It's been almost 40 years since they hauled his carcass out of Washington, but he continues to cast a very long shadow on our politics. So much of what transpired during his tenure still affects us directly today: this includes the prudent and pragmatic (the EPA, OSHA, affirmative action, Roe v. Wade, the China and Russia gambits*) with the dark and malignant, which was, basically, all the other stuff. So in a way, you could say that a great number of our longest-running policy wars are essentially waged over whether we as a nation want bad Dick or good Dick to lord over us.
* To be fair, his health-care plan, which went nowhere, was a slightly more liberal version of the Affordable Care Act. How far we have come as a Republic since then.
---Baron V
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