06-17-2024, 08:34 PM
pdq wrote:
[quote=vision63]
Tho Nixon actually governed. "Hey, lets do something that can improve American lives."
When he was campaigning, he said he had “a secret plan to end the war”, while he was secretly twisting South Vietnamese arms to not end the war (as Johnson was belatedly trying to), so that the Dems would lose the ‘68 election. Twenty thousand more US soldiers died after he took over; God only knows how many Vietnamese. It’s hard to imagine the eventual outcome could have been worse.
He helped foster the coup against Chile’s democratically elected Allende. His military replacement, Pinochet, ruled that country with an iron fist for nearly 20 years.
Many people have forgotten, but the 60’s were also a time of solid economic growth, which by the end of Nixon/Ford had been transformed into stagflation. Nixon plus Ford had the worst 2-term market returns since the Great Depression (only to be surpassed by Dubya).
And yet he swamped the Democrat. BTW, my first ever mark on a ballot was for McGovern.