• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

If Watergate had never happened...

If Watergate had never happened would Nixon be remembered as a good President?


  • Total voters
    35

radcen

Phonetic Mnemonic ©
DP Veteran
Joined
Sep 3, 2011
Messages
34,817
Reaction score
18,576
Location
Look to your right... I'm that guy.
Gender
Undisclosed
Political Leaning
Centrist
If Watergate had never happened...

...would Richard Nixon be remembered as a good President?

Legacy-wise, 20+ years after he would have left office at the end of his term.
 
We don't have a time machine so my guess is that we'll never really know.

Me, I liked Nixon up until Watergate.
 
If Watergate had never happened...

...would Richard Nixon be remembered as a good President?

Legacy-wise, 20+ years after he would have left office at the end of his term.

What if JFK had not been murdered? Would Nixon ever have been president?

That is a question that is impossible to answer and that would have a direct influence on this. If Nixon had been a good president would there have been a Carter presidency? Or a Reagan one.

He opened up the road to the East with China. But that was a choice made out of fear of a Russia-China commie juggernaut IMHO.

What he did in Chili helped the rise into power of Pinochet, just because Nixon did not want Allende in government. Something that has cost many thousands of innocent lives from this brutal dictatorship.

It is impossible to determine whether or not he would have been a good president without Watergate because Watergate was a reality just as the response of Nixon. In office he made some good and some very bad decisions. All in all I have to say, impossible to predict whether or not we would have seen his presidency as good or bad. He would have gone into history as any other president who had not had a future changing decision, he would have been seen as OK, nothing more I would think.
 
What if JFK had not been murdered? Would Nixon ever have been president?

That is a question that is impossible to answer and that would have a direct influence on this. If Nixon had been a good president would there have been a Carter presidency? Or a Reagan one.

He opened up the road to the East with China. But that was a choice made out of fear of a Russia-China commie juggernaut IMHO.

What he did in Chili helped the rise into power of Pinochet, just because Nixon did not want Allende in government. Something that has cost many thousands of innocent lives from this brutal dictatorship.

It is impossible to determine whether or not he would have been a good president without Watergate because Watergate was a reality just as the response of Nixon. In office he made some good and some very bad decisions. All in all I have to say, impossible to predict whether or not we would have seen his presidency as good or bad. He would have gone into history as any other president who had not had a future changing decision, he would have been seen as OK, nothing more I would think.
You spent a lot of time to not answer what is a very simple question. The question deals with Nixon solely, not anyone else, and especially not events prior to his Presidency. It also deals with how he would be remembered. It's not complicated, and it's silly to make it complicated.

Grade: F
 
You spent a lot of time to not answer what is a very simple question. The question deals with Nixon solely, not anyone else, and especially not events prior to his Presidency. It also deals with how he would be remembered. It's not complicated, and it's silly to make it complicated.

Grade: F

And how is it a simple question? In Never Neverland?

How on earth is anybody going to predict how Nixon would have been remembered if there had not been a Watergate.

1. there was a Watergate

2. He did not complete his presidency

3. people cannot predict how a president would have been viewed without him having finished his presidency. Maybe he would have solved world hunger, maybe he would have started world war three.

Grade for your poll: F (two can play that game)
 
If Watergate had never happened...

...would Richard Nixon be remembered as a good President?

Legacy-wise, 20+ years after he would have left office at the end of his term.

The problem with Nixon was a deep and scarred flaw in his own personality which caused him to be too often won over by his darker impulses. Watergate was only one of the more obvious examples.

Had it never happened , I suspect if he could have avoided other such scandals, the main thing he would be remembered for is China and that would cause him to be rated as a GOOD president. Sadly, reality names him a disgrace.
 
If Watergate had never happened...

...would Richard Nixon be remembered as a good President?

Legacy-wise, 20+ years after he would have left office at the end of his term.

I voted "other," but the more I think about it the more I realize it would be very difficult to brand Nixon a good President absent Watergate.

With foreign policy, Nixon in some ways made the exact same mistake as Johnson with the Vietnam War. Because of that double down, those actions taught a changing nation to no longer trust what the government was telling the people. The unpopularity of the war soared as well as the notion of "secret government." With the economy and our fiscal position you could argue well that in concert with our complete implementation of a Fiat Money system, Nixon is largely responsible (with his war machine, entitlement changes, and other dubious spending desires) for the core structural fiscal condition of our deficits that existed all the way up to the point of Clinton and in some ways still exist today. He both inflated spending on the poor and the middle class through entitlement changes to Social Security, Medicare, and other federal employee retirement mechanisms of the period. At the same time he pressured the Fed to be more loose with their interpretations of economic data and by effect accelerated our bubble and pop economic model. From that inflation jumped dramatically as Fed policy was no longer in sync with price and wage indicators. Ended up being something that other Presidents had to deal with up to and including Reagan. Nixon was also the ultimate regulator. Think the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, and the Consumer Product Safety Act of 1972. While we can argue all day about the merits of these Acts, the net effect was an economic impact on top of other decisions from the period. It was no real shock we had periods of unsustainable inflation from all the actions taken during Nixon's time to gain popularity in the face of such a changing nation.
 
Nixon was easy to not like, so he probably would have taken a beating for his personality, and possibly for the failed drug war. without Watergate, though, his legacy would have been presiding over the end of the Vietnam war and opening up China for trade. his presidency would most likely have been in the positive category.

Monday morning quarterbacking, and all. it's hard to tell with the data that we have. his second term was cut short, and he could have done a lot with it or not much.
 
interesting idea for a thread, BTW.
 
Nixon actually did do a lot, and even as a republican, more progressive ideas got through on compromise, more so than even clinton or obama.
 
If Watergate had never happened...

...would Richard Nixon be remembered as a good President?

Legacy-wise, 20+ years after he would have left office at the end of his term.

Nixon was s great president
 
I think that's really gonna depend on who you ask.

For me, kicking the Drug War off in earnest is a major black mark, and kind of hard for me to get over. But I suppose I would have still put him in the middle of the pack, were it not for Watergate, based on what he did in his presidency to that point.

As others have said, it's a little hard to know given that he didn't finish it because of Watergate.
 
By what measure?

Opened up China, got us off the gold standard and negotiated that saudi Arabia sell oil only in dollars

Henry Kissinger was his sos, and perhaps the greatest this country has ever had.

Nixon gets credit for Kissinger, who was the true brains of the operation. Our current superpower status is directly owed to events that took place during the Nixon admib
 
Opened up China, got us off the gold standard and negotiated that saudi Arabia sell oil only in dollars

Henry Kissinger was his sos, and perhaps the greatest this country has ever had.

Nixon gets credit for Kissinger
, who was the true brains of the operation. Our current superpower status is directly owed to events that took place during the Nixon admib



And both of those criminals get credit for Pinochet coming to power in Chile. :roll:
 
And both of those criminals get credit for Pinochet coming to power in Chile. :roll:

Chile is a minor footnote in Anerican history, only because as bad of a guy as Agusto Pinochet was, the events of chile didn't significantly affect the U.S. Economy, our security, or our standing in the world
 
Chile is a minor footnote in Anerican history, only because as bad of a guy as Agusto Pinochet was, the events of chile didn't significantly affect the U.S. Economy, our security, or our standing in the world



Tell that BS to the many thousands of Chile's citizens who were murdered and abused by the Pinochet regime which was put in power by the USA.
 
Tell that BS to the many thousands of Chile's citizens who were murdered and abused by the Pinochet regime which was put in power by the USA.

Try to separate facts here: yes the Pinochet era was a disaster for Chileans and scarred them forever, but strictly from an American perspective, it didn't materially harm us
 
Nixon struck me as a very complex and flawed man.

- He gave us the DEA.
- He was a strong proponent of a universal inclusive national healthcare plan.
- He (& Dr. Kissinger) were very good at Foreign Policy, Viet Nam aside - though he did withdraw the troops, effectively ending the non-war.
- He began the process of restoring diplomatic relations with China - not an easy thing politically, after 'Nam.


So there's a lot to like & dislike about the guy, and I predominately dislike him, even without considering Watergate.

But, if he would've prevailed w/o Watergate, and maybe pulled-off universal healthcare (along with withdrawing the troops), I'd feel pretty positive about the guy!
 
Last edited:
I think that's really gonna depend on who you ask.

For me, kicking the Drug War off in earnest is a major black mark, and kind of hard for me to get over. But I suppose I would have still put him in the middle of the pack, were it not for Watergate, based on what he did in his presidency to that point.

As others have said, it's a little hard to know given that he didn't finish it because of Watergate.

Nixon was the one who started the drug war, but Reagan was the one who kicked it into overdrive. For this reason Reagan has faded in my view with the passage of time.
 
Last edited:
vietnam and hearing that recording where he suddenly became interested in talking about health care, once his adviser mentioned the incentives of HMOs would be to *deny* treatment, ensures i will always think of him as a real devil, even aside from watergate. He was a crook thru and thru
 
Back
Top Bottom