President Nixon dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis
Heh. Nixon was a man of greater pragmatism and awareness than one who would botch the situation. Especially with how the Kennedys helped create it.
In any case, it'd probably be awful. Given how his real life domestic policies were, I shudder to imagine what would happen if he poured his full efforts into them. Let's look at them. My main focus is going to be his federal reserve policies. In 1958, campaigning for Republicans in the mid-terms, it was a time when Eisenhower refused to cut taxes in order to alleviate the recession, choosing to stand instead on principle. Nixon saw the losses Republicans took then, and his personal disgrace, and was never going to let principle on economics get in the way of winning elections. With that in mind, in order to battle the emerging economic problems in his first term, he ignored the advice of conservative advisers and instead opened the floodgates on the fed, lowering interest rates and such. What this did was let money flow into the economy, helping to create inflation, which was likely going to be on the rise anyway due to the liberal spending policies of the Johnson years (another thing I have a beef with). He knew it could very well blow up in his and the country's face and yet persisted in doing it, resolving that he would confront the issue in his second term. His reasoning was that America would be entering a time of strife--environmental, fiscal, and otherwise--and they would need a steady hand at the helm to lead them through it. In order to lead America, he needed to win re-election. In doing so, he helped aid the problem he figured he'd solve in order to be able to do so. Of course, he never could and I doubt would have, due to Watergate.
While a consummate politician in every sense of the word--rigging both domestic and foreign policy to line up to best benefit his own re-election--his policies were geared towards elections, not the nation's success as a whole. God help us were he to turn his full attentions to the domestic situation as opposed to playing mad bomber in Vietnam--another issue of his.
