In other words, it?s a pity Barack Obama isn?t more like Richard Nixon.
In popular imagination, Nixon remains nothing but a great goblin ? scowling bomber of Southeast Asia, panderer to fear and racism, paranoid anti-Semite, dispatcher of burglars ? but the truth is, he governed further to the left than any president who followed him. The overreaching Euro-socialist nanny state that today?s Republicans despise? That blossomed in the Nixon administration.
Spending on social services doubled, and military budgets actually decreased. He oversaw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. His administration was the first to encourage and enable American Indian tribal autonomy. He quadrupled the staff of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, almost tripled federal outlays for civil rights and began affirmative action in federal hiring. He supported the Equal Rights Amendment and signed Title IX, the law granting equality to female student athletes. One of his Supreme Court appointees wrote the Roe v. Wade decision.
Nixon made Social Security cost-of-living increases automatic, expanded food stamps and started Supplemental Security Income for the disabled and elderly poor. It helped, of course, that Democrats controlled the House and Senate. But it was the president, not Congress, who proposed a universal health insurance plan and a transformation of welfare that would have set a guaranteed minimum income and allowed men to remain with their welfare-recipient families. It was Nixon who radically intervened in the free market by imposing wage and price controls, launched d?tente with the Soviets, normalized relations with Mao?s China and let the Communists win in Vietnam.
And, for good measure, the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts grew sixfold, by far the biggest increase by any president.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/opinion/the-madman-theory.html?_r=1
In popular imagination, Nixon remains nothing but a great goblin ? scowling bomber of Southeast Asia, panderer to fear and racism, paranoid anti-Semite, dispatcher of burglars ? but the truth is, he governed further to the left than any president who followed him. The overreaching Euro-socialist nanny state that today?s Republicans despise? That blossomed in the Nixon administration.
Spending on social services doubled, and military budgets actually decreased. He oversaw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. His administration was the first to encourage and enable American Indian tribal autonomy. He quadrupled the staff of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, almost tripled federal outlays for civil rights and began affirmative action in federal hiring. He supported the Equal Rights Amendment and signed Title IX, the law granting equality to female student athletes. One of his Supreme Court appointees wrote the Roe v. Wade decision.
Nixon made Social Security cost-of-living increases automatic, expanded food stamps and started Supplemental Security Income for the disabled and elderly poor. It helped, of course, that Democrats controlled the House and Senate. But it was the president, not Congress, who proposed a universal health insurance plan and a transformation of welfare that would have set a guaranteed minimum income and allowed men to remain with their welfare-recipient families. It was Nixon who radically intervened in the free market by imposing wage and price controls, launched d?tente with the Soviets, normalized relations with Mao?s China and let the Communists win in Vietnam.
And, for good measure, the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts grew sixfold, by far the biggest increase by any president.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/opinion/the-madman-theory.html?_r=1
