It’s hard for me to describe how much I once loathed Richard Nixon.

As a college student during the Watergate scandal, I celebrated when he quit on the cusp of impeachment. I firmly believed, along with millions of others, that Nixon was the lowest human being ever elevated to our highest office, and his track record of anti-constitutional crimes would never be surpassed.

Jeez, were we naive.

Despite his serial abuses and aberrant behavior — bugging his own office, ordering the Watergate coverup, ranting on tape about “the Jews” will stain him for eternity — when you compare Nixon to the current vile authoritarian, the former looks so good I’m tempted to wallow in nostalgia and give the guy his due.

Think about it: At least Nixon wasn’t stupider than a slab of cement. At least he wasn’t a useful idiot of the Russians. At least he didn’t send people to storm the Capitol after narrowly losing the 1960 presidential race. When the Supreme Court ruled against him in 1974, forcing him to release the Oval Office tapes, he quickly complied. When fellow Republicans told him there were sufficient House votes for impeachment and it was time to go, he went. He actually went.

But that’s just for starters. Check out these points of comparison:

* Unlike he who shall not be named, Nixon didn’t work to destroy the mandate of the Environmental Protection Agency. Quite the contrary. He created the EPA, signed the Clean Water Act, and signed the Endangered Species Act. In 1972, he praised America’s “environmental awakening” and said, “the federal government must provide leadership.”

* Unlike the current saboteur of NATO, Nixon worked to keep it strong. In 1969, he called NATO “one of the great successes of the postwar world.” He said “the American commitment to NATO will remain in force, and it will remain strong” because it is “more than a military alliance,” it “represents a moral force.”

* Unlike the current enemy of affordable health care, Nixon repeatedly sought to enact sweeping health reforms — “to ensure,” he said in 1971, “that no American family will be prevented from obtaining basic medical care by inability to pay.” Indeed, Nixon’s provisions — employer-mandated insurance, increased federal subsidies — were actually more generous than today’s Obamacare. (They failed because Democrats, led by Sen. Ted Kennedy, didn’t think they were liberal enough.)

* Unlike the current guy’s quest to rig the judiciary for the rich and favored, Nixon created the Legal Services Corporation Act. Today, the LSC — a federal nonprofit entity — still provides legal aid to low-income people. When he signed it into law in 1974, he called it a “constructive way to help (the poor) help themselves,” to “protect and preserve a basic right for all Americans.”

* Unlike the current addled warlord, whose ignorant blunderings in Iran will likely accelerate a regional nuclear arms race, Nixon prioritized non-proliferation. He sat down with the Russians to negotiate nuclear arms treaties; for the first time, America and the Soviet Union placed limits on their nuclear weapons arsenals.

* Unlike the current entitled brat, Nixon didn’t have a racist rich daddy to grease his ascent. He grew up poor with no connections in a rural California dust town. His father had a lemon farm that failed. Notwithstanding Nixon’s abundant character flaws, it’s beyond dispute that he worked his rear off to get to Duke Law and beyond, to wind up in places like the Great Wall of China, forging an historic detente with a communist power.

I say all this without minimizing the traits so many of us despised — his lies, his paranoia, his willingness to enlist aides in criminal schemes that landed them in jail. He was ultimately destroyed by his own treachery and taught a generation of Americans to distrust their government. He also ended the draft, championed college loans for the poor, and created the OSHA workplace safety agency. The complexities never cease.

And as loathsome as he often was, he never inspired eight million Americans to flood the streets against him on a single day in all 50 states. That alone tells the tale.

Some 30 years ago, I covered an event at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California. Walking the grounds with a colleague, I said, “Hey, isn’t he buried around here somewhere?” My companion said, “You’re standing on him.” I leapt as if my feet had been scorched. I looked down and, yes, there he was. Today, acknowledging his upside, I owe him a semi-salute.

Dick Polman’s column is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.