This week saw the 100th birthday of America's 37th president, Richard Milhous Nixon. Here was the man who went to China", spurred dtente with the Soviets, signed into law the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), took America off the gold standard and ended the Vietnam war. Of course, on the flip side, he also prolonged the Vietnam war, obstructed justice from the Oval Office, used the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to go after his political enemies, launched an illegal war in Cambodia, waged a dirty tricks campaign against his opponents, ... kept an "enemies list", ... ended the Vietnam war with neither peace nor honor, was impeached by Congress, resigned the presidency and left a permanent stain on American democracy. Oh, and also, he committed treason. That is ... the view of President Lyndon B Johnson, who, in the final days of the 1968 presidential election, became convinced that Richard Nixon... and his campaign associates were working surreptitiously with the South Vietnamese government to obstruct peace talks between the US and North Vietnam. It is one of the most duplicitous and pernicious moments in Nixon's political career - which, considering his larger crimes, is really saying something.
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