Richard Nixon

Whenever anyone thinks of president Richard Nixon, the first thing that comes to mind is the scandal known as Watergate, which ultimately led to his impeachment and later resignation, making him the first and only sitting president to resign from office. We all know that he resigned because he knew that he would have otherwise been forced out of office, which is, in and of itself, a pretty shameful act. We all think of him as a crooked and particularly paranoid man who greenlit a shameless act of espionage on his own fellow countrymen. He's also strongly associated with the travesty that was known as the Vietnam war. He thought that the United States could simply muscle its way into creating a democratic state out of Vietnam, but as we all know, that endeavor failed spectacularly. He drastically increased our presence in the region while at the same time making a promise that he would bring the war to a swift end, which of course was a promise that he broke. Despite those two incredibly negative aspects of his presidency, it should be said that he was actually a pretty competent president in most other matters. He started the EPA, he effectively eased the cold war tension by meeting with and smoothing over our relationships with China and the Soviet Union, and he issued much needed reform when it came to civil rights, law enforcement, and welfare policies. I'm by no means using his accomplishments as an excuse for his shortcomings, I'm simply trying to be as objective as possible when analyzing this controversial president. Nixon was an incredibly ambitious, if not particularly paranoid individual. He resorted to sneaky and sleazy means to attempt to secure a second term, and he ended up getting caught and it all blew up in his face. Despite this, matters on the home front were going pretty well under his presidency, and I think that if he hadn't done what he did, he would have probably gotten a second term. Obviously I can't say this for certain, or claim that I have a complete understanding of him since I didn't live through his presidency, I'm just going by what I've learned about him through classes and on my own individual research. Love him or hate him, Richard Nixon is one president that most people know, and his mark on history will be known long into the future. Unfortunately that mark casts him in a powerfully negative light.