Reply #12: Secret war in Cambodia, illegal wiretapping and intimidating civil rights and anti-war groups... [View All]

[Hippo_Tron]

Escalation of Vietnam even though he knew it was un-winnable, not to mention aiding the installation of a murderous dictator in Chile. Nixon was not progressive by any stretch of the imagination unless you completely ignore foreign policy. IMO foreign policy is almost a better indicator of how progressive a President is because it doesn't really have to go through Congress and even when there are treaties, you can measure it by whether the President signed a certain treaty even if the Senate did not ratify.

Clinton didn't send thousands more troops to die in an un-winnable war and he didn't install any dictators in Latin America and he didn't secretly bomb any countries that would subsequently de-stabilize them and lead to a genocide. He did sign Kyoto Protocol, The ICC, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, all of which were never ratified due to Jesse Helms and the most right wing congress since the Hoover Administration. Meanwhile Nixon had one of the most progressive congresses of the 20th century. I really don't see where people get this idea that Nixon was more progressive than Clinton.