Richard Nixon was a great President in many respects and an enormously interesting man in all respects. A self-made man, an intellectual, ambitious as hell, complicated in his upbringing and in his vision of the world. A terribly underappreciated genius.

I was at a Nader rally here in Austin a few years ago and I remember how absolutely nostalgic Nader was for Nixon's policies. He was being ironic, but only partly.

Nixon was a giant. His eventual successor (Carter) was a pansy-assed overreaction to Nixon's imperial Presidency, imposed upon us by a lot of Leftist sell-outs. Nixon made Reagan possible. Reagan made our current President possible. We are a better country for it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must needs to duck.

Wow. You, like, sound smart and shit.

Too bad the content of your musing was pure Alpo.

"Imperial" presidency? We try to quash those, as we are trying to quash the current debacle of an administration that believed in its own child-like fantasies. We are not a better nation for those.

So Nixon's Laos/Chile adventures begat Reagan's Iran/Contra crimes, begat Bush II's Iraq quagmire? This is your "we are a better nation for it"?

Nixon was a "giant" criminal, many criminals are "geniuses". I will give credit to Nixon for a few things but a "giant" he was not.

Carter's appointment of Paul Volcker to the Fed easily dwarfed any economic decison that your jack-off fantasy Reagan ever made in terms of impact on our economy.

And what the fuck is a "leftist sell-out"?

Nixon began the rollback of the Great Society programs of Johnson, tanking the fastest growing and strongest economy the nation has ever seen. Who can forget the fun he had hunting for commies with his buddy, McCarthy. The only other negatives I can think of are that he was a paranoid delusional, lied about felony crimes he was responsible for organizing, and horribly smeared good people in his megalomaniacal bid to retain power. Instead of being a man and facing the articles of impeachment, he cut bait and ran. Just another republi-con coward.

Arnie's Nixon braying is nothing compared to this fact: RN is a fuckin' God, compared to what we have now...okay?

The Perfessor was obviously not a sentient human being in 1976. If he were, then he would remember the outrage across the nation over Ford's pardon of Nixon before the Watergate investigation could be completed. This outrage at Ford is the direct reason Carter won the Presidency.

Both Nixon and Carter will be remembered by history as being excellent Secretaries of State who wound up in the wrong offices. Both of their major diplomatic initiatives (relations with China, Camp David Accords) aer worthy of inclusion with the best diplomatic efforts in American history. Everything else both did, well ...

Nineteen seventy-six was one of the best years of my life. I spent the whole summer traveling across the country with my family, celebrating the Bicentennial. Oh, and I learned how to write in cursive.

Ford did the right thing. The anti-war Left was just out for blood. Nixon paid for his crimes. Clinton did not.