This country was broken long before LBJ and Nixon. In fact, the degradation of our currency was likely an inevitable result of poor fiscal policy and unconstitutional government dating back many decades before that.
The last balanced budget, I believe, was pre-Civil War, wasn’t it? Coolidge got spending cuts, but there was still a deficit. That’s why he kept saying the country spent too much even back then. The American people truly do believe in excess spending insure continuation of their own particular program of interest.
You are right. Third party candidate Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose party screwed America by taking away enough votes to let socialist Woodrow Wilson win. A few years afterward, Franklin D. Roosevelt led the path to ruin that Democrats have followed ever since. We are screwed, it’s just a matter of time.