal with China even if Biden told them to hold the pen...but the EU can't guarantee or depend on a bipartisan foreign policy anymore and can't bank on Democrats maintaining an uber-mandate for decades), this dumb trade war with China and so on. And of course inflaming tensions with Iran and walking out of the Nuclear Deal. Trump's weakened America substantially economically and globally from when he started out. Obama restored Prestige to America after the W. years, but Trump f--ked it all away.
The family separation policy, the "Muslim ban", the Ukrainian Hustle, lying about COVID and letting people die, the Putsch of January 6. Those things tower over everything else. Would Republicans really like Trump or have voted for him if he just talked about tax cuts for the rich on the campaign trail, or about stacking the judiciary or cozying up to North Korea? No the reason the GOP voted for him was these things. So it doesn't make sense to talk about Trump and policy.