Why I Miss Richard Milhouse Nixon

OK, it’s not what you think.

I don’t miss “Tricky Dick’s” Watergate shenanigans or the constant lies that led to him becoming the first and only U.S. president to resign in office (although IMHO, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden should have had the decency to do so… Clinton after lying to a grand jury and committing perjury, Obama after Benghazi, and Biden after the unnecessarily hasty and disastrous withdraw from Afghanistan).

As a free-market capitalist, I also don’t miss Nixon’s economic policies which included his heavy-handed attempts at price controls to combat inflation. However, I do admire many of his foreign policy accomplishments including establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, so in gambling terms we’ll call it a push.

No, the thing I admire most about President Nixon is that all four of his State of the Union addresses were delivered in less than an hour. His longest was 42 minutes and 51 seconds and his shortest was just under 29 minutes. Even better, Nixon’s 1973 SOTU speech was written, but not actually delivered via a personal appearance in the House chambers. Atta boy, Dick!

Following Nixon’s example, Gerald Ford’s three SOTU addresses averaged 45.5 minutes as did George H.W. Bush’s four such speeches. Ronald Reagan, known as “the Great Communicator”, trimmed his eight addresses to an average of just 40 minutes.

Jimmy Carter did Reagan one better, averaging under 37 minutes the first three times and forgoing a fourth. After all, how long does it take to apologize to the American people for your incompetence?

Then came William Jefferson Clinton, who loved the sound of his own voice so much that he spoke for an average of one hour and 15 minutes… Zzzzz. George W. Bush managed to “land the plane” in under an hour all eight times, but Barack Obama averaged 1:02:45 and Donald Trump managed to drone on for 1:20:20.

How about Geritol Joe Biden? So far, he has averaged 1:07:22… or exactly one hour too long each time.