Huh? Perhaps lots of things look good if enough time passes, but Nixon won't be one of them. I mean Warren Harding isn't going to be elevated into the left pantheon because he pardoned Debs, is he? The policies and agencies you list didn't come about because of the enthusiastic support of Nixon but represented significant compromises in themselves and probably should as part of a broader thrust of social policy still being carried aloft from the sometimes heady momentum of an activist government (of sorts) that developed from the Kennedy/Johnson years. Then again, Nixon's so-called achievements are no less subject to the criticisms of, say, Piven and Cloward. Nixon I think was pretty good at give a little, keep a lot politics. That his administration played around with the notion of a guaranteed income looks bizarre from the present. At the time there were deep suspicions about what goals it would precisely serve.
Nixon was the first law and order president. His interest in crime (of which we can now know was something he personally had experience in) set in motion a political agenda to which both Republicans and Democrats have pursued with vigor.
And someone like John Ehrlichman could easily get a job in a Bush administration.
No, I think there's a timeless quality to Nixon. Like an eternal asshole.
D. Breslin