What should have been done differently? Not inflating the currency away to create an urgent incentive for everyone to rush to convert their increasingly worthless dollars into gold. That’s what should have been done.
Instead he completely went to a fiat currency, and made a satanic deal with the Saudis that we would defend them forever as long as they only accepted dollars for oil.
That tied us to that evil feudal monarchy and lead to us fighting in the middle east for 30+ years.
So yeah, Nixon gave us the China of today and all of the trouble THAT has caused. He gave us a starring role in the middle east wars, he gave us a swarm of federal agencies to harass Americans, and he gave us our modern inflated currency that is now hopelessly beyond reform.
He should have Impeached for going off the Gold Standard.