Nixon, Our Greatest President

Tom Veil

Here's a stunning little historical flashback that I was not aware of: Nixon not only introduced, but almost passed, a national universal health care bill. So in light of that, I propose one little tweak to OTL history:

It's the summer of 1972. Richard Nixon looks like a shoo-in to win re-election, but CREEP is busy plotting away. Then one night, John N. Mitchell begins to realize that CREEP is probably overdoing it. The next morning, the talks to Nixon. "You're right, John, we've gotta control the ball, run out the clock. No need to risk anything; that Eagleton will probably do our work for us, anyway." With that decision, CREEP limits itself to shady but legal engagements. Nixon wins, 59% to 38%.

A year and a half later, Nixon introduces his Comprehensive Health Insurance Act, but this time, with no Watergate scandal, the unions get in line behind Ted Kennedy's compromise.


So now Nixon will leave office on his own terms. Now consider his legacy.
  • Nixon ended the war in Vietnam, opened diplomatic relations with China, slashed the defense budget, and completed the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (OTL, Ford finished SALT where Nixon left off).
  • Nixon ended the gold standard, and became arguably the only Republican since Teddy Roosevelt to oversee a period where the middle class prospered more than the rich.
  • He signed Title IX (prohibiting gender discrimination in all federally-funded schools) and Title X (guaranteeing access to birth control)
  • Nixon proposed the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and helped Congress pass the Clean Air Act, the EPA's most powerful statute
  • He did a great job with Supreme Court appointments: Burger, Blackmun, Powell, and Rehnquist. They were ideologically diverse, and all turned out to be brilliant justices.
  • Now, on top of all that, add universal health care.
  • Now, subtract all the negative things you know about Nixon that never would have seen the light of day -- Nixon's foul mouth, his anti-Semitism, his contempt for following the law -- if he hadn't authorized the Watergate break-in.
Ladies and gentlement, I give you Richard Nixon, Our Greatest President.
 

Mark E.

Take out Watergate, introduce health care, and Nixon becomes a far more respected president. The title "greatest" would be difficult because too many would remember the way he escalated the Vietnam war as he sent troops to Cambodia.

Take a look at some of the most popular songs on the Top 40 in the summer of 1970. You had "War" be Edwin Starr and "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The latter begins with the lyrics "Tin soldiers and Nixon's bombing..." It was banned from the radio in Ohio and excluded by most mainstream radio stations.
 

oudi14

The Cambodian excursion was almost a sideshow during Nixon's 'Vietnamisation' effort. That only happened because the VC [who hadn't been totally defeated during Tet] were using the Parrot's Beak and Fishhook areas of Cambodia to launch raids into South Vietmam. But the radicals back home saw this as a Nixon administration effort to widen the war [which it was not]; it really did qualify as a 'police action' ; had the anti war forces left everything alone, this would have died down, and Kent State needn't have happened. I don't usually take Tricky Dick's side on anything, but I knew a guy who was in Tay Ninh Province in 1968, and he said about how the Parrot's Beak had been a problem to them.
 

Mark E.

Find a way to take out the protests at Kent State, and you will definitely give Tricky Dick some new respect.
 
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