Polman: We could use a man like Richard Nixon again

It’s hard for me to describe how much I once loathed Richard Nixon. As a college student during the Watergate scandal, I imitated his voice and entertained my friends with allegedly clever monologues. When he quit on the cusp of impeachment, a bunch of us cracked open a bottle of champagne and recorded our chortling on an audio cassette. I firmly believed, along with millions of others, that Nixon was the lowest human being ever elevated to our highest office and that his track record of anti-constitutional crimes would never be surpassed.

Jeez were we naive.

Presidents get reassessed all the time - historians used to sneer at Harry Truman; now he’s in the top 10 -  but Nixon seems doomed to a basement ranking by dint of his serial abuses and aberrant behavior. Bugging his own office, ordering the Watergate coverup, and ranting on tape about “the Jews” will stain him for eternity. Nevertheless, there’s cynical wisdom in a line delivered by John Huston in the classic film Chinatown: “Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”

Which is my way of saying that when you compare Nixon to the current vile authoritarian, the former looks so good that I’m tempted to wallow in nostalgia and give the guy his due. In today’s MAGA Republican party, he wouldn’t make it past the New Hampshire primary.

Think about it: At least he wasn’t stupider than a slab of cement. At least he wasn’t a useful idiot of the Russians. At least he didn’t send people to storm the Capitol after narrowly losing the ‘60 presidential race. At least he had some respect for our institutions; when the Supreme Court ruled against him in ‘74, forcing him to release the Oval Office tapes, he quickly complied. When fellow Republicans told him that there were sufficient House votes for impeachment and that it was time to go, he went. He actually went.

But that’s just for starters. Check out these points of comparison:

• Unlike he who shall not be named, Nixon didn’t work to destroy the mandate of the Environmental Protection Agency. Quite the contrary. He created the EPA, signed the Clean Water Act, and signed the Endangered Species Act. In 1972 he praised America’s “environmental awakening,” and said “the federal government must provide leadership.”
• Unlike the current saboteur of NATO, Nixon worked to keep it strong. In 1969 he called NATO “one of the great successes of the postwar world.” He said “the American commitment to NATO will remain in force and it will remain strong” because it is “more than a military alliance,” it “represents a moral force.”
• Unlike the current enemy of affordable health care, Nixon repeatedly sought to enact sweeping health reforms - “to ensure,” he said in 1971, “that no American family will be prevented from obtaining basic medical care by inability to pay…America has long been the wealthiest nation in the world, and now it’s time we became the healthiest in the world.” Indeed, Nixon’s provisions - employer-mandated insurance, increased federal subsidies - were actually more generous than today’s Obamacare. (They failed because Democrats, led by Senator Ted Kennedy, didn’t think they were liberal enough.)
• Unlike the current guy’s quest to rig the judiciary for the rich and favored, Nixon created the Legal Services Corporation Act. Today, the LSC - a federal nonprofit entity - still provides legal aid to low-income people. When he signed it into law in 1974, he called it a “constructive way to help (the poor) help themselves," to "protect and preserve a basic right for all Americans."
• Unlike the current addled warlord, whose ignorant blunderings in Iran will likely accelerate a regional nuclear arms race, Nixon prioritized non-proliferation. He sat down with the Russians to negotiate nuclear arms treaties; for the first time, America and the Soviet Union placed limits on their nuclear weapons arsenals.
• Unlike the current entitled brat, Nixon didn’t have a racist rich daddy to grease his ascent. He grew up poor with no connections in a rural California dust town. His father had a lemon farm that failed. Notwithstanding Nixon’s abundant character flaws, it’s beyond dispute that he worked his ass off to get to Duke Law and beyond, to wind up in places like the Great Wall of China, forging an historic detente with a communist power. He was like a character conjured by Horatio Alger.

I say all this without minimizing the traits that so many of us despised - his lies, his paranoia, his willingness to enlist aides in criminal schemes that landed them in jail. He was ultimately destroyed by his own treachery and taught a generation of Americans to distrust their government. He also ended the draft, championed college loans for the poor, and create the OSHA workplace safety agency. The complexities never cease.

And as loathsome as he often was, he never inspired eight million Americans to flood the streets against him on a single day in all 50 states. That alone tells the tale.

Some 30 years ago, I covered an event at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California. Walking the grounds with a colleague, I said, “Hey, isn’t he buried around here somewhere?” My companion said, “You’re standing on him.” I leapt as if my feet had been scorched. I looked down and, yes, there he was. 

Today, acknowledging his upside, I owe him a semi-salute.