Buchanan Compares Nixon and Kennedy
Pat Buchanan takes a look at the legacies of Richard Nixon and John Kennedy- Kennedy being a more legendary figure among most, with Nixon being the scoundrel. He points out that Nixon can actually point to more positive accomplishments than Kennedy.
Buchanan was a senior advisor to Nixon, but you can't really argue with the historical record.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 10:23 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Nixon also had five more years as President. tiegseo
True.
Kennedy was president Jan '61 - Nov '63, about two years and ten months. Nixon was president Jan '69 - Aug '74, about five years and six months. Nixon was president about two years and eight months longer than Kennedy.
I think much of what Buchanan was trying to address wasn't so much the actual accomplishments of either, by themselves, but the media generated myth of Kennedy's great- albeit short lived- presidency.
That, and the probably wide held image of Nixon being a real scuzbag. I mentioned that here long ago that the Left seemed to hate Nixon, yet he created what should be one of their favorite government agencies: the Environmental Protection Agency, along with OSHA. I didn't know about OSHA until reading the Buchanan piece.
I hadn't really thought about Kennedy until a decade or two ago. I'd always considered him a charming guy with a sense of humor. Still do. But years ago I overheard a couple young guys talking. The one was saying things pretty much along the line of what Buchanan wrote. To paraphrase that guy, "Everybody talks glowingly about Kennedy as if he was some great president, but he got us involved in a lot of shit...". He went on to list VietNam and Cuba among other things. I thought he made a good point.
Pat'lock and load' draft dodger Buchanan kissed up to Nixon before during and after Watergate...Kennedy, well, no saint he, but a WWII combat veteran and gifted speaker of Bostonese could have dodged the draft like Pat but did his time and went to politics...read some of his speeches and then read Pat's Nixon rubbish and you will see why Kennedy remains in high regard. He had charm and grace, witness the ancient poet Robert Frost reading at his inauguration..
Nixon sold us out to COMMUNIST China. He has had a much bigger impact on America today than Kennedy has.
I haven't read the article yet, however, in many ways Nixon was the last truly liberal President before Obama (and even Obma is questionable when it comes to foreign policy - he's actually a bit of a hawk, the latest breakthrough with Iran notwithstanding).
Nixon signed the most sweeping environmental reforms of any president. He signed OSHA into existence. Dumped the useless gold standard. And of course opened up dialogue with China.
Too bad he was such a Machiavelian slime ball.
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