HAVING ONE BIG INK BLOT ON YOUR RECORD. I think that it is sometimes an advantage to have a huge blot on one’s historical copybook. An example is Richard Nixon. Watergate dominates any other negatives on his record; those other negatives tend to be passed over. Watergate thus distracts attention from his administration’s disastrous economic record. I suggest that this distortion of perspective shows up in evaluating Communism in Eastern Europe. Historians are still coming to grips with the fact that Stalin killed millions. They then tend to pass over the fact that Communism destroyed the Eastern European economies and deprived millions of basic freedoms by controlling their lives to the point where they couldn’t even listen to music of their choice.
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I agree with your big ink blot theory. None of my history books had ever really touched on the economic crisis the country was in during the Nixon years. It wasn’t until I read President Nixon: Alone in the White House by Richard Reeves that I knew what drastic changes were implemented then…or how hard Nixon was trying to plug the hole in the dike just long enough to get re-elected.
I’m amazed that you consider Nixon’s economic record so disastrous. Doesn’t the real blame for the crisis Nixon faced rest with LBJ? His trying to finance the Great Society and Vietnam War without paying the bill left Nixon with a crisis that Nixon compounded by his decision to remain emeshed in Vietnam. But a European crisis of confidence in US policies coupled with the Gaullist run on the Fort Knox forced Nixon to make hard choices. In retrospect, could the US have continued to to back fixed exchange rates, given that the successful reconstruction of World War II allies and enemies had spawned strong competition? Wasn’t the two step devaluation of the dollar and move to floating (if managed) exchange rates ultimately beneficial?
I hate to think what Bush’s financial profligacy will leave for his successor, but I fear that he/she will reap the same sort of bum rap you are giving Nixon.
I had in mind Nixon’s disastrous policy of imposing price controls and stepping on the economic accelerator.