Richard Nixon and American Politics: A Troubled Legacy

Jeffrey Engel / Southern Methodist University

Richard Nixon was controversial. Very controversial.  At the heart of American politics for decades, he remains our only president to have resigned the position.  He was also influential; indeed, a political savant.  Nixon’s campaign strategies, from his initial run for Congress in 1946, through to his landslide electoral college victory in 1972, offered blueprints other candidates would follow. His strategies highlighted trends in American society that would come to shape and define the political universe we still inhabit today.  We live, it is no exaggeration to say, in the political world Richard Nixon forged.  In other words, to understand today, we must understand and explore the triumphs and tragedies of this iconic American leader.