NIXON: MORE THAN A SCANDAL
Watergate is the indelible stain on Richard Nixon’s reputation, but his presidency was signi cant for more than the scandal that destroyed it. He promoted the most important changes in American foreign policy since the onset of the cold war. Most signi cantly, his opening to the People’s Republic of China forged a new entente with the hitherto hostile Beijing regime to counter Soviet expansionism.
He additionally established a new détente with the Soviet Union to manage superpower competition, most notably through the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty of 1972, the rst arms-control treaty of the nuclear era.
Nixon also agreed the se lement that ended the United States’ participation in the Vietnam war in 1973, but this was hardly the “peace with honour” he had promised Americans and could not prevent Communist victory two years later.
In domestic terms, Nixon can be seen either as the last of the moderate Republican presidents or the rst in a new cycle of conservative ones. His record included desegregating more Southern public schools than any president in history, presiding over a regulatory revolution (notably the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency) and a major welfare reform that failed to gain Senate enactment.
Meanwhile, he built foundations for a new Republican ascendancy through his cultural conservatism that appealed to habitual Democratic voters in the blue-collar suburbs and the white South. If Nixon’s abuses of presidential power rightly weigh heavier in the scales of history, his accomplishments also mark him as one of the most signi cant modern presidents.