Nixon News & Notes
Why All The Hype For Nixon?
More than three decades after his death, Richard Milhouse Nixon is finally having his moment. A new generation of conservatives has come to admire the 37th president. They see him as the model Republican leader, far superior to Ronald Reagan and even Donald Trump. Hype edits of his speeches regularly go viral on social media. To those who partake in Nixonmaxxing, as the phenomenon has been dubbed, he is the man who nearly saved America—until the deep state took him out.
On the one hand, Nixonmania is a necessary corrective to the image propagated by the media over the past 50 years. His critics, basing their arguments mostly on hysteria and liberal hand-wringing, largely succeeded in portraying Nixon as one of the worst presidents in American history—a characterization that falls apart before the actual evidence.
But the new Nixon myth also has issues. Nixon had few substantive accomplishments as president, especially on the issues dear to the Online Right. While one of the better presidents when it comes to foreign policy, he had no real domestic achievements, aside from advancing liberal causes and programs. In many ways, the country actually got worse on his watch, with crime spiraling out of control and the economy plummeting. Nixon may not be responsible for these developments, but he certainly didn’t solve them.