10 Reasons Richard Nixon Was Secretly An Amazing President

Say the name “Richard Nixon” and most people immediately think of one word: Watergate.
The jowly silhouette, the “I am not a crook” line, the dramatic helicopter goodbyeit’s all very
cinematic, and it completely steamrolls a huge part of Nixon’s actual record in office.

But if you zoom out from the scandal and look at the nuts and bolts of what happened between 1969 and 1974,
a weird thing happens: Nixon starts to look…kind of impressive. Awkward, paranoid, deeply flawed? Absolutely.
But also surprisingly visionary on foreign policy, shockingly progressive on the environment, and oddly
creative on domestic policy for a self-branded conservative.

Think of this article as a Listverse-style reappraisalten reasons why, beneath the drama and disgrace,
Richard Nixon was secretly an amazing president, or at least a much more consequential and
constructive one than his reputation suggests.

1. He Opened the Door to China

Before Nixon, the United States and the People’s Republic of China basically pretended each other didn’t exist.
Since the Communist revolution in 1949, Washington had recognized only Taiwan as “China” and treated Beijing as
a hostile, isolated giant. Then came 1972: Nixon stepped off a plane in Beijing, shook hands with Premier Zhou Enlai,
and re-wired global geopolitics in a single week.

That trip didn’t just produce great photo ops and a generation of “Nixon in China” headlines. It kicked off the slow
normalization of U.S.–China relations, weakened the Soviet Union’s strategic position by exploiting the Sino–Soviet split,
and created a triangular balance of power that gave Washington more leverage in the Cold War.

Realpolitik, Not Romance

Nixon was no idealist; he called himself a practitioner of realpolitik. He didn’t visit Beijing because he suddenly
fell in love with communism. He did it because he understood that 800 million people couldn’t be kept in a diplomatic deep-freeze
forever, and that working with China would push Moscow to the negotiating table and apply pressure on North Vietnam.

Today, whether you see U.S.–China engagement as success, tragedy, or “it’s complicated,” it’s hard to deny that Nixon’s bold move
reshaped the world map in a way few presidents ever do.

2. He Helped Cool the Cold War With the Soviet Union

As if opening China weren’t enough, Nixon also launched a policy of détentea deliberate easing of tensionswith
the Soviet Union. In 1972, he traveled to Moscow and signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) and the
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which capped certain strategic nuclear weapons and limited missile defense systems.

For the first time, the two superpowers agreed to stop mindlessly racing toward bigger and better nukes. These agreements didn’t
end the Cold War, but they built a basic framework for arms control that future presidents would expand and refine. In other words,
Nixon helped plant the seeds of nuclear restraint.

From Brinkmanship to Management

Earlier Cold War crisesfrom Berlin to Cubahad brought the world to the edge of catastrophe. Nixon’s approach was more like
“conflict management”: keep competition, reduce the chance of blowing up the planet by accident. Not exactly soft and fuzzy,
but much better than duck-and-cover drills for the rest of time.

3. He Created the Environmental Protection Agency (Seriously)

It sounds like a trivia joke: “Which Republican president created the Environmental Protection Agency?” The punchline is Nixon.

In 1970, he proposed combining scattered environmental programs into one powerful federal agencythe EPA. He also
signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Air Act amendments of 1970, and helped launch the modern era of
federal environmental regulation.

This wasn’t some fringe side project. The EPA quickly became one of the most important regulatory agencies in the federal government,
taking on air pollution, water contamination, toxic chemicals, and more. If you appreciate cleaner air than the smog-choked skylines
of the 1960s and rivers that don’t spontaneously catch fire, you are indirectly benefitting from Nixon-era choices.

The Greenest Not-So-Green Guy

Nixon was not an environmentalist at heart. He was responding to a public outcry, massive pollution problems, and a growing
environmental movement. But here’s the key: he responded effectively. Whatever his motives, the institutional architecture he
built still shapes U.S. environmental policy more than 50 years later.

4. He Backed Workplace Safety and Consumer Protection

Nixon’s record wasn’t just about planetary health; it was also about personal safety at work. His administration pushed for and
saw the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

These agencies gave the federal government serious tools to regulate unsafe working conditions. Before OSHA, job safety standards
were patchwork, weak, and often ignored. After OSHA, employers had to follow enforceable rules on everything from toxic exposure
to machine guarding and fall protection.

Nixon also signed legislation that strengthened consumer protections, addressing everything from dangerous products to misleading
labels. For a guy often caricatured as only caring about law-and-order and foreign policy, that’s a pretty big domestic footprint.

5. He Quietly Advanced Civil Rights and School Desegregation

Nixon’s civil rights record is complicated and controversial. He opposed some tools, like court-ordered busing, and often tried to
finesse the politics of race. But if you look at results, the early 1970s saw a dramatic increase in the desegregation of Southern schools.

Under his administration, federal officials workedsometimes behind the scenes, sometimes very openlyto implement court orders and
negotiate desegregation plans across multiple states. In just a few years, the percentage of Black children in the Deep South attending
majority-Black schools dropped sharply as districts finally integrated more fully.

The Philadelphia Plan and Affirmative Action

Nixon also presided over the development of the “Philadelphia Plan,” one of the first major federal affirmative-action efforts,
which required federal contractors in that city to set goals for hiring more minority workers in the building trades. It was a
clumsy and contentious early model, but it laid groundwork for later affirmative-action policies.

Again, Nixon was no civil-rights hero in the classic senseand he certainly used racial issues politically. But if you only listen
to his rhetoric and ignore the actual policy results, you miss how much changed on his watch.

6. He Expanded the Social Safety Net in Surprising Ways

Nixon campaigned as a conservative, but his domestic policy playbook often read like something from a centrist reformer. He proposed
a sweeping welfare reform called the Family Assistance Plan, which would have replaced much of the existing welfare
system with a guaranteed minimum income for familiesan idea that excited both conservative economists and some liberals. Congress
ultimately killed it, but it shows how unconventional his thinking could be.

What did pass was the creation of Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a federal program providing income support
for elderly, blind, and disabled people with very low incomes. That’s Nixon-era legislation, still helping millions of Americans today.

He also supported expansions of food-stamp programs and floated proposals for national health insurance and health maintenance organizations (HMOs).
None of this fits neatly into the “heartless conservative” caricature.

7. He Reshaped the Global Economy With the “Nixon Shock”

In 1971, Nixon took a step that economists still argue about over coffee and in very long journal articles: he ended the direct
convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold and imposed temporary wage and price controls. This package of moves became known
as the Nixon Shock.

In the short run, these actions helped stabilize a shaky system and address inflationary pressures. In the long run, ending the Bretton Woods
gold-based framework set the stage for today’s global system of floating exchange rates and turned the dollar into the anchor of the world’s
financial architecture.

Bold, Risky, and World-Changing

Was it perfect? Definitely not. Some of Nixon’s controls backfired and contributed to later economic problems. But the decision to move beyond
the gold standard was a bold recognition that the post–World War II economic order needed an upgrade. For better or worse, every modern central bank
and currency trader lives in a world created, in part, by that Sunday night TV address in August 1971.

8. He Signed the 26th Amendment and Empowered Young Voters

If you’re an American who voted for the first time at 18, you’re also living with Nixon’s legacy. In 1971, he signed the
26th Amendment to the Constitution, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

The logic was simple and powerful: if you’re old enough to be drafted and sent to waras many young Americans were in Vietnamyou’re old enough
to vote. The amendment moved through Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support, and Nixon welcomed it.

For a man sometimes portrayed as suspicious of dissent, expanding the electorate to include millions of younger, often more skeptical voters was
not exactly a safe political bet. But he did it anyway.

9. He Backed Space Exploration and Scientific Ambition

Nixon didn’t start the Apollo program, but he inherited it at its peakand he kept backing it. He was the president who called the Apollo 11
astronauts on the Moon, who welcomed them home, and who oversaw the remaining successful Moon landings.

Under his administration, NASA began shifting from pure “plant the flag” missions toward long-term scientific and technological goals, including
planning that eventually led to the space shuttle program. His support helped keep U.S. space leadership alive during a period of budget pressures
and shifting priorities.

10. He Pushed Native American Self-Determination

One of Nixon’s most underappreciated achievements was his change of course on Native American policy. For decades, federal policy lurched between
neglect and attempts to terminate tribal sovereignty. Nixon took a different path, advocating for self-determination rather than
forced assimilation or termination.

His administration returned some lands, increased tribal control over programs and resources, and set the stage for later legislation expanding
tribal authority. It wasn’t a complete fix for centuries of injustice, but it was a significant and meaningful shift.

So…Was Nixon Secretly Amazing?

“Amazing” is a loaded word. Nixon’s presidency ended in disgrace for very real reasons: abuse of power, obstruction of justice, a culture of
political paranoia. None of that should be minimized or brushed aside.

But history isn’t a Yelp review with one star or five stars and nothing in between. When you step back, you see a president who:

• Fundamentally altered Cold War diplomacy with China and the Soviet Union.
• Created enduring institutions like the EPA, OSHA, and SSI.
• Helped accelerate school desegregation and civil-rights enforcement, even if imperfectly.
• Restructured the global monetary system in ways that still shape the world economy.
• Expanded voting rights to millions of young Americans and supported scientific and space exploration.

That combination of deep flaws and big achievements is exactly why Nixon fascinates historians. If you only remember the scandal,
you’re missing the whole strange, complicated, occasionally amazing story.

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sapo: Richard Nixon’s name is usually shorthand for scandal, tapes, and a helicopter escape from the White House.
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Reflections and Experiences: Living With Nixon’s Legacy

Talking about Richard Nixon in 2025 feels a bit like reopening an old family argument. Everyone has a story: a grandparent who
remembers his resignation on live TV, a college professor who can still quote his China speeches, or a political junkie who has
strong opinions about the “Nixon Shock” and monetary policy. Even people born decades after he left office live every day in systems
he helped create.

Think about environmental policy. For many Americans, the EPA is just a three-letter acronym in the news. But its work shows up in
surprisingly personal ways: the air-quality reports on your weather app, the protections on the river running through your town,
the cleanup of old industrial sites that became parks or housing. Local fights over factory emissions or toxic waste sites are
downstreamliterally and figurativelyfrom decisions made during the Nixon years.

Or take workplace safety. If you’ve ever gone through a tedious safety orientation at a new job and rolled your eyes at the number
of rules, there’s a decent chance OSHA is the reason those rules exist. They can feel annoying in the moment, but they also mean
fewer people are maimed by machinery, poisoned by chemicals, or killed in preventable accidents. For families whose loved ones came
home in one piece because of better workplace standards, Nixon’s legacy isn’t abstractit’s personal.

The economic side is more subtle but just as real. Everyday experiences with fluctuating exchange rates, global trade, and the
dominance of the U.S. dollar are all part of the post–Bretton Woods world. When you buy something online shipped from halfway
around the globe or travel and swipe a card that magically works in another currency, you’re interacting with a system that
evolved from the shockwaves of Nixon’s monetary decisions.

Even in politics and civic life, Nixon’s shadow lingers. Young voters who take it for granted that they can cast a ballot at 18 are
participating in a constitutional change he signed. Debates over presidential power, executive privilege, and government surveillance
almost always loop back to the Nixon era as a cautionary tale. Law students, journalists, and civil-liberties advocates still study
his misuses of power as the “never again” examples that define the limits of the modern presidency.

And then there’s the emotional experience of looking at a figure like Nixon today. He forces us to hold two ideas at once: that
someone can commit serious abuses and still make decisions that improve millions of lives; that a presidency can be both ethically
disastrous in some ways and structurally transformative in others. That tension discomforts us, because we’d love our villains and
heroes to stay neatly sorted into separate bins.

But learning to live with that complexity is part of growing up, both personally and as a democracy. When we look back at Nixon,
we’re not just rating one man’s performance; we’re practicing a kind of historical literacyrecognizing that power is messy, that
big changes often come from imperfect people, and that “secretly amazing” can coexist, uneasily, with “deeply flawed.”

In the end, engaging honestly with Nixon’s full recordhis breakthroughs and his betrayalsgives us something more valuable than
a final verdict. It gives us practice in weighing evidence, holding nuance, and admitting that history rarely offers clean,
easy narratives. That may be the most useful experience his presidency leaves us: the reminder that understanding the past demands
more than a headline, a meme, or a single scandal. It asks us to do what Nixon himself often struggled to dosee the bigger picture.