The difference was you worked for Nixon, and with Ford.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I liked Nixon fine, but Nixon was not a partier.
That was my choice at that time, and I still say Nixon was a great president. A very beautiful and wise man.
He and Reagan were not at all alike, because Reagan is an optimist and Dick Nixon wasn't. Yet in some ways they were alike. Neither really liked to talk on the telephone, for instance. And, in a lot of respects, both of them were very much loners.
Nixon probably was a nice guy.
When I was younger, I thought of myself as a Nixon Republican because he was the anti-Communist.
Nixon was a bad loser. He hated losing worse than death, and that is why I enjoyed him. We were both football fans, both addicts; and on some days, nothing else mattered.
In the post-Watergate atmosphere of 1975 and 1976, the just-plain-folks personalities of both Ford and Carter seemed the perfect antidote to Nixon's arrogant, isolated presidency. But as alert history-minded readers know, Ford and Carter were both rebuffed by voters in their efforts to hold on to the presidency.
The trouble with Nixon is that he's a serious politics junkie. He's totally hooked and like any other junkie, he's a bummer to have around, especially as President.
While he was president, it was popular to be a Nixon hater.
Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.