Nixon doesn’t look so bad after all – Daily Freeman

It’s laborious for me to explain how a lot I as soon as loathed Richard Nixon.

As a school pupil throughout the Watergate scandal, I celebrated when he give up on the cusp of impeachment. I firmly believed, together with tens of millions of others, that Nixon was the bottom human being ever elevated to our highest workplace, and his monitor document of anti-constitutional crimes would by no means be surpassed.

Jeez, we had been naive.

Despite his serial abuses and aberrant habits — bugging his personal workplace, ordering the Watergate coverup, ranting on tape about “the Jews” will stain him for eternity — if you evaluate Nixon to the present vile authoritarian, the previous appears so good I’m tempted to wallow in nostalgia and provides the man his due.

Think about it: At least Nixon wasn’t stupider than a slab of cement. At least he wasn’t a helpful fool of the Russians. At least he did not ship folks to storm the Capitol after narrowly shedding the 1960 presidential race. When the Supreme Court dominated towards him in 1974, forcing him to launch the Oval Office tapes, he shortly complied. When fellow Republicans advised him there have been enough House votes for impeachment and it was time to go, he went. He really went.

But that is only for starters. Check out these factors of comparability:

* Unlike he who shall not be named, Nixon didn’t work to destroy the mandate of the Environmental Protection Agency. Remove the opposite. He created the EPA, signed the Clean Water Act, and signed the Endangered Species Act. In 1972, he praised America’s “environmental awakening” and mentioned, “the federal government must provide leadership.”

* Unlike the present saboteur of NATO, Nixon labored to maintain it robust. In 1969, he referred to as NATO “one of the great successes of the postwar world.” He mentioned “the American commitment to NATO will remain in force, and it will remain strong” as a result of it’s “more than a military alliance,” it “represents a moral force.”

* Unlike the present enemy of reasonably priced well being care, Nixon repeatedly sought to enact sweeping well being reforms — “to ensure,” he mentioned in 1971, “that no American family will be prevented from obtaining basic medical care by inability to pay.” Indeed, Nixon’s provisions — employer-mandated insurance coverage, elevated federal subsidies — had been really extra beneficiant than immediately’s Obamacare. (They failed as a result of Democrats, led by Sen. Ted Kennedy, did not assume they had been liberal sufficient.)

* Unlike the present man’s quest to rig the judiciary for the wealthy and favored, Nixon created the Legal Services Corporation Act. Today, the LSC — a federal nonprofit entity — nonetheless gives authorized help to low-income folks. When he signed it into legislation in 1974, he referred to as it a “constructive way to help (the poor) help themselves,” to “protect and preserve a basic right for all Americans.”

* Unlike the present added warlord, whose ignorant blunderings in Iran will possible speed up a regional nuclear arms race, Nixon prioritized non-proliferation. He sat down with the Russians to barter nuclear arms treaties; For the primary time, America and the Soviet Union positioned limits on their nuclear weapons arsenals.

* Unlike the present entitled brat, Nixon did not have a racist wealthy daddy to grease his ascent. He grew up poor with no connections in a rural California mud city. His father had a lemon farm that failed. Notwithstanding Nixon’s plentiful character flaws, it is past dispute that he labored his rear off to get to Duke Law and past, to wind up in locations just like the Great Wall of China, forging an historic detente with a communist energy.

I say all this with out minimizing the traits so many people despised — his lies, his paranoia, his willingness to enlist aides in prison schemes that landed them in jail. He was in the end destroyed by his personal treachery and taught a era of Americans to mistrust their authorities. He additionally ended the draft, championed school loans for the poor, and created the OSHA office security company. The complexities by no means stop.

And as loathsome as he typically was, he by no means impressed eight million Americans to flood the streets towards him on a single day in all 50 states. That alone tells the story.

Some 30 years in the past, I lined an occasion on the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California. Walking the grounds with a colleague, I mentioned, “Hey, isn’t he buried around here somewhere?” My companion mentioned, “You’re standing on him.” I leapt as if my ft had been scorched. I seemed down and, sure, there he was. Today, acknowledging his upside, I owe him a semi-salute.

Dick Polman’s columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.