When people ask what president was Nixon, they usually expect a one-word answer. "Disgraced." "Corrupt." Maybe "Tricky Dick." But Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, and honestly, he was a lot more complicated than a simple villain in a history book. He served from 1969 to 1974, a period where the country was basically tearing itself apart over the Vietnam War and civil rights. He’s the only guy to ever resign from the office, which is a massive deal, but if you only look at the ending, you miss the weird, brilliant, and sometimes progressive stuff he did before the wheels came off.
He was a striver. A kid from a poor Quaker family in Yorba Linda, California, who worked his way through Duke Law and into the Navy. He didn't have the Kennedy charm or the Johnson swagger. He had grit. And a lot of resentment. That chip on his shoulder defined his entire career, for better and mostly for worse.
The Man Behind the 37th Presidency
So, what president was Nixon in terms of actual policy? If you looked at his domestic record without knowing his name, you might actually think he was a moderate Democrat by today's standards. It’s wild. He created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He signed the Clean Air Act. He even proposed a healthcare plan that looks suspiciously like the Affordable Care Act.
He wasn't a tree-hugger. Not even close. He just saw which way the wind was blowing after the first Earth Day in 1970 and decided it was better to lead the parade than get run over by it. He was a pragmatist. A cold, calculating pragmatist who understood power better than almost anyone else in Washington.
China and the Great Pivot
Nixon’s biggest flex was foreign policy. Before 1972, the U.S. and China basically didn't talk. We pretended the most populous nation on Earth didn't exist. Nixon, the guy who built his career being the ultimate anti-communist "Red hunter," was the only person who could go to Beijing without being called "soft" by his own party.
He and Henry Kissinger played a high-stakes game of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." By opening up China, they put massive pressure on the Soviet Union. It was a masterstroke. It changed the entire map of the Cold War. But even that success was shadowed by the secret bombings in Cambodia and the agonizingly slow exit from Vietnam.
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The Shadow of Watergate
You can't talk about what president was Nixon without the "W" word. Watergate wasn't just a break-in at a hotel. It was a mindset. Nixon was paranoid. He kept an "enemies list." He used the IRS and the FBI to mess with people he didn't like.
The break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in June 1972 was botched from the start. Five guys in business suits with surgical gloves and walkie-talkies? It was amateur hour. Nixon didn't necessarily order the break-in itself—historians like Stanley Kutler have debated the exact "smoking gun" for decades—but he absolutely ordered the cover-up.
That was the sin.
He sat in the Oval Office and told his Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, to get the CIA to tell the FBI to stop investigating. He lied to the American people on national television. He stayed in power for two years after the break-in, winning a landslide re-election in 1972 while the truth was slowly leaking out thanks to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at the Washington Post.
The Resignation
By August 1974, it was over. The Supreme Court ordered him to turn over the "tapes"—the secret recording system he’d installed in the White House to record every conversation. Those tapes proved he was part of the conspiracy to obstruct justice.
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On August 8, 1974, he gave a speech from the Oval Office. He looked tired. He looked defeated. He told the country he would resign the next day at noon. The image of him boarding the helicopter on the South Lawn, flashing the double "V" for victory signs, is one of the most surreal moments in American history. He wasn't winning. He was retreating.
The Complicated Legacy of Richard Nixon
Was he a good president? It depends on who you ask and what day of the week it is.
If you ask an environmentalist, they might begrudgingly thank him for the EPA. If you ask a historian of the Cold War, they'll point to his brilliance in "Triangular Diplomacy" with the USSR and China. But if you ask someone about the public's trust in government, they'll tell you Nixon broke it. Forever.
Before Watergate, most Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing most of the time. After Nixon, that trust cratered. It has never really recovered. He proved that the President isn't a king, but he also proved that the President could use the machinery of the state like a personal weapon.
The "Silent Majority"
Nixon’s political genius was tapping into the "Silent Majority." These were the people who weren't out protesting in the streets or burning draft cards. They were the middle-class families in the suburbs who felt like the world was moving too fast. He spoke to their fears. He used "law and order" as a code for cracking down on social unrest. This strategy—the "Southern Strategy"—reshaped the Republican Party for the next fifty years. It moved the GOP away from its New England roots and into the South and the Sunbelt.
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What Most People Get Wrong
People think Nixon was a conservative ideologue. He wasn't. He was a power ideologue.
He didn't care about the gold standard—so he ended it. He didn't care about free markets—so he implemented wage and price controls to fight inflation. He was the ultimate "whatever works" politician. He was also incredibly lonely. He spent hours alone in the Lincoln Sitting Room, fire roaring even in the middle of summer, drinking expensive wine and scribbling notes on yellow legal pads.
He was a man of huge intellect and even bigger insecurities. He felt like an outsider in the very city he ran. He hated the "elites"—the Ivy League crowd, the press, the "Georgetown set"—even though he was more powerful than all of them combined.
Taking Action: How to Evaluate Presidential History
Understanding what president was Nixon isn't just about trivia. It’s about recognizing the patterns of power and the importance of institutional checks. If you want to dive deeper and really get a handle on this era, don't just watch a documentary.
- Read the transcripts. Go to the Nixon Library website or the National Archives. Listen to the actual tapes. Hearing his voice—the swearing, the plotting, the mundane talk about football—humanizes the tragedy in a way a textbook can't.
- Analyze the "Imperial Presidency." Look at how Nixon expanded executive power. Compare it to how modern presidents use executive orders. You’ll see that many of the "overreaches" people complain about today started or were perfected during the Nixon years.
- Study the "Nixon Shock." Look into his 1971 economic moves. Ending the direct convertibility of the US dollar to gold changed the global economy forever. Understanding this helps you understand why inflation and currency values fluctuate the way they do today.
- Visit a National Park. Many of the lands and protections we enjoy today were solidified under Nixon's watch. It's a weird irony that the man who left office in such a "dirty" way did so much to keep the country’s air and water clean.
Richard Nixon was a man of shadows. He was the president of the moon landing and the president of the Saturday Night Massacre. He was a brilliant diplomat and a petty conspirator. To understand him is to understand the messy, contradictory nature of American power itself. He remains the ultimate cautionary tale: a man who reached the top of the mountain only to be pushed off by his own hand.