If I remember correcty, Jack Ruby died of natural causes in prison, though I think he went nuts by the end.

Well, I think his involvement with Watergate already lessens him from being all that great.
Not to mention his dirty campaign tactics and his pre-Presidential just-as-bad-as-McCarthy zeal for hunting communists under everyone's bed.

Does Iran/Contra keep people from thnking Pres. Regan is gretat? No. Why? Becasue it is only a tiny part of his Presidency.

Nixon gets a bad rap because the only thing people want to remember about him is Watergate. They chose to ignore eveything else he did.

If Pres. Clinton had resigned over the Lewinsky (sp?) scandal do you think that he would be remebered for anything else? No? I didn't think so.

"Anybody here seen my old friend John, can you tell me where he's gone. He freed a lot of people but it seems the good they die young. I just looked around and he's gone." - Dion

If you refer to the conviciton of Alger Hiss, Nixon was right on with this. As for McCarthy, Nixon was not even close to McCarthy.

The battle for Middle Earth begins December 17.

Many historians do not consider Kennedy anything but an average President and few consider him a below average President.

The Vietnam problem actually is laid at feet of the Truman Doctrine.

True, the JFK mystique can be laid at the feet of his widow, who I would compare to Libby Custer who did the same with her husband when he met his death at Little Big Horn.

There are many unanswered questions about the murder of JFK, but no one has ever come up with hard evidence that there was a conspiracy. It is a lot of speculation and made some people millions in book sales and video sales because of this tragedy.

LBJ was the one who escalated the Vietnam war, and the Great Society was no success. Credit LBJ with Civil rights laws though.

Nixon was no more of a great president than Clinton. I find Clinton pretty much the same as I do Nixon.

Hard evidence was destroyed or died.

Very possible, Brent.

Well, the Alger Hiss case continues to be debated.
As for comparisons to McCarthy, I don't want to get into specific similarities and contrasts, but Nixon made quite a lot of ridiculous anti-Commie statements and built a lot of his political career by hunting down Reds on every corner.