(Actual sign posted at the Nixon Library)
I am posting a series of blog entries on the Richard Nixon Library.
I am not sure why people think of Genghis Khan as a right-winger. He ordered the integration of his military and didn't support a state religion. That makes him much more progressive than many conquerors before or after him.
Back on the topic of Richard Nixon I want memories from my readers. What did you think of him at the time?
If I get three decent responses I will post a picture of a modern enemies list of the Nixon Library I discovered on a bulletin board in a staff area while I was there.
Nixon is the first president I remember. I was 13 when Watergate hit the fan in 1973.
I never quite understood (and still don't, I guess) what all the fuss was about. Nixon always seemed to me like a comical, paranoid, and pathetic liar with severe emotional damage he likely picked up from his childhood. He was far better at shooting himself in the foot than in actually executing conspiracies. A breakin to a campaign office for, what, some campaign papers? Yeah, sure, burglaries are illegal; but high school kids who did the same thing would be slapped on the wrist and put on probation for a year. What kind of sensitive government papers would you find in a campaign office, anyway? Watergate was more an embarrassment to Nixon little different from the twitter posts suffered by (now ex-)Rep. Weiner. I never thought that Watergate came anywhere near the kind of major, impeachable damage to and betrayal of our government and our society that people like G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney committed while in office. Nixon was a novice and a greenhorn compared to those master traitors of the Constitution.
I really don't get the 'Genghis Khan' reference, either. Did the Khans even have tobacco?
Stuart,
It is true they didn't have tobacco.
Thanks for reading and commenting on my blog.
The Ming dynasty was just after the Yuan dynssty and the Ming dynasty exported tobbacco.
What are you referencing that says they didn't have tobacco?
Tobacco was a New World crop that was exported from the America's. The reference assumes that because Genghis Khan was a ruthless dictator that he must be to the political right, but Stalin also fits this bill and he was on the far left. It basically points out that Nixon like all republicans had a very weak grasp of historical knowledge.