40 years ago today Richard Nixon leaves the White House for the last time as president:

Narcissism is sure a bitch – ego is a double bitch – and vanity is a triple bitch.

These are some of the personal factors that brought Nixon down. If he wasn’t so vain and would have destroyed the Nixon tapes he wanted to keep as posterity he would have never had to resign. He should have been like the goat and ate the evidence.

Nixon was no different from any other politician except he got caught. Look at what the Kennedy clan got away with through the years.  Popularity and looks has a great deal to do with ones longevity in politics.

Nixon wasn’t a schmoozer but a pretty crude individual that shot from the hip. Through the years he brushed a lot of people the wrong way. If he would have been more personally acceptable I don’t think so much pressure would have been put on him to resign.

As the old story goes “make sure of who you stiff on the way up because it is a very hard fall on the way down”, or something like that.

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What were President Richard Nixon’s accomplishments?

Domestic accomplishments:

Launched initiatives to fight cancer and illegal drugs, imposed wage and price controls, enforced desegregation of Southern schools, and introduced legislation to reform healthcare and welfare

Established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and signed into law the Clean Air Act and National Environmental Policy Act

Presided over lunar landings beginning with Apollo 11, although he eventually replaced manned space exploration with shuttle missions

Foreign policy accomplishments:

Initially escalated America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, but subsequently ended US involvement by 1973 through the Paris Peace Accords

Opened diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1972 and ushered in a new era of Sino-American relations

Initiated détente with the Soviet Union in the wake of his diplomacy with China, leading to SALT I and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

Supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War, which led to an Israeli victory and a retaliation by Arab OPEC nations who refused to sell crude oil to the US during the 1973 oil crisis

Covertly supported a military coup against Chilean Marxist president Salvador Allende: and much much more.

It is a shame that a good man like Nixon who was so naive thought he was un-touchable. I know of other presidents that did much worse and should have been shown the exit.

Among some of his attributes the old boy had was he had a set of balls and for the most part backed up hat he said.  Too bad it was his overly inflated ego he had put him down.