Writing in the New York Post, Lowry grants that Nixon was a formidable politician, but argues that his economic policy, expansion of government and Watergate collapse make him a poor model for today’s conservatives.
Richard Nixon spent his post-presidency trying to repair his reputation, and in a new column for the New York Post, Rich Lowry argues that Nixon would be pleased to see parts of the populist New Right now taking up his cause.
Lowry points to a Wall Street Journal report that the Justice Department is examining whether the Watergate special prosecutor committed misconduct, which he sees as part of a broader Nixon revival on the right.
In Lowry’s telling, populists like Nixon as an example of right-of-center politics without strict conservative policy commitments, as a combative partisan, and as a man the liberal establishment loved to hate.
Credit where it is due
Lowry agrees that Nixon deserves more than to be remembered only for resigning. He describes him as a shrewd survivor who won more elections than he lost, including a landslide in 1972, and who ran a sophisticated foreign policy alongside Henry Kissinger. If you needed someone to think your way out of a political jam, Lowry writes, Nixon might be the person to call.
A checkered record
From a conservative point of view, though, Lowry calls the record checkered at best. He blames Nixon in part for the stagflation of the 1970s and calls his wage and price controls perhaps the worst economic policy of the postwar era: they held prices down for a while but caused shortages, and inflation came back once they were lifted.
Lowry writes that Nixon expanded government rather than shrinking it, creating the Environmental Protection Agency, OSHA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, while adding regulation, keeping monetary policy loose, imposing tariffs and leaving high tax rates largely untouched. He adds that Nixon expanded affirmative action, sought détente with the Soviet Union, and failed to deliver the “peace with honor” he promised in Vietnam. Lowry calls the opening to China clever, but says it had harmful consequences decades later.
On Watergate, Lowry acknowledges that Nixon had enemies, but notes that Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump did too, and Nixon is the only one who was forced from office. He also says the scandal gave Democrats large congressional majorities and helped cost Gerald Ford the 1976 election after Ford pardoned Nixon.
His conclusion: be fair to Nixon as a flawed but accomplished politician, but do not make him a role model, unless the right wants to make serious policy mistakes and then lose in spectacular fashion.
This article summarizes an opinion column by Rich Lowry published by the New York Post. The views described are the columnist’s. The photograph is a stock file image.
