In tonight's New Hampshire GOP primary debate, Rudy Giuliani showed he is either ignorant of history, or a liar.
He claimed at one point that President Eisenhower "started the moon program, which was then continued by Kennedy, continued by Johnson, and finished by Nixon.
That is NOT true.
Eisenhower was not at all interested in the manned space program, nevermind going to the moon. All Eisenhower wanted out of the space program was a spy satellite program to watch over the X-USSR.
It was the democrat Kennedy, NOT the republican Eisenhower, that started the program, and then Johnson continued the program.
As for Nixon "finishing" the program, he was an accident of history. Nixon hated his rival John Kennedy for beating him so throughly in the 1960 election, and as the Apollo moon program was a major part of Kennedy's legacy, Nixon wanted to cancel it, but was not able to do so in part because it was so close to completion at the time he took office, as well as having strong political support due to Kennedy's legacy. Nixon did ultimately gut the Apollo program when the missions Apollo 18, 19, and 20 were cancelled, even though all the necessary hardware had been built and was ready to fly, and nobody has been to the moon since 1972.
So, Rudy was either ignorant of history, or was deliberately lying in order to try to capture some status for the creationist-supporting GOP.
jtg