I didn't know about that, thanks for the link. Nixon started the EPA too, in some ways he was to the left of many Democrats today.
I will say simply that "Tricky Dick" was a crook and his secretary of state was a war criminal (Chile, Argentina, etc). And yet, Nixon...
- Created the EPA. Would the man who created the EPA be making actual progress on climate change? Tough question, but as a minimum he would likely look more like a Democrat than a Republican. Unfortunately, the Democrats don't seem to understand the gravity of the situation either.
- proposed the minimum basic income as linked above even in an age of *falling* inequality. What we he be proposing in our age of rising inequality and much greater absolute inequality (though perhaps lower absolute poverty? Not sure about that).
- pushed a national health policy considerably more "liberal" than Obamacare at a time when far more Americans had employer-based insurance -
http://ihpi.umich.edu/news/nixoncare-vs-obamacare-u-m-team-compares-rhetoric-reality-two-health-plans- Opened relations with China. Kissinger had negotiated in advance, but did you know that the Chinese would not commit to letting Nixon meet with Mao and Nixon felt that if Mao refused to visit with him, the trip would be a failure. Yet he climbed onto a plane to fly to China with no assurance on this score. I cannot imagine a president doing this today for a trip to, say, Iran or North Korea.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/books/chapters/0225-1st-macm.html?_r=0In many respects he was more "Democrat" than many if not most Democrats today.
I basically see Hillary Clinton as the inheritor of Nixon both for good (see above) and ill (paranoia, sense of executive privilege, hawkishness).
