"four more years!"

 I typed on this blog Thursday of this past week, that Richard Nixon, when President, signed the bill to create the Environmental Protection Agency, and he signed the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) - to guarantee equal rights for women.

        And then I said he did the right thing when he resigned.

...I didn't mean to imply that he should resign because of supporting the 

EPA

and the

ERA.

I was trying to list good things that Nixon did, as president.  (And I'm sure he did some other good things, the ones I  mentioned were just off the top of my head.)

Resigning in 1974 was the right thing, because the Watergate break-in and associated "dirty tricks" had broken wide open with tape-recorded conversations, etc., and the people were calling for impeachment, and Nixon didn't have the votes to prevent it.

        Some people might say he resigned because he knew he didn't have the votes to support him staying in office, and that doesn't constitute "doing the right thing" - he just resigned because he didn't have the numbers.

To me, it was still the right thing to do, and he did it, and so I give him credit for that.

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        About 19 years after Nixon's resignation, I was working as a lobbyist for a statewide association of public schools, and the governor took a position on school funding that was OK, and kind of helpful, so I said, "Terrific!" - and one of the people who had just recently been elected to the board of directors of my association said to me that the governor took that position for the wrong reasons.

        And I said, regardless of reasons, he did something, & it's good, for us, and for all schools, actually.  So - good, right?

But no - he had to be mad.

And several years after that, he started attacking me.  Because he couldn't "get-at" the governor.  LOL.

I remember once, he told me his wife worked at a manufacturing plant in our state's biggest town.  He said she liked working there.

        (And I sort of half-realized then, and later on, realized more fully, that his wife probably liked working there because it gave her a chance to get away from him....)

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I think when a politician does the right thing, that's good, we mustn't get too "picky" about what their reasons might be.

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