Richard Nixon: Was He Truly Conservative? Essays

If one looks closely at Nixon's speech it has a very easy, logical pattern to follow, and allowed him to achieve every goal that he set for himself. One of his main intentions of his speech was to attack the democrats, but at the same time make republicans, including himself, look good. After Nixon built up his own credibility, he began to bash the democrats. He implied that Stevenson and Sparkman had something to hide, unless they do as "I" did and make their finances pubic. Nixon encourages his audience to believe a lot of things that may or may not have been true. One, that he has done nothing morally wrong with using the $18,000 fund because he made his finances public. Two, he is an honest man, and he deserves to be retained as Vice Presidential candidate. Three, rich men such as "Governor Stevenson who inherited a fortune from his father" should not deserve to be president. But, a "modest man" such as himself or Eisenhower, a common man that "God must have loved," should have that chance at office. In general Nixon said that Eisenhower and he, the republican candidates, are qualified to lead the country and democrats are not. Therefore, he only left the American public with the option of electing the

This was the first time the United States government enacted the wage and price controls since World War II. The prelude to Nixon’s actions was that the inflation had become a serious problem. Lyndon Johnson imposed a 10% income tax surcharge in 1968 to soak up purchasing power, but this had no effect on inflation whatsoever (capitalgainsandgames.com). Nixon desperately needed to keep inflation bottled up until after the election. Although the wage and price controls undoubtedly helped Nixon politically to win the reelection to the office, they also undermined the long term viability of the American market. Nixon’s act launched United States economy into a decade of unprecedented turbulence, punctuated by episodes of hyperinflation, shortages, high interest rates and stagnation. There was no other Presidential pronouncement since then that has so radically reordered the economic agenda both domestically and

According to Tony McConnell, Nixon was the first president to consider a basic income and was the originator of the Environmental Protection Agency (28). Just like any other president, Nixon made his own policies and impacts on America. Another noteworthy topic of Nixon’s legacy is his foreign policy. McConnell notes that “it could only have been… [Nixon] to make common cause with the Chinese against the Soviet Union” (29). Nixon established nuclear arms control with Russia during the Cold War and establish the diplomatic openings with

President Richard M. Nixon’s administration had to face many international and domestic challenges in the United States between 1968 and 1974, some positive and some negative. His achievements in expanding peaceful relationships with both China and the Soviet Union are contrastingly different with his continuation of the Vietnam War. In the end, Nixon’s scandals and abuse of presidential power caught up to him, and his administration did much to corrode America’s faith in the government.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” “We have nothing to fear except fear itself.” Those influential words were said by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt respectively. Even though they are very influential words, my favorite has to be: “By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.” This was Richard Nixon’s quote as he became the first person to resign from their presidency. Former President Richard Nixon was remembered for many things, most notably as the worst president in the United States of America, all because of a thing called “Watergate.” That begs the question: was Nixon’s presidency as bad as it is known for, or were there good things that outweigh the bad?

In 1960’s America was becoming divided at home and struggling to understand the America’s intervention in foreign nations especially South Vietnam. When Nixon took office he wanted to quiet the protests, he wanted to get America out of Vietnam and focus on the falling economy at home. Thus Nixon purposed a period of relaxation with the Soviet Union. “ Nixon and Kissinger hoped that such a relationship, which they deemed détente would lessen the threat of nuclear war, encourage the Soviets to pressure North Vietnam into a peace settlement.” (Gillon p. 1114) “ President Nixon and Henry Kissinger wanted to abandon the costly pursuit of weapons superiority and instead focus on peaceful economic competition.” (Gillon p.1114)

Richard Nixon, though created a large credibility gap within the US, he accomplished a lot for the country. He served five years in the presidential office as a republican (1969-1974), and he was the only president to resign from office in history. Although through his presidency he had accomplished many things, such as creating revenue sharing, ending the draft, and creating anticrime laws, he still had a rough time rebuilding his reputation after many assumptions of corruption in his office. Though he never admittedly pledged guilty to his crimes of taking government funds for his own personal gain, there was proof that he was. After the Watergate scandal, the American people set their mind to believe what the proof led to, so Nixon’s

Prior to 1980, the Democrats had dominated the Republicans for several decades. (Meyer, 2005). However, on December 1, 1980, Reagan garnered 91 percent of the electoral votes becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to defeat a Democrat since 1888 when Benjamin Harrison won the presidential elections. Prior to this period, the democrats had controlled both the House of Representative and the Senate. According to Troy (2012), Ronald Reagan has remained the most influential U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Even after Reagan’s retirement from the presidency of the US, his revolution, restoration, and rediscovery continued to shape the US. Under Reagan’s presidency and his revolution, US has emerged as the world’s only superpower and started enjoying a capitalist resurgence at home and abroad. The Reagan revolution has had long-term outcomes on social, political, and economic landscape.

In 1967 the anti-war movement caused Lyndon Johnson to start a major propaganda campaign with the aim of convincing the American people that the war in Vietnam was being won. Johnson never managed to gain public opinion, but neither did the movement. According to Johnson’s white house aide and confidant Doris Kearns the anti-war movement had a “deep personal effect on him” and “drained his self-esteem and energy.” He went on to limit the bombing and not seek re-election with the hope that he would salvage his place in history by making progress in negotiating an end to the war and restoring unity at home. This hope was not fulfilled and Richard Nixon went on to be elected as president.

January 1969, Richard Nixon entered the executive office picking up the pieces Lyndon Johnson who had left while the Vietnam War was still in effect. Many Americans had the expectation that Nixon would be the “peaceful president”, visualizing he would put an end to this war in Southeast Asian and bring back home our troops. A policy Nixon redefined was the American role in the world by suggesting to limit the U.S resources and commitments. Therefore, Nixon’s set his efforts to end the war since the withdrawal from Vietnam was not an immediate option. Also, Nixon had his radar on Moscow and China because according to George C. Herring, they felt that they must release the United States from the war in a way that would uphold United States credibility with their friends and foes alike. During Nixon’s term in office, he tries a number of different strategies in his effort to end the war, but to this day, one can see that Nixon only prolonged the war when it could have ended earlier.

Regan made conservatism seem progressive,

In a time when communism was such a strong out cast and frowned upon by the U.S. citizens, under the presidency of Richard Nixon, was a young man by the name of Ronald Wilson Reagan. Reagan was born February 5, 1911 in Tampico, Illinois, to Nelle Clyde Wilson and John Edward “Jack” Reagan. In the 1930’s, Reagan was a very successful anti-communist actor that had to fight the ‘militantly activist movie industry movies union’ and had to deal with investigations into Hollywood’s political activities. Reagan would later (1981-1989) become the 40th President of the United States. Many challenges were faced under Reagan’s presidency. The one main foreign affair under Reagan’s presidency was the concern of communism and terrorism.

After years of LBJ's Great Society, Richard Nixon won the 1968 election on a pledge to stem the country's ballooning welfare programmes and reduce the government's role in the economy. Early in his presidency, Nixon placed fiscal conservatives in a number of high government positions. He named Donald Rumsfeld as the Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, an organisation the man disliked, and a renowned economics professor and free market advocate, Arthur Burns, as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Reflecting his professed devotion to decentralisation, he also urged the Congress under the slogan, “New Federalism”, to delegate Washington's authority over social spending to individual states. The heady days of constant government

The White House also came up with an adversary list. Every President from Washington to Johnson has had his list of disapprovals, but Nixon's was much more efficient and threatening . The list originated on

I agree with you that his character is what attracted many voters to elect him as president but that is the very same thing that gets other presidents elected but the different is the timing and having the experience with President Nixon. President Carter thanks to the mishaps of others he was able to sell the American people a dream. He wanted to be great and wanted to do so much but he was able to see that being the president is so much more complicated than he thinks. He was faced with many issues and problems and was not able to resolve them. He also offered a new approach on foreign issues but in this particular area he had some success from his achievement in arranging a peace treaty between Egypt and