As ever, I'm going to get my sources out of the way at the start. So: Asaf Siniver's Nixon, Kissinger, and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Machinery of Crisis, Pierre Asselin's 2011 article in the Journal of Cold War Studies "Revisionism Triumphant: Hanoi’s Diplomatic Strategy in the Nixon Era" and Logevall and Preston's Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969-1977. (Also Nixon's memoirs, a few Kissinger tomes etc.)

So then. Yes, Nixon would be considered a great president if not for Watergate and what Watergate represents. That's an important distinction to make as basically the more we learn about Nixon, the more there is to dislike about the human being. However, we're talking here about Nixon the President, and I'm going to deal with just a few foreign-domestic issues.

The "big one" Vietnam. Pierre Asselin rightly points out that much of the criticism heaped on Nixon takes a very West-centric perspective as concerns Vietnam. The basic argument is that since Nixon offered the North a "better" deal while running for President, since he expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos, and negotiated out rather than simply leave, Nixon betrayed both Americans and needlessly extended the length of the war. The problem with this point of view is that it ignores the North Vietnamese perspective (specifically those in charge). The North Vietnamese leaders were totally disinterested in negotiating until Nixon genuinely upended their system with the combination of bombings, invasions, mining, and triangle diplomacy. Keep this always in mind, the North Vietnamese had been fighting for the better part of a century to get imperial powers out of their country - no negotiating, just get out. The very fact that Nixon was able to actually get the North to not only negotiate, but make any kind of compromise is evidence of his diplomatic success. It was an immense disgrace for the North to negotiate at all, yet Nixon was able to accomplish that.

Triangle Diplomacy and Detente. The opening with China and the thawing of antagonism with the Soviets (as well as SALT and the ABM Treaty) was not a short-term plan. It wasn't simply a matter of getting the Chinese and Soviets to fight amongst themselves, rather it was about placing further stress on the divide between them in the hope that both (but mostly China) would move closer to the U.S. sphere. Detente was not intended to be the solution to the Cold War, but it was meant to coax the Soviets more into the American world system and force them to engage/compete more economically and morally. To simplify obscenely, Nixon initiated (not Kissinger, as Nixon had the idea earlier than Henry) a diplomatic manoeuvre which severely weakened the Soviet Union and exacerbated their position in the long-term as it contributed to Soviet participation in what eventually became the Helsinki Accords, and so on and so on.

The second Nixon shock. Nixon cancelled the convertibility of USD to gold. Why is this important? Because Nixon understood that the intention of the Bretton Woods System (or this aspect of it at least) had been fulfilled - the capitalist economies were mostly thriving, and in many ways (Japan especially) making use of a system that was meant to help get them back on their feet in order to pull ahead. Thus, Nixon ended the practise since it was no longer needed.

These are just some foreign policy achievements of Nixon. It's not as though he didn't have failures, or that he didn't have some really impressive domestic achievements, but I'm going to leave it there for now. *Note: I may edit this post for spelling or nonsense sentences but I will not alter the thrust.

One area of policy generally that doesn't receive much attention is the US's relationship with Native Americans. The Nixon years were great for Natives. Essentially the US went from a policy based on the idea of assimilation and 'kill the indian, save the man' to self determination. In the late 60s and early 70s the American Indian Movement (which has been compared to the Black Panther movement) protested the old doctrine. It was then changed, mostly by executive order, by Nixon . http://nativeamericanhistory.about.com/od/Policies/a/Richard-Nixon-S-Influence-On-American-Indian-Affairs.htm

Additionally, could someone speak to Nixon's foreign policy achievements? I'll never forget my APUSH teacher back in high school stressing that between detente with the USSR and the "opening" of China, Nixon had the most successful foreign policy of any postwar president. I always thought this was a big claim so I'm wondering if there's any merit to it.

I love Nixon. I'm a big fan of a lot of his policy accomplishments and a lot of the policy that he attempted to implement and didn't succeed, including reforms to welfare which would have been the equivalent of creating a basic income policy.

I used to actually use those policy positions and accomplishments to justify why Watergate wasn't that big of a deal, especially considering that in-spite of public reaction, that kind of stuff was pretty run of the mill during the 1950s and 1960s.

Now I want to a apologize because this isn't a historian's answer because it's information that has come to the public much too recently to be really included in a history text and John A. Farrell's book Richard Nixon: An American Tragedy hasn't been released yet.

If we didn't know about Watergate and subtracted that from the equation, I think we would instead be discussing the fact that Richard Nixon deliberately extended the Vietnam War because he thought that would help him in the polls in 1968. Some of the folks have claimed that that this rumor isn't true, and have cited Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 -- which was published in 2013.

In 2014, George Will pinned this column and Farrell wrote this piece for Politico. I think part of problem that I have with this thread is that we basically can't answer this question to the full extent using secondary sources because some of the primary sources haven't been available.

So, to answer your, I thought Nixon was a great president with the exception of Watergate and was even willing to defend him, but with what I know now he put his own election, effectively his personal interests, above the welfare of the nation and wasted the lives of our countrymen and billions of dollars in so doing.

He might have even been elected president without messing up the peace talks, we'll never know because he was willing to screw the nation over just because he thought it would improve his chances. I think his treason will likely cement him as one of the worst presidents as our historical record advances. I think 50 years form now Nixon will be: "The guy who committed treason to become president and later had to resign because of some other criminal stuff."

I have some questions about his foreign policy (as a progressive, I would have liked to see him withdraw our troops by June of 1969), but I do have to give him credit for establishing the [Environmental Protection Agency[(http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/birth-epa) and for signing into law not only the Clean Air Act but also the Clean Water Act.

I'm not a historian, but I used to believe this claim as well.

I recently read One Man Against the World by Tim Weiner, which uses the recently declassified material (tapes, diaries etc) to give a better perspective on Nixon's own thought process, including why he wanted an opening with China and the Soviet Union, as well as his rationale for the clandestine bombings of Laos and Cambodia.

The author seems to be making the point that the "good" things Nixon did such as creating the EPA or improving relations with China & USSR were either things he had no control of ( due to a strong Congress) or to serve his own purposes regarding Vietnam.

Nixon's administration did have some profound foreign policy successes, one of these being the opening of China to America which (arguably) has great economic benefit to this day, and in doing so weakened the Soviet Bloc by pulling China away from Moscow's influence.

I have a Cold War book, and I'll look for it tomorrow, but I'll paraphrase from it in saying that the Soviets were legitimately surprised by Nixon's removal from office for something that they considered to be a very minor offense, and they were doubly surprised that America would want to remove Nixon because they considered him a formidable adversary.

Hm... a great President, no. Far too controversial and polarizing, and ruling in a time period that wasn't conducive to happy or "heroic" memories. The Vietnam War and Nixon's electoral strategies would sour a lot of memories. Even before the Presidency, the partisan divide that Nixon evoked was intense, even by the standards of American politics. There's no way of knowing what would happen in his second term, but the economy was likely going to be crap in 1976 at the very least, and that would hurt. It's also probable that there would be some scandal eventually, by dint of the time period and the increasing lack of tolerance for "old style" politics and CIA shady business. Nixon just didn't have the quality to get people to see the stars like FDR, JFK, or Reagan did, and that means he will never hit the top tier of Presidents. Even being on par with Clinton or Eisenhower is a stretch because of this sheer anti-charisma, helped by the fact that Nixon's enemies were far more likely to make movies or write newspapers than Clinton's or Reagan's or Kennedy's.

With that being said, however, I think it's safe to say that he'd be ranked higher than he is with Watergate. Above average is the probable likely consensus, particularly if he accomplished what he was planning on accomplishing in foreign policy during the second term. Nixon had some pretty grand plans in that field, particularly concerning the USSR, East Asia, and the Middle East, and it's silly to think that he couldn't get anything more done in 1973 and 1974 at the very least. And Nixon's domestic policies were generally pragmatic, solid and centrist, bad economic policies aside-in fact, but for Watergate, Nixon and Teddy Kennedy probably would have pushed through a version of healthcare in 1974 that was far stronger than the ACA is. So he'll probably be remembered as a guy who was shady, untrustworthy, and slimy, but did his job very well and restored order to an America that needed it.

Judgment would definitely depend on political orientation, with liberals and Democrats taking a much dimmer view of him. But the idea of Nixon as the embodiment of all evil, on par with the likes of Adolf Hitler or some South African NP leader, would have very limited appeal without Watergate to post-Baby Boomer generations, even to the liberal ones. It just wouldn't resonate, for the same reason that Bill Clinton hatred doesn't for conservatives/libertarians in their 20s today. Matter of fact, even with Watergate, it doesn't, at least not to the same degree. There is a reason that a solid majority of the "heavy" anti-Nixon stuff in the media these days is being created by aging liberals, not younger ones, many of whom show a little more nuance. (Check out the @dick_nixon Twitter account, for example, and contrast that with an older liberal historian like Kutler who argued that Nixon, 20 years dead, still had the power to unhinge our collective judgment and needed to be guarded against.)

Also, no tapes, or a heavily edited version of them, would be an extreme boon for his reputation.

No. Watergate was a reflection of Nixon. He was a paranoid, shrewish, neurotic, despotic sociopath who saw enemies everywhere. Watergate exposed him, but before that he was a war criminal, a thief, and a spy who expanded the powers of the presidency so that he could abuse them. He ran as the peace president while undermining peace talks in secret. He was one of the worst pieces of refuse to ever sit the american throne. His apologists didn't even exist until after his death, and repeating their lies makes you mildly complicit in evil.

This is a fascinating thread. Can anyone comment on Hunter Thompson's eulogy for Nixon?

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/