Richard M. Nixon

1960 election and post-Vice Presidency
Main article: United States presidential election, 1960

Vice President Nixon, right, and Senator John F. Kennedy during their TV debate prior to the 1960 presidential electionIn 1960, he ran for President against John F. Kennedy. The race was very close all year long. [2] Nixon campaigned on his experience, but Kennedy said it was time for new blood and suggested the Eisenhower-Nixon administration had allowed the Soviet Union to make gains in the arms race. Kennedy also made much of the stagnant American economy of 1960, telling voters it was time to "get the country moving again." It also did not help that when Eisenhower was asked about major policy decisions that Nixon had helped make, the president responded: "Give me a week and I might think of one." In the first of four televised debates, Kennedy not only looked better physically, he also came off as polished, articulate, and mature. The performance dispelled many people's worries that the young senator was too inexperienced to be president. Nixon, for his part, was recovering from an illness and, with the stubble on his face visible, looked unimpressive. Nixon lost the 1960 election narrowly. There were charges of vote fraud in Texas and Illinois, and Nixon and the Republican National committee challenged the results in both states as well as nine others. All of his challenges failed. The Kennedy camp challenged Nixon's victory in Hawaii. That challenge succeeded, and after all the court battles and recounts were done, Kennedy had gained a greater number of electoral votes than he had held after Election Day.

Nixon wrote Six Crises (1962), a book dealing with his political involvement as a congressman, senator and as Vice-President. The book used six different crises Nixon had experienced throughout his political career to recount his political memoirs. The book was not supposed to be an academic work on the subject of crises, rather a method of depicting his political biography in a personal manner. The book won praise from many policy experts and critics.

In 1962, Nixon suffered another defeat, this time in a race for Governor of California. Years of campaigning and losing had worn Nixon down. In his concession speech, Nixon blamed the media for favoring his opponent Pat Brown and stated that it was his "last press conference" and that "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore." In just another 12 months though, John Kennedy would be assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The events that define the tumultuous 1960s were beginning, and before the decade closed a "New Nixon," one who was "tanned, rested, and ready," would win the Presidency in another close election.


1968 Election
Main article: United States presidential election, 1968
Nixon moved to New York City where he became a senior partner in the leading law firm, Nixon Mudge Rose Guthrie & Alexander. During the 1966 Congressional elections, he stumped the country in support of Republican candidates, rebuilding his base in the party. In the election of 1968, he completed a remarkable political comeback by taking the nomination. Nixon appealed to what he called the "silent majority" of socially conservative Americans who disliked the hippie counterculture and anti-war demonstrators. Nixon promised peace with honor, and, though never claiming to be able to win the war, Nixon did say that "new leadership will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific". He did not explain in detail his plans to end the war in Vietnam, causing Democratic nominee Hubert H. Humphrey to allege that he must have had some "secret plan." Nixon didn't invent the phrase, but because he did not disavow the term, it soon became part of the campaign. In his memoirs, Nixon wrote that he actually had no such plan. He eventually defeated Humphrey and independent candidate George Wallace to become the 37th President of the United States.



Vietnam War

President Nixon greets released POW (and future Republican Senator) Navy officer John McCain (on crutches) after years of imprisonment in North Vietnam, 1973Once in office, he proposed the Nixon Doctrine to establish a strategy of turning over the fighting of the war to the Vietnamese. In July 1969, he visited South Vietnam, and met with President Nguyen Van Thieu and with U.S. military commanders. American involvement in the war declined steadily until all American troops were gone in 1973. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, fighting was left to the South Vietnamese army. Although well supplied with modern arms, inadequate funding, low morale, and corruption called their fighting capability into question. The lack of funding was primarily because of large funding cutbacks by the U.S. Congress. Nixon was widely praised in the United States for having delivered 'peace with honor', and ended American involvement in the war in Vietnam. However a part of his strategy was the resumption of the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam should the DRV violate the Peace agreement, which he was confident they would. Watergate, however, made it impossible to carry this out. Nixon, along with his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger also sought a 'decent interval' solution to the problem of South Vietnam, so that that country would survive for long enough for him not to be personally blamed for its ultimate collapse.

Nixon ordered secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia in March 1969 (code-named Operation Menu) to destroy what was believed to be the headquarters of the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam, and later escalated the conflict with secretly bombing Laos before Congress cut the funding for the conflict in Vietnam.

In ordering the bombings, Nixon realized he would be extending an unpopular war as well as breaching Cambodia's stated neutrality. During deliberations over Nixon's impeachment, his unorthodox use of executive powers in ordering the bombings was considered as an article of impeachment, but the charge was dropped as not a violation of Constitutional powers.


China and Soviet Union

President Nixon greets Communist Party of China Chairman Mao (left) in a visit to China, 1972Relations between the Western and Eastern power blocs changed dramatically in the early 1970s. In 1960, the People's Republic of China ended the alliance with its biggest ally, the Soviet Union, in the Sino-Soviet Split. As tension between the two communist nations reached its peak in 1969 and 1970, Nixon, with significant, strategic aid from Henry Kissinger, decided to use their conflict to shift the balance of power towards the West in the Cold War. In what later would be known as the "China Card", the Nixon administration deliberately improved relations with China in order to gain a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union, but also gave Moscow a chance to improve relations so as not to be squeezed by a US-China détente. In 1971, a move was made to improve relations when China invited an American table tennis team to China; hence the term "Ping Pong Diplomacy". In October 1971, The People's Republic of China entered the United Nations. Nixon sent Henry Kissinger on a secret mission to China in July 1971, and in 1972 Nixon stunned the world by himself going to China to negotiate directly with Mao. Fearing the possibility of a Sino-American alliance, the Soviet Union yielded to American pressure for détente.

Nixon then turned to the topic of nuclear peace. The first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks were finally concluded the same year with the SALT I treaty. To win American friendship both China and the Soviet Union cut back on their diplomatic support for North Vietnam and advised Hanoi to come to terms. They did not, however, cut back their military aid to North Vietnam - in fact Chinese military aid to North Vietnam increased during this period. [3] Nixon later explained his strategy:

I had long believed that an indispensable element of any successful peace initiative in Vietnam was to enlist, if possible, the help of the Soviets and the Chinese. Though rapprochement with China and détente with the Soviet Union were ends in themselves, I also considered them possible means to hasten the end of the war. At worst, Hanoi was bound to feel less confident if Washington was dealing with Moscow and Beijing. At best, if the two major Communist powers decided that they had bigger fish to fry, Hanoi would be pressured into negotiating a settlement we could accept.[4]

Other Wars and threats
Nixon strongly supported General Yahya Khan of Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971 despite widespread human rights violations against the Bengalis by the Pakistan Army. Though Nixon claimed that his objective was to prevent a war, safeguard Pakistan's interests including the issue of refugees, all the while trying to maintain the channel of diplomacy with China via its ally Pakistan, in practice it turned out the other way. President Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger downplayed reports of Pakistani genocide in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and risked a confrontation with Moscow to look tough.[5] Many, including Kissinger,[6] have mentioned that the foreign policy "tilt" towards Pakistan had more to do with Nixon's personal like for the dictator and the support to Pakistan was influenced by sentimental considerations and a long standing anti-Indian bias.[7] Meanwhile, India's signing of a mutual security treaty with the Soviet Union in the middle of the crisis heightened tensions in Washington. The Nixon administration was also responsible for illegally providing military supplies to Pakistani Military despite Congress' objections to the same,[8] and against American public opinion which was concerned with the atrocities against East Pakistanis. [9] His decision to help West Pakistan in a war at any cost prompted him to send the nuclear weapons equipped USS Enterprise to the Indian Ocean to try to threaten the Indian Military. Though it did little to turn the tide of war, it has been viewed as the trigger for India's subsequent nuclear program.[10] He was also vocal in abusing the Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi as an "old witch" in private conversations with Henry Kissinger, who is also recorded as making derogatory comments against Indians.[11] Ultimately Nixon's foreign policy initiatives in this matter largely failed as his attempts to maintain an unbroken China connection was at the cost of dismembering its own ally, Pakistan, which felt that once again United States had fallen short as an ally.[12] The Nixon administration was also unable to prevent the war as Bangladesh became independent the same year.

Nixon supported Augusto Pinochet's overthrow of the socialist government of Chile in 1973, but did not instigate the coup. A U.S. intelligence base in Panama Canal coordinated the acts of the various Latin American secret services, such as DINA and Dirección de los Servicios de Inteligencia y Prevención.

Israel, a powerful but unofficial American ally in the Middle East was supported by the Nixon administration during the Yom Kippur War. When an Arab coalition led by Egypt and Syria --allies to the Soviets--attacked in October 1973, Israel defeated them, after initial losses. By the time the U.S. and the Soviet Union then negotiated a truce, Israel had penetrated deep into enemy territory. A long term effect was the movement of Egypt away from the Soviets toward the U.S. But the victory for its ally and the support provided to them by the US came at the cost of the 1973 oil crisis. Some historians have argued that throughout the war, Nixon's handling of the 1973 oil crisis demonstrated that neither he nor Kissinger could truly grasp the importance of economic factors.[13]


Domestic policies
He established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on December 2, 1970.

On July 20, 1969, Nixon addressed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin live via radio during their historic moonwalk. Nixon also made the world's longest distance phone call to Neil Armstrong on the moon. On January 5, 1972, Nixon approved the development of the Space Shuttle program, a decision that profoundly influenced U.S. efforts to explore and develop space for several decades thereafter.

On January 2, 1974, Nixon signed a bill that lowered the maximum U.S. speed limit to 55 miles per hour (90 km/h) in order to conserve gasoline during the 1973 energy crisis. This law remained in effect until 1995.

Committed to wide-ranging bureaucratic reforms, in a last-minute bid to save his presidency Nixon signed a significant reform of the federal budgeting process and granted wide authority to Congress in shaping the final budget.


School Integration
The Nixon years saw the first large-scale integration of public schools in the South, after the region had stalled in compliance with the 1954 Supreme Court's Brown ruling. Strategically Nixon sought a middle way between the segregationist George C. Wallace and liberal Democrats, whose support of integration was alienating white ethnics. Nixon concentrated on the principle that the law must be color-blind. "I am convinced that while legal segregation is totally wrong, forced integration of housing or education is just as wrong."[14]. Though Nixon thought of appealing to southern whites by slowing school desegregation, he decided to enforce the law after the Supreme Court, in Alexander v. Holmes County (1969), prohibited further delays. Nixon's Cabinet committee on school desegregation, under the leadership of Labor Secretary George P. Schultz, quietly set up local biracial committees to assure smooth compliance without violence or political grandstanding. By fall of 1970, two million southern black children enrolled in newly created unitary fully integrated school districts. "In this sense, Nixon was the greatest school desegregator in American history," historian Kotlowski concludes. [15]. In the North, meanwhile, the Brown decision did not apply directly but in city after city federal Judges started ordering busing programs to integrate schools, a policy Nixon opposed.


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