...that there would be Presidents in the future who would make Nixon (and Goldwater and, heck, even Reagan) look good I would have simply not believed it. Ah yes, life since then has been full of surprises...hasn't it?

George W. Bush has done more than any other human being, living or dead, to rehabilitate Nixon. His presidency makes many of us long for the good old Nixon days!

Nixon's petty breaking and entering felonies pale in comparison to the shredding of the constitution of the Bushist's. Of course, they were both involved in war crimes....still... it's like Richard Nixon was caught smoking a joint compared to George W. Bush manufacturing methamphetamine to sell to children.

The only reason anyone can look kindly on Nixon or his administration is because, sadly, we now have GW. Evidently he makes even Nixon look good. YUK!

Nixon invented the Southern Strategy, and it was the federal courts that desegregated the schools, not the Nixon administration. You may be able to rehabilitate him on other points, but you can't seriously make Nixon into a hero of race relations.

I believe that the guy's name was James Buchanan (not John)

That pretty much sums up why Nixon was reviled and disliked so greatly. Watergate just gave the reason to bring him down. Add in his demeanor, foot-in-mouth speech and looks and you have a villain made for the '70s.

JFK looked like prince charming next to RMN and McGovern looked like the easy-going, reasonable uncle next to Nixon's sweaty, molester uncle persona.

And yet the article is right. Nixon did a lot. Relations to China and Title 9 have give any other president a decent legacy alone. Of course RMN was his own worse enemy with a sociopathic streak but he was also a victim of the times, his appearance and manners. A tragic figure but in context of today's admin -- my god he was a liberal.

Great review/essay, Mr. Barra. I'm glad somebody's tackling Nixon, the archetypal American political demon. The following lines are very revealing...

Probably because our definition of liberal has little to do with politics and economics and has more to do with what we regard as being a good person. By that definition, Richard Nixon does not qualify. He was petty, vindictive, paranoid and resentful

Heh -- I think plenty of liberals are petty, vindictive, paranoid, and resentful! But the first sentence is vital -- attempting to divorce liberalism from politics and economics is deadly to it, which is why it's suffered so much since the early 70s.

What makes a person truly liberal? Ecumenical politics and equitable economics -- fairness and justice just can't be safely or sensibly extracted from the political and economic arena, if liberalism's the goal.

Nixon, for all his brooding conservative paranoia and the Watergate albatross around his neck, governed to the left of every president that followed him, Democrat or Republican. It's disturbing and upsetting to think that he was our last liberal president, but I'm glad you pointed out his significant political and economic progress on a host of issues; maybe he was just rolling with the turbulent times, trying to distract people from Watergate, or trusting in a Democratic-led New Deal/Great Society holdover Congress to handle things -- but I find "When in doubt, build a park." far better than the Bushian/Rovian/Cheneyesque "When in doubt, start a war." (or the DINO/DLC "When in doubt, appease.")

Any Democratic president today should aspire to be more liberal than Nixon in their administration, and if they fail, they need to held to account for it, or at least called on it. So long as "liberalism" is quarantined from political progress and liberal economics, it will remain gliberalism, weaker than tea, a very poor substitute for progressive politics.

My high-school history teacher agreed that the "worst" Pres. was Buchanan. However, I apply that title to the group of Presidents, both Dem. and GOP, in the late 19th Century who stood by and allowed Jim Crowism in the South and Robber Baronism in the North to thrive unfettered, with disastrous results that still reverberate.

No.

It's useful to learn about his good work, and there is much as the article points out.

But our nation has deep, important, fundamental flaws yet in the thinking of our people which result in bad policies, and we need to learn those before we learn about the nice things Nixon did. What Nixon did wrong is more important for our nation than what he did right.

Our nation still does not understand, for the most part, the lessons of the Nixon administration; at least insofar as how to prevent the re-occurance of electing a man who will repeat his wrongs, since we have done so with the current occupant (as John Dean notes in the title of his book, the current president is "Worse Than Watergate".)

Like a woman who learns only to leave batterer after batterer but not how to stop picking them as partners, simply condemning Nixon isn't enough. What is it that breaks down between the theory of democracy as the people should elect a 'great man', and the practice which can lead to a man who puts himself above the law and, among other policies, continues a war in Viet Nam?

It's worth asking. Why was Nixon the nation's choice ahead of the decent, competent Hubert Humphrey (or, for that matter, able to run neck and neck in the popular vote against the very attractive, war hero, Pulitzer-winner, wealthy, extremely well-spoken John F. Kennnedy?) Especially in light of his already shady appearance as 'tricky dick'?

Were it not for some freakish strokes of luck, such as a top FBI official willing to help reporters and a tape system recording incriminating conversations that he'd inherited and which was revealed inadvertantly, all of his wrongs may not have even seen him 'brought to justice', insofar as resigning. He may have been a 'successful' two-term president.

The lessons we need to learn are ones of how poorly our democracy does at selecting men better than a Nixon, how fragile the system of impeachment is, how unable the people are to stop a war like Viet Nam which Nixon was able to not only continue for years, but to secretly expand greatly into Cambodia.

The blank look I suspect the typical reader may have at wondering how to prevent the next Nixon - something I can not specify - shows how little we have learned the lessons of his presidency, and how pointless it is to pat him on the back for taking care of National Parks and Native Americans in comparison to fixing our political system and culture.

The great direction of this nation begun by FDR, continued through LBJ (apart from Viet Nam), ended by assassins and the political shifts of the all-important southern states' electoral votes to republicans following LBJ's civil rights bill and Nixon, resulted in the plummeting of this nation since Reagan into a dark return to the robber-baron culture where virtually all of the nation's economic growth has gone only to the top 10% or so, and the top 5% have gone from a 50% share of America's wealth to a 75% share.

Understanding the lessons of the president who led the way away from the FDR-LBJ liberal era is important to our nation.

Part of that is to keep kicking Nixon around, not for the pleasure, but to try to ensure the harms are not repeated.

I understand that writers often exaggerate the importance of irony - wow, Nixon was a liberal - but keep it in perspective.

He's villified for a reason. His presidency was one that paved the way for the current president's (and vice-president's) secrecy, for being able to pursue a 'secret war' and put the president above the law. Some forgotten good domestic policies don't mean that history should put those good policies ahead of the criminal wrongs.