1st Edition HIST 1312 Lecture 18 Outline of Last Lecture I II III Beyond the New Frontier a Shaping the Great Society b New Voice Expanding the American Dream a The Women s Rights Movement b The Emergence of Chicano Power Happenings of 1968 Outline of Current Lecture I Nixon s Personal Life a Young Life b Political Career II Nixon and the Balance of Power a Vietnamization b Modifying the Cold War III Nixon and Politics a Pragmatic Conservatism b An Embattled President The Watergate Scandal IV About the 1970s Current Lecture Richard Nixon I Nixon s Personal Life a Young Life Born in Yorba Linda CA and lived in Quaker community in Wittier CA These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute Learned principle of hard work through parents who weren t rich but owned a grocery store Attended Wittier College due to parents needing his help in the shop When he graduated he went to Duke Law and graduated high in his class He tried to get a job but was unsuccessful so he moved back to Wittier and got a job there Married Pat Ryan in 1940 right before WWII When he fought in WWII he broke his mother s heart because of their nonviolent Quaker heritage o Got 10K from gambling oversees and used that towards his 1946 campaign for Congress b Political Career Nixon aided in Alger Hiss s arrest o Hiss got arrested for the lie he used to cover up rather than the actual crime In 1950 Nixon decided to run for senator and won Nixon became Eisenhower s Vice President when running he was running in 1960 o Nixon got in trouble due to a slush fund and from that point on Eisenhower didn t trust him o Checker Speech Nixon defending the gifts he got from other people his slush fund Called for the checker speech for the family s dog which was named Checkers that was a gift Because of this Eisenhower wants to dump Nixon as his VP but knows the people loved him so he kept him on Nixon lost governor election in 1960 and people began to consider him as obsolete until he worked his way back into politics a few years later Ran against Hubert Humphrey for president in 1968 and won II Nixon and the Balance of Power a Vietnamization 1969 While the Soviets were an important agenda item in foreign affairs Nixon and his adviser Henry Kissinger also knew that Vietnam was the most immediate problem o It dominated and shaped nearly all other issues the budget public and congressional opinion foreign policy and domestic stability o Nixon s solution was Vietnamization pulling American soldiers out and train Vietnamese to replace them reducing the total American role while enhancing South Vietnam s military capability it began in the spring of 1969 Adding to the public disillusionment about Vietnam was the publication of the Pentagon Papers a collection of official documents gathered by former Defense Department researcher Daniel Ellsberg that showed that government officials had deceived the American public about conditions in Vietnam from the 1950s o Kennedy and Johnson lied about cause of Vietnam War This news leaking worried Nixon because he was afraid that if this leaked on Kennedy and Johnson then other information about him might leak In 1970 Nixon ordered American troops to cross the border into Cambodia and destroy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong headquarters and supply areas o The Bombing of Cambodia The HoChiMinh Trail was being used to take ammunition to Viet Cong moving through N Vietnam out to the neighboring country then south into S Vietnam The US couldn t bomb Cambodia or the other neighboring country because they were neutral but Nixon said that he wanted to bomb Cambodia to end the HoChiMinh trail College students protested because it seemed that Nixon was expanding the war rather than ending it The college students were mad because they would be the ones who would have to fight in the war Lots of students were killed during the protests o The Cambodian invasion generated loud protests across the United States especially on college campuses including Kent State where four protesters were killed and eleven were wounded o Outraged students responded to these killings as well as those at Jackson State University by shutting down over one hundred campuses as thousands of antiwar demonstrators marched through Washington o However as Nixon had predicted with American soldiers returning home opposition to the war shrank and more Americans supported the administration s quest for an honorable peace The cease fire established in 1973 soon collapsed and Congress cut aid to South Vietnam o Saigon the capital of South Vietnam fell to the Viet Cong in March 1975 and the war ended as it had begun with Vietnamese fighting Vietnamese b Modifying the Cold War As part of his push for an era of negotiation Nixon pursued d tente a policy that reduced tensions with the two Communist superpowers o China was the key to this strategy since Nixon hoped and correctly so that American friendship with the Chinese would encourage the Soviets to improve their relations with the United States o Soviet leader Brezhnev increased trade with the West and the superpowers announced a Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement SALT I that restricted antimissile sites and established a maximum number of ICBMs and SCLBMs III Nixon and Politics a Pragmatic Conservatism Nixon believed that Republicans needed to emphasize conservatism that did not automatically reject social responsibility and executive activism Nixon s battle with inflation during his administration was a losing one in part because of economic events over which he had no control o Inflation when prices go up and wages do not was the biggest economic problem at the time in the country It came from waging a large war and borrowing money to pay for it As a part of the ongoing southern strategy to garner the region s votes the administration opposed busing to achieve school integration worked to slow down integration in other areas and sought to put a southerner on the Supreme Court o Bussing Sending white children to black neighborhoods and vice versa to try to make segregated schools Made parents angry especially white parents and Nixon puts more conservative people into office to appease the conservatives b An Embattled President The Watergate Scandal Nixon was convinced he was surrounded by enemies and used the FBI the IRS and other government organizations to intimidate and punish his