Watergate besmirched his legacy, sure, but aside from that, we got the Endangered Species Act, he eased tension in China, and got us on track to go to the moon.
Was Nixon as horrible as he is portrayed in popular culture, or was he just a surly guy who became a caricature because of one monumental screw-up?
Unarguably Nixon abused the power of his position as President to further his own personal ends by using executive agencies to target his political and personal "enemies" (through the FBI, CIA, IRS, etc.). He also abused that power in an attempt to subvert the democratic process (the Watergate break-in specifically).
His crimes struck at the very heart of the constitutionally protected liberties and democratic processes of America. In my opinion there are very, very few greater crimes a politician can commit.
I'm going to go ahead and say no, he wasn't as bad of a guy as everyone seems to have agreed.
I don't mean to undermine the bad things he did. Watergate wasn't even the worst of it — the secret bombings of Cambodia and Laos are reason enough to hate the guy, IMO, as is his entire approach to Vietnam — but I've long come to realize that just about every president of the modern era (and maybe every president ever) has done some truly horrible things. FDR, for example, is one of my favorite presidents. He also rounded up over 100,000 American citizens, based solely on race, who weren't accused of any wrongdoing whatsoever, and threw them in internment camps. That's despicable, totalitarian behavior. Completely inexcusable — and that's from a guy who's largely considered one of the best presidents in U.S. history.
In other words, if we're judging presidents relative to one another, I don't think it's grounds to call a POTUS a "bad president" just because they did some awful things. Nixon did some awful things; however, unlike some other presidents, he also did a number of good things (I'm speaking from the standpoint of a self-identified liberal, FWIW):
-Created the Environmental Protection Agency -Signed the Clean Air Act -Integrated the schools (Within the first two years of Nixon's presidency, the percentage of black children in the South who attended all-black schools dropped from 68 percent to 18 percent) source -Lowered the voting age to 18 -Created the Occupational Health and Safety Administration -Opened up to China -Increased minimum wage (by 40 percent over two years)
He also ended the draft, although I'm personally split on whether or not that was a good thing or not, and proposed universal health care (unsuccessfully). Anyway, in totality, I don't think Nixon is the monster everyone makes him out to be. His record is mixed, for sure, but history shouldn't forget or ignore the positive actions he took as president.