(CNN) -- The Richard Nixon I knew had almost nothing to do with the Richard Nixon as portrayed in most media. The Richard Nixon I knew was a man who had served his country honorably as Dwight Eisenhower's vice president at the height of the Cold War, when Eisenhower kept us at peace for eight years -- with Nixon's help -- only to have the 1960 election stolen away from him by handsome, rich John F. Kennedy's fraud at the polls in Chicago. Nixon had endured eight years of seeing the country disintegrate into chaos in the streets and an endless, hopeless war in Vietnam under a genuinely great but very misled president, Lyndon Johnson.
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The Richard Nixon whom Ben Stein knew wasn't anything like the way media portrayed him
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Stein: Nixon was under constant media assault, never had control of both houses of Congress
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Stein: He ended Vietnam War, brought home POWs, saved Israel and made peace
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Stein: In key event to ending Cold War, Nixon opened ties with China, subduing Russia
Nixon gave unequivocal support to Israel: @placeholder could not have cared less about its fate.