I’m sure many of your readers nodded in agreement when they read the recent letter to the editor that stated, “Donald Trump makes Richard Nixon look like the pope.” Perhaps the author is too young to remember just how awful Nixon was, or is unaware that unlike Pope Francis or John Paul II, who are models of compassion, most of the popes were deeply involved in politics and many were just as unscrupulous as Nixon and Trump.

Today Nixon is remembered mainly for his role in the Watergate scandal, which led to his undoing. He authorized a burglary and then tried to cover up the crime. Compared to Trump’s trashing of most of the norms of political behavior culminating in an attempted coup to nullify an election he lost, Watergate seems pretty tame.

Nixon had the same authoritarian impulses as Trump, including using the Justice Department to go after his enemies, but in those days Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court were willing to stand up to his attempted abuses of power, so he couldn’t get away with indulging them.

He also had the same impulse to use divisive and racist rhetoric to achieve power: his victory in the 1968 election was largely due to his “law and order” platform in response to the big city riots of the mid-’60s, and the fury of white people in the South who resented the end of the Jim Crow era.

In terms of policy, he was responsible for three very destructive things: First, the “War on Drugs” expanded the harsh criminalization of drug use, resulting in the unjust imprisonment of many thousands while utterly failing to address America’s drug problem. Second, in response to the inflation caused by simultaneous expansion of social programs and the Vietnam War, he imposed wage and price controls on the economy. While most of them didn’t last long, the price of oil was capped for 10 years, resulting in long gas lines and a decade of economic “stagflation” which crippled the economy.

But his greatest sins were in the area of his greatest expertise, foreign policy. He is credited with opening up a relationship with China, but in doing so he agreed to their most important condition: accepting the lie that Taiwan was not an independent country and should always be part of China. He was also complicit in the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile, leading to a decades-long murderous dictatorship there.

Most of all, he knew when he took office that the Vietnam War was a lost cause, that while the U.S. could prevent a communist takeover of the South, it could never achieve a peace in which the country was divided with a sympathetic government in the South.

But he didn’t want to be the first U.S. president to “lose” a war, so he expanded the American involvement. As a result, over 21,000 American soldiers died, along with hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. Then he expanded the war into Cambodia in a futile attempt to save the day, overthrowing its king and installing a “puppet” ruler who tolerated the invasion. This led directly to the murderous Pol Pot regime, which killed more than a million of its citizens.

In terms of damage to the American system of government, Trump has no equal (though the cowardice of most Republican politicians must also be blamed).

But in terms of damage to our economy and bringing about death and destruction, he has a long way to go to equal Nixon’s misrule. He may get there though! If Americans had a better and more honest education about their history, they’d be much less likely to elect someone like Trump or Nixon.

Joseph Blumenthal lives in Northampton.