I cannot let this day pass without taking note that it marks the 100th birthday of the 37th president of the United States, Richard Milhous Nixon.

I’ll admit to having mixed feelings about this day and the man who came into this world a century ago.

He took part in the first election in which I voted. It was 1972 and I voted for his opponent, Democratic U.S. Sen. George McGovern. I was barely home from the Army and was cutting my political teeth. I despised Nixon’s conduct of the Vietnam War, which I got see up close for a time. McGovern, who died near the end of 2012, sought to end that war. Nixon’s allies painted McGovern with grotesque distortions. The Committee to Re-Elect the President – with its apt acronym CREEP – waged a reprehensible campaign that turned out to be a winner; Nixon won re-election in a 49-state landslide.

It didn’t end there. The Watergate scandal that started with the June 17, 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee office in DC exploded in 1973 and ‘74. The nation learned of Nixon’s profound paranoia, of how he sicced the CIA against the investigation of what happened at the Watergate. The House of Reps sought to impeach him; the Judiciary Committee drafted articles of impeachment, setting the stage for the full House to follow suit. Nixon quit his office in August 1974.

Nixon, who was nicknamed Tricky Dick by those who loathed him, left the public stage with the disgrace he had earned.

But my feelings about him today, so many years later, have been tempered by what has happened to his Republican Party. Nixon would be seen by many GOP zealots today as the kind of liberal that Nixon himself despised. The Environmental Protection Agency came to life on Nixon’s watch; the president supported equal rights for women; he was virtually silent on issues such as abortion and marriage equality. How would he fare in today’s climate? Not well. Indeed, some have suggested he couldn’t win a GOP primary.

I cannot celebrate this man’s centennial birthday. My own memories of him remain mostly negative, although my bitterness toward him has subsided. Perhaps one day those thoughts will turn positive. Just not yet.