We were just talking about him last night.
My very dear friend used to work for him. He was, literally, his plumber. Which is funny, but true. And while my friend did not vote for him and has no more regard for him politically than the rest of us, he liked him personally, liked the work, and often finds himself missing him.
It is odd, indeed, to hear, "I miss Nixon" in my home.
Indeed, Nixon was a corrupt power monger. But he was smart, and in his warped way he cared about America. Shrub lacks the brains or the caring. I hated Nixon when he was in office, and I thought I'd never see a worse president. I was wrong.
Hey, happy b'day. 'Tis a grand day altogether.
The saddest part for me is the thought that Nixon's domestic social programs (from comprehensive health insurance to CETA), often conceived for cynical reasons and implemented poorly or not at all, were still quite possibly the most progressive we'll see in our lifetimes.
De, that's interesting. We rarely have any real idea of what people like Nixon are like outside of the public accounts.
Pygalgia, I keep meaning to get myself a "Nixon: now more than ever" bumpersticker. I hear they're back in fashion. 
Thers, thanks and happy birthday to you! A grand day indeed. Hope you had a good one; mine was exhausting but enjoyable.
dj, you're right...that really is terribly sad.
Heck, at least Nixon gave us the EPA. What's the best thing we'll be able to say about Bush in 30 years? I really can't think of one thing.
Happy Birthday on your birthday, Tom.
Don Ruckekshaus isn't so sanguine abouy Nixon "giving us" the EPA:
He created EPA for much the same reason Reagan invited me to return to the agency in 1983: because of public outrage about what was happening to the environment. Not because Nixon shared that concern, but because he didn't have any choice.
Pretty much everything Nixon did domestically was for that reason, a more cynical man has hardly existed.
I'm sure he'd as soon have done nothing, but he had a war to run.
Sounds familiar.
Nixon... I mean, really...
This is the guy who loosed Ted Agnew (as we knew him in Maryland) on the world.
Engaged? Hardly.
Then there was the time he declared himself a Keynesian in 1971 ...
My Presidential disgust is calibrated just a little differently. Bush makes me miss Reagan. Reagan made me miss Nixon.
Reagan was a lot worse than Nixon. The rubes bought his "good guy" smarm, and let him rob them blind. But that was okay because he smiled and talked nice to them while he did it. So he got away with a lot of crap way longer than necessary.
Then there's poor Tricky Dick. Nobody liked Nixon, really. He was probably the last President we had that you were with him because you liked his policies/ideas, or you hated him because you hated his policies/ideas, rather than really giving a fig about the man himself. He was too smart to play the Aw, Shucks routine, and too no-nonsense and suspicious/paranoid to pull off charming. Poor guy. Now that he's gone, I feel kinda sorry for him.
Oh, and happy B-day Tom. Hope it was a fun one. 
Happy birthday, Tom! Sorry I'm late.
All the crap going on in the Bush administration makes me nostalgic for the Nixon-era Congress. Where are the Republican statesmen who will stand up to a corrupt president because it's the right thing to do?
Yeah, I'm just having a bit of trouble ginning up much sympathy, respect or thanks for the guy who smeared Helen Gahagan Douglas as "the pink lady" and "pink right down to her underwear"...
Or the guy who brought us the southern strategy.
Or the source of so much modern Republicanism, like this all time great:
I don’t give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up, or anything else.
And the man was no one-hit wonder. He just kept pumping out the hits and breaking new ground for decades. He was the Red Hot Chili Peppers of his day, except without the Red.
John Kennedy, no stranger to Dick Nixon, once said that a dinner for a group of Nobel prize winners (I think it was) was the greatest collection of intellect at a meal in the White House since Jefferson ate alone...
If you were alive for Nixon's trip to China you will recall the thrill of seeing the greatest collection of rat bastards in one place since Stalin last used the can.
Yeah, I'm not inclined to grant Nixon, in death, any more than he earned in life.
The modern GOP is Dick Nixon's house, the current occupants are just living in it; but none will ever rise to Nixon's level of depravity.
Giants walked the Earth in those days, I tell you.
So you're the guy who did him in! Congratulations and thanks!
I have a T-shirt about Nixon that I love -- it reads "I don't care if he's dead, I still want to IMPEACH NIXON!" The guy was a total rat bastard, and only looks good today in comparison to the King Hell Rat Bastad (and Worst President Of All Time), George W. Bush.
Belated happy birthday, Tom, sorry I missed it yesterday.
Happy birthday, Tom! Pardon me for being a day late.
The thing that always amazed me about Nixon was that anyone took him seriously after the "Checkers" speech. (I was a small child at that time and didn't see the speech until many years later, but it amazed me to look back and see how the man's career had progressed since then.) The Checkers speech made it quite clear that the man was either emotionally unbalanced or a manipulative rascal … or both. How he managed to be elected so many times to so many things afterwards is a testimonial to what suckers the American people are (or were, at least).
I pretty much follow LJ/Aquaria's hierarchy of badness for those three presidents. Nixon was bad, Reagan was worse, and Grinning W. Monkey is the embodiment of everything wrong with homo sapiens.
The Checkers speech (1952 was before my time, but of course I've seen video and listened to the audio at American Rhetoric) was a doozy....
I have a theory, too, that the best and only answer to a smear or to an honest misunderstanding of the facts is to tell the truth.
That, in retrospect, is real knee-slapper.
One of my favorite Nixon times was when he told reporters after he lost to Pat Brown, "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore."
That rocked. Dude broke up with HIMSELF long before bands made it fashionable.
Hey! I just noticed the credit on the painting! Is that the Max Hilton-Gray?
Yup...that's him all right.
Saying Reagan was worse than Nixon? You guys are seriously off-tap dead center.
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