I was wrong about Nixon

Tricky Dickie, the ruthless manipulator, the President that was a crook, this is how I thought of Nixon, but I was wrong. I watched last night David Reynolds's brilliant documentary, Nixon in his den. This is how history should be presented, a story, an account from which you gain a greater, deeper understanding of human frailty that makes up history. Nixon came through as a driven manipulative obsessive man with huge chips on his shoulders. He came from the wrong side of the track, resented that East-Coast wealthy intellectuals educated at Harvard looked down on his small college education, though his degree from Duke University was respectable enough. To compensate for his seeming social disadvantages he worked constantly and excessively hard. He was a loner, but he was ambitious. He was secretive and distrusting. He had no friends, no confidants. He made his name and built up his political capital by hounding communists, yet he harboured a vision as President to end the Cold War, and build a more peaceful future. He inherited a war in Vietnam which he didn't believe in, realized that America could not win, and considered it his priority to get out of it. When bombing the Viet Cong into submission didn't achieve its end, he played chess with world politics, by bringing China in from the cold, establishing relations with China and persuading China to suspend support for the Viet Cong. This put pressure on the Soviet Union to follow suit. By cutting off support for the Viet Cong he could negotiate a withdrawal from Vietnam. His close ally was Kissinger, but when Kissinger claimed credit for his diplomatic successes Nixon became jealous of him and tried to distance him. Yet Nixon's paranoia and his secretive ways which stood him in good stand in his diplomatic efforts was his undoing in domestic politics. In the end he was a man to be pitied, a successful President who left big footprints in the sand of history, but the honour and respect due to him for his great achievements was denied to him because of his personal failings.