Hail to the Chief

And I don't mean Illiniwek. I'm talking about my new favorite president. Ladies and Gentlemen... Tricky... Dick... Nixon!!!

We knew that this guy opened up China to the west...

Nixon (right) shakes hands with the "other" Chairman (left).

...and that he wasn't afraid to break a few rules...

Mark Felt is... Deep Throat: The Man that Brought Down Dick. This guys looks like a "Deep Throat."

But did we know that Nixon was awesome? Check out the quotes on this little piece.

Nixon on abortion: "It breaks the family... (however) There are times when an abortion is necessary... When you have a black and a white... or a rape."

Nixon on Jews: "It may be that they have a death wish. You know, that's been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries."

At this point, I could just end the post, but I figure that a little digging would be cool...

According to Wikipedia, Tricky Dick grew up in a poor, Quaker family, got into Harvard and Yale, but couldn't afford either. He did end up at Duke, where he became the president of the Duke Bar Association. Interestingly, I'm the president of the TFS Bar Association, but I'm guessing that these two groups have different missions. In any case, he volunteered for military service when WWII rolled around, and made enough playing poker during the war, that he was able to finance a campaign to become a Congressman. How cool is that?

Apparently, Nixon was a pretty reasonable fellow, from a political standpoint. Believed in looking internationally, supported civil rights, and was actually enough of a patriot to stand aside in the 1960 election, when there were allegations of voter fraud in Illinois (which, given the state of Illinois politics, was probably a given - JFK won by 450,000 votes in Cook County, but won the state by less than 9,000 votes) and Texas (LBJ's home state, where some counties had more votes than voters, just like in Iran, 2009). JFK beat him by a mere 0.2% in the popular vote, and Illinois/Texas would have swung the election. Instead, Nixon loses the election, loses in the 1962 run for California governor, and then retires from politics.

And in 1968, he made a comeback that would make MJ envious, and became an almost-2-term president.

Nixon made great strides internationally by pushing detente w/ the Russians, and opening up a relationship with China. And he did a lot to push advances in civil rights here at home. I suppose that the question is do we judge people by their sound bites, or do we judge them by their actions? When it comes down to it, are we going to remember a quip about interracial abortions? Or the desegregation of schools? And of course, you have the whole Watergate thing, which may have been blown out of proportion, in terms of how if affected the election (though not in terms of character).

As I read through the history on Tricky Dick, I think that I like him, in terms of someone who gets things done. I don't think that I agree with all of his international moves, but that's done in hindsight (like strengthening the position of the countries in the Middle East, so as to reduce Russian influence). And you have to wonder if he wouldn't have been better served during Watergate, just by coming clean early on, and saying, "Hey, sorry. I screwed up, but this didn't really affect the landslide election. Can we all be friends again?" But I suppose that folks who are that smart and confident in their abilities tend toward pride and winning the debate, rather than humility and reconciliation.

In any case, it seems that Nixon is forgotten by us - we're generally OK with history, but not so great with semi-recent history. But, I have a suspicion that he'd be a great case study of both things to do, and things to not do as a leader. And you have to put some common threads with someone like Barack Obama. Neither of them grew up privileged, and both of them made their way through by being smart and skilled. Both of them are pragmatic. And both seem to show a bit of an arrogant streak at times. Of course, they're both wildly different in their political (particularly economic) views. Some folks have already pointed out some similarities between the two. We'll see how things play out.

-Chairman