A recent question I've had is how the academic/history community views Nixon as a president. I couldn't really find comprehensive opinions online, and the most relevant /r/askHistorians post I could find is this one: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tj7jj/taking_away_watergate_how_iswas_nixon_regarded_as/ The OP of that poses the question better than I can, but the post is quite old and the responses there were a bit limited.
From what I know about him, he seemed like a generally good president. He drew down troop numbers in Vietnam (after the surge) and eventually got U.S. forces out, being somewhat like Obama in that he inherited and had to end an unpopular, costly war. He visited China and reopened diplomatic relations after a long freeze, taking a more nuanced approach to foreign policy than his predecessors. He took the U.S. out of the Bretton Woods system to prevent a run on the dollar, allowing world currencies to float in relation to one another, which has in general proved advantageous in the years since. He negotiated for SALT and the ABM treaty with the Soviet Union, putting a halter on the headlong rush that had become the arms race. Domestically, his administration started the EPA and OSHA as well as the wars on cancer and drugs. I also hear that after his resignation, he traveled and wrote extensively and was regarded as something of an elder statesman. Now, asking how Nixon is viewed while disregarding Watergate may be like saying "Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" (as an old history teacher was fond of saying), but is there validity to saying that he was a good president beyond the scandal?
The motive I have in asking is exactly because Nixon had so such international success (as in defusing tensions), especially with communism, and I can't help but outweigh his success over Watergate, and I would personally rank Nixon as an extremely good president. In fact, an international friend of mine specifically remarked that Nixon was highly regarded in foreign countries (and I believe Mao even specifically said Nixon was the greatest US president?). However, most responses I've read on this topic is that Nixon had good policies, but Watergate is so egregious that it cancels out.
So, is there a general consensus within the historical community on whether Nixon was a good president or not?
Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (1995) deals with this exact question. One thing about historians is that we hate classifying things into "good" or "bad" (the satire 1066 and all that is based on this). It isn't so much that his achievements outweigh Watergate as that they are both part of his record. One can argue that the same decisiveness, brilliance and arrogance that allowed his achievements also led him to make critical mistakes in dealing with his opponents leading to the Watergate scandal.