I usually agree with Roger Simon, but I have some points to pick with this attempt to compare Nixon with Obama:
“Now I realize the comparison is unfair to Nixon who, other than Watergate of course, was a pretty decent president. He and his cohort Henry Kissinger opened Red China and effectively changed history by triangulating the Soviet Union. What those two men did helped lead to the diminution of Maoism as well and probably saved a huge number of lives. Tricky Dick also ratified the first, and ultimately most significant, U. S. environmental legislation, the kind that actually had a positive effect on the air and water, as opposed to the destructive self-regarding nonsense we have today.”
Well, I suppose it is true that some of the regulation of pollution and so on did some good, and yes, the China issue was played fairly well. But this article commits a sin of ommission: there is no mention whatever of the abandonment of the gold link to the dollar (admittedly, the link was a mere formality by the early 70s anyway, but still) and the institution of price controls, a pure example of King Canute Economics.
Nixon was not as evil as he is portrayed, maybe, and it is true that he pissed off a lot of the right people, but he also pissed off a lot of the wrong ones as well. I think that is possibly where Obama has a common bond. Not only has The One done things guaranteed to annoy conservatives, he hasn’t exactly been a great liberal president in the best use of that word, either.
My sentiments exactly. Frankly, I think that Watergate was relatively unimportant (the only significant part, and the thing which lead to his impeachment and resignation, was the coverup, not the event itself), and it was certainly much less important than the currently unfolding Gunwalker scandal.
But the abandonment of gold convertibility was more than a “mere formality”. Yes, US citizens had been prohibited from owning gold since the Roosevelt administration, but foreign governments could still demand conversion of their dollars into gold. That kept a lid on our government’s ability to print money out of thin air. Nixon eliminated that last link to monetary sanity, and set the stage for the worldwide economic calamity now unfolding around us. That was his greatest sin.
On the question of which President Obama resembles, I still favor the comment I read somewhere (apologies for not knowing to whom to credit this) that he’s most like Mikhail Gorbachev … a leader attempting to save a system destined for failure.
There is a saying among lawyers that “any case can be defended” – but I did not think it was true till now.
So Richard M. Nixon was responsible for the fall of Maoism.
His crawling to Mao (whilst the said Mao was murdering tens of millions of people) helped end Maoism.
Actually Maoism continued till Mao died (and Nixon was out of office by then).
What is Nixon supposed to have done – shoot Mao with a delayed action poison dart from Langley?
Actually Nixon could not have given a crap about what Mao was doing in China – what he wanted was for Mao to stop helping to kill Americans in IndoChina.
And Mao promised him the Moon and the Stars – and went right on helping to kill as many Americans as possible.
As anyone but a complete and utter moron (sorry “intellectual”) would have predicted.
The defence of Nixon is total crap – but it was well presented.
If I ever go rape and murdering I want this writer to represent me in court – he just might get me off.
Back in the real world.
Nixon vastly increased Welfare State spending.
He also vastly increased regulations – not “just” price controls, he also created such things as the EPA (the private-property-does-not-exist-all-belongs-to-Gaia agency).
And on and on.
Lesson to be learned.
Just because the left hate someone – does not mean he is any good.
Richard Nixon was right down there with Edward Heath.
Of course Barack Obama is not like Nixon – he is like the person that Nixon went to see in China.
“You are going to far Paul”.
If that is so – why do so many people who are or have been employed by the Obama Administration openly praise Mao. Indeed have been RECORDED doing so.
“We will get you for mentioning those recordings – just like we got GLENN BECK”.
Mmmmm.
One hundred million Dollar radio deal.
Nice estate near Dallas.
And lots of armed guards – some of them ex Special Forces.
Come on leftists “get me” like you “got Glenn Beck”.
Not entirely fair, Paul, and not what the Roger Simon quote says. He didn’t say that Nixon “was responsible for the fall of Maoism”, merely that opening up relations with China ultimately lead to the diminution of Maoism. You may disagree with that, but I think that’s a defensible position. And whether or not Nixon’s visit was a proximate cause of the eventual demise of Maoism, it certainly helped reduce tensions between the two countries and set the stage for increased trade and, as we are seeing today, the change in China toward (not “to” but “toward”) a more market-based economy. All unarguably good things.
I’m not going to try to defend Nixon’s entire record (I’ve already agreed with Johnathan’s points about his severing of the last monetary link with gold and the imposition of wage and price controls, and I agree with you about the EPA), but give the devil his due: opening up relations with China was Nixon’s signal achievement of merit. (Well, that and he also got us out of Viet Nam: Kennedy started that war, Johnson escalated it, and Nixon ended it, much as the Left would rewrite history to say otherwise.)
Not to toot my own horn here, but I can’t resist. On my blog (linked in my sig) I wrote on precisely this issue a few days ago.
“Tricky Dick”? Oh, you mean Saint Richard the Morally Upright. You have to admit the bar has been drastically lowered in the last 40 years, no?
He signed some important cancer research legislation. He gave a mighty effort to win in Vietnam, and then got us out about as well as any President could have. He saved Israel from extermination in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, by okaying massive airlifts of vital supplies to Israel.
His economic policies, Phase One, Two, & etc. with its wage and price controls though, those were horrible.
Nixon was a sleazy crook and Kissinger was a Fascist. The former was at least reasonably human, the same cannot be said of the latter, a mass murderer and a truly nasty piece of work.
US politicians enter politics to line their own pockets, pure and simple. This is true of pretty every President after WWII.
You only have to look at the way the Bush’s, Clinton, Reagan, Obama, et al, whore themselves out to Wall Street like cheap porn stars to see their true motives.
If its a “public service”, why is the Pres paid? He/she should work for nothing, and do it out of a sense of duty.
A leader who has to be paid to lead is no leader.
And before that they were wonderful? Really?
Calvin Coolidge wasn’t too bad.
Surely the biggest problem with the comparison is that Obama did not in fact pull off any kind of foreign policy coup, let alone one that apparently neutralised China as a hardline communist power and indirectly led to the break-up of the USSR.
As far as I can tell he simply continued Bush’s Iraq-Afghanistan policies, which themselves haven’t brought a great deal of strategic advantage to the US.
He’s Nixon, then, without the saving grace.
“You only have to look at the way the Bush’s, Clinton, Reagan, Obama, et al, whore themselves out to Wall Street like cheap porn stars to see their true motives.”
I am not aware that the Gipper did this much – he’d already made a decent living beforehand and was too old to care. Clinton is probably the worst of the lot. Bush senior and junior don’t really need the money.
Interesting, is it not, that this tirade about the dubious activities of former Presidents comes from the same person who, a few days ago, viciously attacked the British Monarchy for its supposed riches, its evil “German” origins, etc? And yet as I continue to point out, just because a head of state is elected is not a cast-iron guarantee that there won’t be rent-seeking behaviour of the sort we have seen. There is something to be said for having independent means if you are in public life, as well as being so old that the chances of a big career after leaving office are small.
A co-worker of mine is an old anti-war hippy, and therefore hates Nixon and always will. I get a kick out of needling him – “Hey, Nixon got us out of Vietnam, ended the draft, started the EPA and said that we’re all Keynsians now. From your progressive viewpoint, what’s not to like?” We may actually have come a long way since the days when an FDR-lite like Nixon was the Republican standard-bearer.
Nixon was a funny President, he had almost no interest in or understanding of domestic or economic policies, he was always focussed on foreign affairs. To this end, he opened relations with Red China (therefore dropping Nationalist China as an act of realpolitik) as a way of putting pressure on the USSR to resume nuclear arms negotiations with the USA. He was the first President to visit Peking and Moscow, and managed to get the first nuclear arms control treaty signed with the USSR. He was aware that the world existed on the brink of nuclear war, and wanted to work towards diminishing that risk. The actions of some CIA renegades and their Cuban buddies in bugging the Democrat offices in the Watergate were not a priority for him. I happen to think that the same cast of characters may well have assassinated JFK, so Nixon got off comparatively lightly.
I think what the hippies really hated about Nixon was that he wore a suit and tie even when walking on the beach. It was a “he is uncool” thing, not a policy thing.
Laird – Maoism carried on AT FULL FORCE till Mao died.
So Nixon had zero impact – total zero.
Medicant.
“Kissenger was a Fascist”.
I wonder if it is the 1920s Soviet PROPAGANDA “tool of big business” idea of Fascism you have in mind.
Of course in the REAL Fascism of Mussolini it was the STATE (not “big business”) which had the whip hand. Mussolini remaining a socialist till his dying day.
As for Kissenger – I doubt he had (or has) any political ideology at all.
It always seemed to me (and, yes, I am old enough to remember him office) that he considered international politics a GAME.
If he has not already done so, Roger Simon should read “Mao: The Untold Story”.
Then he might understand that I am not being too hard on him.
“…it is true that he pissed off a lot of the right people, but he also pissed off a lot of the wrong ones as well.”
e.g. Hunter Thompson