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Article: Brute force and a little grubbing: He blitzed Vietnam, bugged the Democrats, then walked off with his pension. Fred Emery assesses Richard Nixon
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- April 25, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1994 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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WILL Richard Nixon be remembered as statesman or Watergate
disgrace? These facile alternatives, which have formed the basis of
many media assessments in the past 24 hours, are in my view
misplaced. Nixon was a complex character; to the end he revelled in
his inscrutability. A better answer is that he will be remembered for
it all: high policy vision, low political scheming and a criminal
abuse of power, much though the Nixon claque on both sides of the
Atlantic would like to persuade us he was a giant pulled down by
pygmies.
Of course, what was stirring about Nixon was that he took action,
and he has been given fulsome credit for his foreign policy activism.
But even here the picture is ...