I know that Nixon was viewed as a Leftist to a certain degree.
You know, I find myself in a strange quandry with Nixon.
Do I agree with his Leftist moves? No. I don’t back those types of government policies.
At the same time, this man has been vilified by the public to the point that it’s way over the top IMO.
After Clinton and now Obama, it’s just wrong to keep acting as if he was the great Satan of presidents.
Nixon may have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t a traitor to our nation, and frankly, I think both Clinton and Obama have committed acts of treason.
Well there’s a very big difference between Leftism and Liberalism. LBJ was a gold plated American liberal, and Leftists hated him. They hated him because Johnson was an anti-Communist, as was Nixon.
Nixon wasn’t a Leftist in any conceivable sense of the term. But as President he did sign a whole load of liberal domestic legislation. He was a big government Republican, a good deal closer to Rockefeller’s Republican liberalism than to Goldwater’s Republican conservatism. Yet Goldwater was the first prominent Republican to endorse Nixon in 1968.
As far as Watergate, I don’t think Nixon did anything that Lyndon Johnson hadn’t done to an even bigger degree. And after reading Colodny and Gettlin’s ‘Silent Coup’ I don’t think Nixon even knew about the break-in beforehand, much less did he order it. That entire burglary was John Dean’s doing and he he managed to pin the blame on Nixon and save his own hide at the same time.
I occasionally hear Hannity using Nixon’s name in a fashion as if he was evil. Well Hannity was probably 5 years old when Watergate happened, and he’s no smarter now than when he was riding his Big Wheel.