It's not a comment on Obama or Nixon's personal nature, more the nature of the rightward shift of the narrative. I should be more specific: Nixon had handlers that kept his crazier, paranoid nature in line.

Despite being a seriously corrupt and...odd man, though, I would argue Nixon was the most brilliant and shrewd president we had in the 20th century.

Agreed. Nixon knew to co-opt issues away from the other side and some of his actions were not conservative at all -- His health care plan was more liberal than Obama's. Ironically, it was defeated by Democrats who wanted more. Dammit, we could have had a national health care policy all these years.

Nixon's corruption was deep-rooted, but not necessarily ideological -- except for the fact that his paranoia convinced him that all the liberals were out to get him (and they were, of course). Let's not forget, it's not just Watergate that is the issue. He took bribes, paid off witnesses, ignored the law, violated election laws, and otherwise thought (literally) that the President was above the law.

Indeed. We all have strange conversations when we are speaking in private, but Nixon seemed to be king. Also, he seemed to be very anti-semetic in his discussions--probably part of his paranoia. Especially strange when Kissinger was one of his closet advisors.

Nixon was like our crazy black-sheep uncle/bigot, but I think his handlers kept him from going over the top. Cambodia...

Groucho, you may have been too young and maybe what you know now colors your view, but at the time did you get the sense that although Nixon was fairly popular, people nonetheless saw him as a strange cat?

I am always reminded, and maybe this is apocryphal, of his debate with Kennedy where radio folks thought Nixon won but television folks saw a sweaty used car salesman compared to a suave and handsome Kennedy and concluded that Kennedy won. Certainly you were too young for that, but just was suggesting there was an underlying strangeness.

Nixon did get popular by his 2nd term.

His 1972 election victory was one of the 4 biggest electoral wins post WW2. He got 95% of the electoral college and around 60% of the Vote. No one has done anything close to that apart from Reagan.

Other three biggest victories are 1964 LBJ and Ronald Reagan 1980 and 1984.

Nixon resigned while I was still in High School and although I was interested in politics, I wasn't paying that much attention. Plus there was no internet or 24 hour news channels then, so you only got so much information. I wasn't sure why he was resigning, really, at the time.

By the time I was in college and reading "All the President's Men" I had a different view of him.

So I can't really say what people thought at the time; I was too young to really pay attention. Or else I'm too old now to remember.