How counterfactual history helps kids judge character: What if Watergate never happened, and would Nixon be an outstanding president?
The other night I was clearing peanut butter crumbs off the kitchen table after my 10th grader finished his AP US History homework, when he pushed his laptop back, propped his sneakers up on the empty chair, and asked, “Wait, if Watergate never happened, would Nixon actually be remembered as one of the best presidents ever? Or just good?”
I paused, mid-fold of his muddy soccer practice jersey, and looked at his open notebook. The page was full of scribbled bullet points: EPA founded 1970, opens China 1972, ends Vietnam, desegregates more schools than JFK, Watergate break-in 1972, resigns 1974, only president ever to resign. Half his granola bar was still stuck to the notebook spine, and my iced coffee was leaving a dark ring on the woven placemat my mom made me 10 years ago.
When I was in high school, a question like this would’ve gotten brushed off by my teacher as “a waste of time—just memorize what did happen, not what didn’t.” For a long time after that, I thought the same thing. History was facts, dates, and already-written legacies, right? But lately, as I’ve sat in on these homework sessions, I’ve changed my mind. Questions like this aren’t a distraction from learning history. They’re one of the best tools I’ve found to help my son stop seeing historical figures as one-note villains or heroes, and start thinking about how people’s choices and flaws shape their legacy—something that matters just as much when he’s judging people at school or online as it does when he’s studying the 1970s.
We pulled a scrap of receipt paper out of the junk drawer and split it into two columns, like I’ve started doing when these questions pop up. Left column: What do we know Nixon did that lasted? We wrote down creating the Environmental Protection Agency, which still sets clean air and water rules today. Opening diplomatic relations with China, which shifted global politics for the next 50 years. Taking the US off the gold standard, a big economic shift most people don’t connect to him. Pushing through the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. Even pushing for desegregation of Southern schools faster than his Democratic predecessors, which a lot of textbooks skip over.
Right column: What do we know about his flaws and mistakes, even before Watergate? We wrote down secret bombing of Cambodia that killed thousands of civilians. Illegal wiretapping of journalists and political opponents. The all-consuming paranoia that led him to record every conversation in the White House in the first place. His routine use of racist language in private tapes, which came out years after he left office.
Then we got to the original question: If the Watergate break-in never happened, or if Nixon didn’t cover it up, would he be remembered as outstanding instead of disgraced?
We talked for 40 minutes, until I had to remind him he needed to shower before bed. He argued that all that big, lasting policy stuff would’ve outweighed the small, secret flaws, that if he’d finished his second term with no big public scandal, historians would rank him up with Roosevelt and Truman. I pushed back a little: that paranoia that led to Watergate wasn’t a one-time mistake. It was core to who he was. It’s pretty likely it would’ve shown up somewhere else, even without the break-in at the Democratic headquarters.
The thing is, neither of us could prove we were right. And that’s the point. Most of us, as parents or teachers, get uncomfortable with open-ended questions, especially when it comes to history. We worry if we don’t have the right answer, we’re failing at teaching. Or we worry that acknowledging the good things a disgraced person did means we’re excusing the bad. But this small exercise doesn’t do that. It just forces you to look at the whole person, instead of grabbing the most famous thing they did and calling that their whole story.
The practical part, for anyone who gets these random what-if questions from their kids, is this: You don’t need to be a history expert to do this. You don’t need to plan a whole lesson. You just need three small steps, every time: First, write down what you both already know about their achievements and their mistakes, no filtering. Second, ask what part of their legacy is shaped by one big event, versus the sum of all their other choices. Third, don’t stress if you don’t land on a clear answer. That’s it. It takes 10 minutes, it doesn’t derail homework, and it teaches a skill kids need way more than memorizing a single date.
Last week, my son turned in an extra credit essay on this question. His teacher gave him a B+, writing “Great argument, but there’s no way to ever know for sure.” That’s exactly the result I wanted.
I still have our crumpled receipt paper list taped to the fridge, next to his soccer game schedule and a finger-painting my 7-year-old made of our dog. I don’t have a solid answer to the original question either. Most historians are split: some say he’d be a top 10 president, others say his other flaws would’ve always overshadowed his wins. What I do know is that my son doesn’t see Nixon as just the punchline about a scandal anymore. He sees him as a whole person, and that’s the kind of thinking that will help him when he’s navigating messy, complicated people off the textbook page too. There’s no neat ending to that, and that’s okay. That’s how learning works.
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