And yet, Johnson is held in higher esteem than Nixon. Why?
shareDemocrats only involve themselves in violent actions for the most noble causes.
Republicans would only involve themselves in peace if they can make a profit.
Or at least that's how the popular dialog goes. There's no show of logic when partisan foolery is involved.
Nixon kept us in Vietnam for 5 extra years after lying about his "secret plan to end the war" that he somehow couldn't reveal while running for the Presidency … because he had no secret plan, other than to ramp up the killing. Which he did, extending it to Laos & Cambodia, destabilizing their governments & paving the way for the Khmer Rouge. He actually considered using nuclear weapons against North Vietnam at one point. He prolonged an illegal, immoral war we had no business being in from the first. As former Marine & former Vietnam hawk Daniel Ellsberg so accurately said, "We weren't on the wrong side. We were the wrong side."
By the way, I'm not absolving LBJ or JFK or Eisenhower, either.
1-Nixon took office in Jan 1969, when there was half-a-million US Military personnel in Vietnam. The last combat troops left in March 1973. Do you really think he could've gotten us out of there any faster?
2-If the French had recognized Vietnamese Independence in 1945, we would've never inherited this mess.
3-I agree that our involvement in Vietnam was a mistake, but 58000 Americans died there and they should never be forgotten.
If America had accepted the elections of the 1950s, we wouldn't have been there at all either. Nor should we have been.
It also shouldn't be forgotten that somewhere between one million & three million Vietnamese died in that war, the majority of them civilians. I remember free fire zones, napalm & white phosphorus dropped on civilians, and massacres like My Lai, which was not just one isolated incident. Ellsberg was right about our being the wrong side.
Johnson didn't seek re-election, and if he did, he didn't conspire to spy on the RNC like Nixon did the DNC. Nixon's early achievements would be considered Leftist and Marxist by today's Republicans IF Nixon was a Democrat, but since he was a Republican even today they don't doxx Nixon for that.
shareWatergate.
Most people Stateside remember the heinous actions of Nixon that he did to spit in the face of justice and goodwill towards US citizens. That sticks in cultural memory as being worse than dropping a bunch napalm on people 13,000+km away.
I agree about Watergate. That scandal wiped away all the good things that President Nixon accomplished.
shareI think that's why people remember LBJ as better than Nixon: Nixon was, in fact, a crook.
I think the other main reason is that, maybe partly or mostly because of Watergate, the perception of Nixon is that, regardless of his policies or his effectiveness as a leader, he's a bad *person*. I think a lot of people might think that of other presidents, too. People might like Bill Clinton's policies but think he's a liar, for instance. Or, conversely, I think most people think of Obama as being a good person (erudite, classy, scandal-free), even if they didn't like him as a president.
That's probably why there's nothing but bi-partisan love for Abraham Lincoln. It's hard to argue with "abolished slavery" and he had a pretty righteous reputation, too.
Johnson did not have to resign to avoid impeachment.
shareNixon claimed he had a "secret plan" to end the war. The fact that the war went on for another five years said different.
shareThere was no way to pull out half a million US Military Personnel in less than 3 years.
The only mistake President Nixon made was ordering attacks on NVA camps in Cambodia. That delayed the complete pullout by about a year.
By his own admittance, Nixon claimed if he had to do it over he would have bombed North Vietnam in 1969, not waited until 1972. Also, he said he would have burnt the tapes.
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