The Richard Nixon Presidency

When I took Civics in 8th grade and Government in 11th grade, recent US history was discussed a lot. In US History in 10th grade I distinctly remember going over the Civil Rights movement, the space race, and even the fall of the Berlin wall and cold war which had just happened a short while before. Did you guys not make it to the end of your text book? You really didn't talk about anything more recent than the Civil War? No World War 1? World War 2? Roosevelt and trust busting? Prohibition? Vietnam? Korea? Brown v Board of Education? Women's Lib? That seems incredibly odd to me. But sometimes comments from other Americans on this site make it seem like I received a much fuller education than some. For a while Fairfax County was the rated the #1 school district in the country. We always joked about it but maybe this was actually deserved.

I also remember learning about Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon. Though I don't believe his dog's name ever came up.

If you're in 11th grade and your "history" text covers things that happened in your life time (less than 17 years ago), I'd call that pretty comprehensive. I also don't see any reason to lament not knowing cursive (learned that in 3rd grade myself); states and state capitals seems more significant to me (learned those in 4th and/or 5th grade, I think).

Either you have a terrible memory or a thoroughly unique school system that teaches you nothing of the past 150 years of human existence.

My history classes in Germany didn't discuss much beyond WW2 either. Some of it was covered in political/social science but all in all there was much more about 1871-1945 than about 1945-.

Or the last.

Trump might be the last.

Nixon had guts to support lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 even though younger people during the whole Vietnam era weren't very likely to vote conservative. You don't see Turtle even take on Constitutionally mandated challenges.

All I could think of was Moral Majority but now I remember that came a bit later - more in the Reagan era.

Yes, and he managed to ascend by lacking any of the charisma that seems a prerequisite to the presidency these days. The guy had a lot of serious flaws, but he got where he was by having a strong command of policy, the law, and a lot of intellectual horsepower along to go with it. It's incredible that a Republican president in the 70's forced desegregation and established the EPA. The modern Republican party seems to be actively fighting to undo those gains.

If Nixon were running for office today the current GOP would probably call him a socialist.

um. okay. Is anyone here from Cambodia? Trump was better at obstructing justice than Nixon. I'm not sure why your being from Cambodia would make that any more or less relevant. But, someone told me to tell you.

Also, I think it's sad that while pilloried in his own time, today there are some out there who are attempting to rehabilitate the image of Richard Nixon. Again, not exactly sure why this was something I needed to tell you.

Canada Dry: your point? Did you even read my comment? Or were you so busy leaving comments everywhere calling American presidents war criminals (this is the sixth one I've counted today) that you didn't have time to read what you were responding to?

And... are you honestly convinced that every other US president is "among the worst people in the world"... but Donald Trump is merely an oaf? When he's got less moral character than *any* of them? Seriously?

..... are you serious? Both Bushes and Bill Clinton were all vastly more moral human beings with far more character than Trump. You could be biased toward either party and still see that. Trump has NO principles, NO beliefs, NO morals, other than whatever is good for him in the moment. There has never been a president this shallow and rudderless before in US history. We've had corrupt presidents. We've had immoral presidents. We've had presidents who were racists, sexists, philanderers, war criminals, cheaters, and crooks. But Trump is a whole different animal. The closest a human being could ever come to the word a-moral. Just completely devoid of morality. It's not something he ever thinks about. It's not part of the hardware in his brain. He doesn't have the capacity to understand right from wrong.

As to the "most corrupt" title, he easily takes that title, too. Try googling "presidential administrations by number of indictments" sometime. Nixon is a distant 2nd.

CD's view of presidents (extremely harsh against all, except easy on Trump) makes more sense now that we've come to understand he gets all of his views from Russian state propaganda.