Professor Nicole Hemmer
Appearances
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Absolut. Und wenn Sie den Weg von Nixon nachschauen, wie wir ihn machen werden, werden Sie sehen, wie der Cold War-Konservatismus, der noch in 1952 ein außerirdischer Bewegung war. So viel des Cold War-Konservativen-Bewegungs würde Eisenhower ausdrücken, weil er fühlte, als würde er nicht weit genug gehen.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Aber wenn Sie Nixon im Büro sehen, sehen Sie einen viel stärkeren, viel mehr tiefen, in den Republikanischen Partei-Konservativen-Bewegung. Und Nixon ist dafür verantwortlich. He's chosen in many ways in 1952 because of his red-baiting credentials, because he's seen as somebody who's more to the right than Eisenhower is.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
And over the course of his career, he's going to chart a path through a more conservative Republican Party and arguably by the 1970s, a more conservative country.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Sure. So Nixon had this slush fund, had this fund. He's being called to account for it. And it's one of those things that the Eisenhower campaign was sailing along so smoothly. And here comes Nixon mucking things up. And Eisenhower looks around. He's like, I don't need this. I can just replace this guy. And Nixon is aware that he is at real risk of being thrown off this ticket.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
And if he's thrown off this ticket, his political career is basically done at that point. Und so macht er etwas sehr Wissenswertes, nämlich er geht um Eisenhower herum und geht direkt an die amerikanischen Leute, um seinen Fall zu machen. Und es ist faszinierend, dass er Fernsehen benutzt. Es ist 1952. Nicht so viele Amerikaner haben Fernsehen an diesem Zeitpunkt. Es wird auch auf Radio gedreht.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Aber es ist ein Set, auf dem er sitzt und seine Frau Pat ist da. Und er sitzt da und er fängt einfach an, seine Finanzen durchzuführen. You can imagine, even today, somebody sitting there going through their finances is a little uncomfortable. In the 1950s, this is not something that you talked about. But he talks about it and he's like, we're not rich. We don't spend a lot of money on things.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Look at my wife, Pat. She doesn't wear a mink coat. She wears a respectable Republican cloth coat. And then he tells this story about the one thing that he did get that he didn't report. Which is that a supporter, while they were traveling on the campaign trail, had given him a little black and white dog. And his daughters had named it Checkers.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
And he says, no matter what they say about me, I'm gonna keep him.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
It's a dog, it's a puppy, and his daughters. It's one of those things that really, even though it doesn't actually put to bed the issue of the slush fund, Sure. And using the press to his advantage in this case. Really interesting.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Eine der Dinge, die Sie erwähnt haben, waren seine extensiven Außenreise. Außenpolitik war wirklich das Brot und Butter von Nixons politischen Karriere. Es war die Sache, über die er gebraucht hat. Es war die Sache, über die er all seine Zeit gelesen hat. Er verstand internationale Politik. Er war wahrscheinlich besser als irgendein Präsident im 20. Jahrhundert.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Und das betrifft jemanden wie Eisenhower, der der Alliierte Supreme Commander in Europa war. Er war jemand, der Weltpolitik verstanden hat, aber Nixon verstand es philosophisch und auf einem viel tieferen Niveau. Das wird seine Karriere formen.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
But the other thing that shapes his career is, again, that antagonism between Eisenhower and the Cold War conservative movement, because it functionally tars Nixon as what the right called a MeToo-Republican. Somebody who was just going to go along with the New Deal and with liberal ideas and wasn't actually going to be a staunch defender of the conservative philosophy.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
And so that puts him at odds pretty early on with the right. And that is a relationship he is going to have to then pay lots of attention to for the next 15 years.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
He saw US international power, whether it was soft power, whether it was money, whether it was the military, as absolutely essential to fighting communism. And so he is going to be insistent that the US is fully involved on the world stage. And that, too, will be a big part of his presidency.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Absolut. Die beiden waren eigentlich Freunde im Senat. Und sie waren die jungen, kommenden Sterne. Aber es könnte keinen größeren Kontrast geben, wenn Richard Nixon für jedes einzelne Ding, das er in der Leben hatte, kämpfte und gegen geschlossene Türen drang. Und oft haben diese geschlossenen Türen für ihn nicht geöffnet. Jack Kennedy flog durch das Leben.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Er hatte jede Möglichkeit, die er sich vorstellen konnte. Der Welt wurde für jemanden wie Jack Kennedy gebaut. Er kam aus einer reichen Familie, einer gut verbundenen Familie. Sein Vater hatte diese Verbindungen, die Möglichkeiten für Kennedy möglich machten. Er wurde von der Ivy League eingeladen. Und dann fliegt er in den Senat. Er ist sehr hübsch und schön. Und er bekommt alle Frauen.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Und es ist wirklich der Gedanke, dass Jack Kennedy ein Star ist. Und er kommt aus einer Star-Familie. Und wenn Nixon an ihn schaut, sieht es aus, als würde alles so einfach kommen. Und er ist nicht falsch.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Absolut. Und Nixon ist auch ein Schriftler. Er ist jemand, der wirklich an dem geschriebenen Wort kümmert. Er wird später in seinem Leben ein prolifizierter Schriftler werden. Jack Kennedy hat ein gescheitertes Buch namens Profiles in Courage, das ein New York Times Bestseller wird. Und du musst dir vorstellen, Nixon hat einfach... Wenn er dieses Buch sieht.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Because up until this point, even though he had worked very hard for everything he got, he got a lot at a very young age. And this, in some ways, is his first big public failure. He narrowly loses the election. He is convinced of two things. One, that Eisenhower did not support him enough, and that cost him support.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
And he's also kind of convinced that he didn't actually lose, that there were shenanigans in states like Illinois and Hawaii, where Joe Kennedy, Jack Kennedys father, had gotten involved and stolen the election. So you want to talk about grievance. Nixon comes out of that election convinced that not just that he lost, but that something was taken from him.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
And that idea that something was taken from him, that somebody else is responsible for his failures, is going to be a strong through line over the next few years of his life.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Es war ein seltsamer Moment. Er hatte die Nacht vorher verloren. Natürlich war es schmerzhaft für jemanden, der Vizepräsident der Vereinigten Staaten war. Aber er hat nicht wirklich geschlafen und er hat nicht geschlafen. Und so ist er ein bisschen enttäuscht und er geht runter, um mit den Medien zu sprechen. I'll be back with more American History after this short break.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
It's a huge moment. And if you want to get a sense of whether Nixon was already aiming for a comeback, the 1964 election is a pretty good moment to look for. Because Goldwater, who's an Arizona senator, is nominated by the Republicans, the furthest right candidate they had ever nominated, backed by this new Cold War conservative movement. And when Goldwater gives his speech,
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
accepting the nomination, he is seen as so extreme that even Nixon watching the speech later writes that he felt a little sick because he was like, not only is he going to lose this election, but he is tarnishing the Republican Party. And at that moment, most of the slick establishment types within the Republican Party abandoned Goldwater entirely. They say, I am not...
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
For Goldwater. He goes out there and he starts stumping for him. He does the work that needs to be done by the party. He proves himself to be a loyal Republican. And then even, you know, Goldwater loses in a landslide, but Nixon will continue to go out and he will campaign for
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
In the 1966 midterms for all of the Republicans across all of the House races and Senate races, he's putting in the work for the party. And the reason he's doing that is because he can imagine a comeback. And he is racking up a lot of IOUs from all of these politicians who he's out there stumping for.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Yeah, it's something that he leans into by the time you get to the build-up to the 1968 run. He says that he learns from the Goldwater campaign that you can't win with just conservative votes, but you also can't win without them.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
And he takes that lesson and he folds it into his political approach as he is eyeing, potentially running against Lyndon Johnson.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
It is such a pivotal moment in the history of the two American parties because the Republican Party had thrown an enormous amount of support behind the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. The Democratic Party was split down the line because it had so many Southern Democrats who were opposed to black civil rights.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
But in the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnson, the Democrat, was the champion of the Civil Rights Act and Barry Goldwater opposed it. And that really created a kind of opening for the Republican Party to woo disaffected white racist voters in the South. Because Barry Goldwater only wins a handful of states. He wins his home state of Arizona and then those deep South states.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
So Nixon is looking at that map. And the Republican Party, which had not been competitive in the South since the Civil War. Yes. He looks at that and he says, there is a real opportunity here.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
And so he develops what becomes known as a southern strategy to try to figure out a way to woo those white voters in a way that is clear to them that he is going to support them in the realm of civil rights, but is not so obnoxiously racist that it is going to drive away voters in other parts of the country. And that is sort of the line he toes.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Sehr genau. Und du weißt, Nixon kommt aus Kalifornien, könnte in einer Art und Weise sich von den Kriegen über die schwarzen Zivilrechte und die Rasse im Süden auslösen, um sich als jemand zu positionieren, der diese Dynamiken nicht auslösen musste. Und er engagiert sich nie in Segregationist-Politik. Wenn er Rasse-Baiten macht, ist es immer tieflich in der Sprache von Gesetz und Ordnung.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
In the language of states rights. And that's the cleverness of the Nixon campaign is coming up with that new way of talking about racism.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Yeah, he has to sort of represent himself to the nation. Because remember, the last time that he was a big national figure, he wasn't doing so hot when it came to politics. But Nixon also faces a very different political environment by the time you get to 1968. He's being challenged by these liberal and moderate Republicans, people like George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
He wants to make it clear that he's more conservative than them. He hires Pat Buchanan, who would later go on to be this major conservative figure, but he hires him as one of his speechwriters and advisors to help him reach out to conservatives. And he also has to be less conservative.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
overtly segregationist than George Wallace, who is the former Alabama governor, who is also running for president, is a third-party candidate, and is not only doing well in the South, but is also picking up disaffected white working-class voters in the North. And so Nixon really has to carve a path between those two.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Ja, in Part because it was signaling like a big change that was happening in the Democratic Party, which had been dealing with the so-called Dixiecrats since 1948, those disaffected white Southerners who oppose black civil rights. But Wallace was also putting himself in the way of that new Southern strategy. Those voters that Wallace was appealing to, Richard Nixon wanted those voters.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
So that's when he's really honing his language and his outreach to people in the South. And people like Strom Thurmond become very important. for vouching for Nixon and making it clear that he's still your guy.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Sehr genau. Ich meine, Vietnam ist ein pivoter Problem geworden, weil im Anfang von 1968, sobald die Kampagne unterwegs ist, die Tet-Offensive passiert. Und die Tet-Offensive ist dieser Moment, wo, trotz all der Generalsversprechen, dass die Vereinigten Staaten diese Krieg gewinnen, trotz all diesen Versprechen wurde es so klar, dass die USA nicht gewinnen wollten.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
dass der Krieg schon lange dauern würde. Und Nixon schwebt rein und sagt, put me in charge and I will be able to negotiate a settlement for this war. Johnson's in too deep, he can't see it clearly. Und Nixon ist sehr klar, dass wenn er rein kommt, er etwas Neues an die amerikanischen Menschen bieten kann. Yes, exactly. He represents that which the Eisenhower days carried for so many people.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
That's right. And you can't understand his psychology without knowing about the Checker speech and without knowing about the last press conference and all of those resentments that he had stockpiled by the time he got into the Oval Office.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Absolut. Und er war so eine große Figur in der US-Politik für so lange, von den frühen 1950er-Jahren bis in die Mitte der 1970er-Jahre. Es war wirklich, du weißt, Richard Nixon's Quarter Century.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
And that arc, right, from that tiny little place in Yorba Linda to the final ignominy of his resignation from office. He grew up in poverty. He was raised by his two parents. His mom was a stay-at-home mom. He was raised as a Quaker and was deeply steeped in religion when he was growing up. But he was somebody who was scrapping from the very beginning.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Who believed that he was destined for bigger things and who couldn't necessarily immediately see a path out. And so he was intent on making a path out of Yorba Linda onto a bigger stage.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Very much so. And that's the thing that he's always struggling against. When he enters that East Coast world, when he starts to become part of that East Coast elite, he thinks about Whittier and where he came from and how much he has to prove himself. And that sort of metastasizes into something more than just a drive.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
It definitely gains some edges of paranoia and vengeance by the time he becomes president. But Whittier is always with him.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Which is a very Nixonian thing to do, right? If I can't be accepted, I'm going to make my own way. And you'll see that throughout his career. But even as he's making his own way, because the thing is, you look at his career and he's inordinately successful.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Er hat es absolut gemacht. Und deshalb ist es so wichtig, nicht nur alle Erfolge, die er durch die Zeit hatte, zu behalten, sondern auch die Schmerzen und das Verzweifeln, die er mit ihm verbracht hat, als er aufwuchs.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Ja, sehr, sehr. Das ist eine tolle Art, es darzustellen. Und er ist so schnell in Erinnerung, weil er in die Haustür kommt, als das große Thema des Tages der Koldauer ist. Ja. Und diese steigende Angst vor Kommunismus. Und Nixon sieht das Land. Und er positioniert sich, um einer der Top-Red-Hunters im Kongress zu sein. Und in diesem Fall, er darstellt einen sehr dramatischen Moment.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Es ist der Pumpkin Papers-Inzidenz. Where one of the suspected communists reaches into a pumpkin in a vegetable garden and pulls out microfilm that shows the spying that was going on. And Nixon is part of that process and becomes a household name because of all of the coverage of these hearings about potential communist spies in the United States.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Being an anti-communist, even a fervent anti-communist, was not that unusual by the time you get to the late 1940s, in part because the United States already had this history of being fervently anti-communist. There had already been a Red Scare in 1919 and 1920. And up until the point that the US allies with the Soviet Union,
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
The United States approach to what was turning into World War II was that there were two major evils, Nazism and Communism. That kind of takes a break because of the exigencies of the war. But as soon as the war is over and the Soviet Union begins to expand, there is a very easy return to anti-Communism. And Nixon, you know, specifically grows up in a home where his father is Very anti-communist.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
And he imbibes those politics and brings them with him when he goes to the House.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
I don't know if there was one particular relationship, but it is something that he figures out very early on, right? He figures out how to sort of pink scare against his opponent when he's running for office. And there is, I think, a sense that there are opportunities to be made if you join something like the House Un-American Committee.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
So I think it's both in his case, both a sincere commitment to anti-communism and an understanding that this small House Committee could actually be a place where where a junior member of Congress could really begin to make his name.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
His was actually somebody who was working with the Soviet Union during his time in office. And he had that sort of impeccable pedigree that both made him somebody that Nixon was very eager to take down and also somebody who was able to glide by a lot of suspicion in the 1930s and 1940s.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
It's actually Whitaker Chambers, who is somebody who had been a communist and who had worked for the Soviet Union, who outs Alger Hiss and provides evidence to the committee. You know, at the time, there was still some uncertainty and a lot of that was down to Alger Hiss's reputation, his closeness to Franklin Roosevelt.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
But in subsequent years, it was revealed that he did have these close ties to the Soviet Union.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Eine faszinierende Persönlichkeit und würde Teil des post-World-War-II-Kold-War-Konservative-Movements werden. Jemand, der sehr nah mit National Review gearbeitet hat und nur ein Charakter. Es gibt eine tolle Biografie von ihm, wenn Leute von Sam Tannenhaus interessiert sind, die sich in all seine kleinen Schwierigkeiten befindet.
American History Hit
Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty
Es ist definitiv ein Fall von intensiven Vorstellungen. Das würde natürlich das Cover-Up werden, ein großer Teil von Nixons Geschichte, wenn er Präsident ist. Aber an der Zeit, wie wiederum, ist es das Opportunismus. Es ist, dass man kann, dass man kann, dass man kann, dass man kann, dass man kann. Ich bin zurück mit mehr amerikanischer Geschichte nach diesem kurzen Break.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Ford was not involved in these final decisions that Richard Nixon is making. Indeed, many people who suspected that some deal was struck about a pardon that would come later would would fabricate this idea that there is this internal conspiracy. But in fact, the historical records don't show that at all.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And in fact, you know, Gerald Ford understood that this was likely going to play and that he was going to step in into this unprecedented role. And he focused his time not on influencing Nixon, but on preparing for this very heavy weight of responsibility that he was going to have to bear by taking up the presidency after something that was truly unprecedented, after a two year process.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
constitutional crisis and that he was going to be the one, the unlikely leader to push people to help them grapple with the tragedy, the trauma that they had endured. And so that was his focus, more on the responsibilities that he knew he was going to assume at this unprecedented time.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Yeah. And he in that in that same address, he talked about the importance of truth and straight talk. Those are the two terms that he used. And he really pledged that he would be honest to the American people after all of the deception and dishonesty that had been uncovered.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Yeah, by the 1970s, when Ford steps into the office of the presidency in 74, the president is the star in a way that even surpasses what Franklin Roosevelt did because of television, right? So it's not just the voice of the president that people are hearing. They're seeing him on this televised bully pulpit that Ford had actually pushed against in Congress for more opportunities for Congress
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
to have access to television because he and many others in Congress felt that TV had given the presidency too much power, too much power to set the presidential agenda, too much power in the public imagination at the expense of Congress. So Ford had been pushing in the 1960s for
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
using the equal time clause of the FCC in a way that would allow members of Congress like himself to be on television more. So he understood what this had done in terms of shifting the attention to the presidency. What he didn't understand were all of the behind the scenes mechanisms that into the production of the president as a television star.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And this is what he struggled with, is that he had a very small press operations as a representative from Michigan, very, very tiny. And they served many different roles. They weren't just focused on communications. When you go into the White House, you have an entire team of people that are constantly thinking about your image and your message and the staging and the presentation.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And like that is a constant focus of the presidency by the 1970s. But it's not when he was representative. So it's really a significant transition in terms of communications expectations.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
It does. And that's where, again, remembering that people had watched these events. behind-the-scenes conspiracies actually play out over the previous two years.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
They had seen all of these internal efforts to undermine opponents and create political discord, not just with the break-in and the cover-up of Watergate, but remember, the Watergate investigation exposed a range of different unethical and corrupt and dirty tricks that the Nixon administration was pursuing on a regular basis.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
So the assumption immediately is that, of course, this is the next chapter, that Gerald Ford was nominated vice president because he made this agreement with Nixon or that somehow along the way they had this negotiation where they had this agreement that, OK, Ford would step in, Nixon would step down as long as he got that pardon. And so there are many different theories that start to circulate.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
But historians have not found any evidence that that actually happened, that there was any kind of discussion or an arrangement or even an understanding between Ford and Nixon about a pardon.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
All of the documentary evidence really points to this notion that Ford believed it was in the best interest of the country to move forward, not go into another trial, a criminal trial, that he thought that would have people relive the wounds of Watergate. And really set a precedent that could be destructive down the road as well.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Absolutely. And that takes root because, again, it's this particular moment where people are so cynical. And the press is very cynical. But it's also at this moment when all of his advisers and all of the expectations for presidents are that they present a polished image, right?
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
So there's this constant... And these are the two legacies of Richard Nixon that he has to grapple with, is that the operations of politics more broadly, but specifically the White House, have become a well-crafted machine, focusing on cultivating a very specific... presidential image that is then sold and packaged and sold to the American people and to journalists.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Then, on the other hand, the legacy of Nixon is that this is all a fabrication and it could be hiding not just, you know, gaffes, but those gaffes could be insight into a bigger corruption or bigger scandal that might be hidden behind the scenes. And so it's this pressure to have a polished communication effort as well, and more attention, right? The cameras are on him.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
He's pursuing this Rose Garden strategy to try to bring, restore faith and prestige and integrity to the president, but he does that via the media, right? So he has to have this apparatus, while at the same time, people are concerned that that apparatus is the problem. It's part of the problem of corruption and hiding misdeeds as well.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Absolutely. So it's November of 1975 and Chevy Chase is debuting his new impersonation of Gerald Ford. And if you watch it, he doesn't dress like him. He doesn't try to impersonate, you know, the sound of his voice or any of his mannerisms. All he does is knock things over and he's klutzy.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And that's how, and you have, you know, this unpresidential seal that's on a podium, but that's really all that they're doing. But anyway, this was really new in terms of directly tackling saying, I'm Chevy Chase, right? And that's how he, or sorry, I'm Gerald Ford. So this starts in November and it made Ron Nussin, Gerald Ford's press secretary, it just made him cringe.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be back.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And then, but then he thought like, is there a way we can use this? And so that March, he and the president decided that they're going to invite Chevy Chase to perform at the White House Correspondents Dinner. And the president actually tries to turn the tables and says, I'm Gerald Ford and you're not, right? And so he sees this as a way to kind of tap it and try to reverse the narrative.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
It's this battle of co-optation. Al Franken saw Ron Nussin when they were in the New Hampshire primary. And he said, you know, we should have you on the show. And Ron Nussin considered the offer. And ultimately, after the success of that March dinner, when Gerald Ford was in person, you know, kind of turned the tables on Chevy Chase, he decided that he would guest host the show.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And so Ron Nesson guest host the show in April. The opening, you know, that live from Saturday night was something that was phenomenal. pre-filmed from the White House, but Gerald Ford does make an appearance.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And Ron Nussin is really interesting throughout that performance, which kind of gets to these dynamics that we've been talking about, about that search for more transparency and authenticity, but also this escalation of image construction. Because so Ron Nussin plays the press secretary talking about you know, how Gerald Ford should deal with this bumbling image, right?
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
So it's this inside look to the Oval Office. And they make fun of all of the, you know, the press secretary not always telling the truth and spinning the truth, right? And so that's actually a theme of the broader episode.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Yeah, one of the things that I've looked at in my work are, you know, he made regulatory reform a pillar of his presidency. And he really wanted to pursue this to kind of think about agencies that had too much bureaucratic oversight, too much red tape.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
How could they function more efficiently and not just serve the corporate interests that had kind of gained regulatory control over them or what's called regulatory capture? So he's really taking on some powerful lobbying industries in a way that he sees as really making regulations more responsive to citizens and consumers.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And so he takes on, I watched him take on in the archives that I've done for my book on cable television, he took on the broadcast lobby, which was incredibly powerful. and really initiated the start of the decentralization of our media landscape that we have today.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
During his presidency, you had the big three, ABC, CBS, and NBC, that dominated what people saw on their television screens and fought against any newcomers coming in. And he was willing initially, I should say, he was willing initially to kind of stand up to that and question these regulatory assumptions of power that had been in place for decades.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
However, I will say that, you know, 1975, you see him take a lot of action. By early 1976, he's focused all on re-election. By that spring, he's being challenged by Ronald Reagan in primaries. And all of a sudden, he kind of pulls back on some of those more assertive measures because he's looking to kind of create political capital and political friends that can help him win re-elections.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Absolutely. So in 72, the Democratic Party, for the first time, implements these primaries and, you know, allows different voices to come in and kind of compete for the presidential nomination. And the Republican Party is moving towards that in 76 and is trying to make it a more open process.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And Ronald Reagan capitalizes on it, especially he goes to New Hampshire, but also does very, very well in the South, where this more conservative wing of the Republican Party understood that their message of small government and states' rights was that that would play very well in the South with those Southern Democrats that had left the Democratic Party over the issues of civil rights.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And so Ronald Reagan is critiquing his legitimacy, his leadership abilities. And so, again, a lot of these attacks on Ford begin with Reagan. And and then Jimmy Carter is able to, you know, capitalize on them because they're already out there. There are these narratives that have already emerged.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And I think, you know, when we kind of talked about this broader media environment where the press is more cynical, where entertainment shows like Saturday Night Live are, you know, poking fun at him. Ronald Reagan and his critique is tapping into that and then further escalating that as well.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Absolutely. There had not been a television debate since 1960. And part of that is because those debates loomed large in the mind of Richard Nixon. He firmly believed that he lost the election because of those debates. The reality is much more complicated. But in his mind, it was those debates that like that really that triggered his downfall there. Lyndon Johnson in 64 is not going to debate.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
He's, you know, he's the incumbent at that moment is running for election, right, as president. And so he's certainly not going, there's no incentive for him to debate. In 68, Richard Nixon sure is not going to do it. And he's not going to do it in 72. And so finally, you have these debates that
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
this question of will debates bring more transparency, more accountability by, you know, forcing the candidates to answer questions on TV directly to citizens. And there was a consensus that, yes, these are good things. It was about restoring accountability. And again, more of this transparency to the political process.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Absolutely. And they're all about getting women to turn out, getting all of these different citizens engaged in the political process. And so, yes, absolutely. The League of Women Voters, they take charge, you know, they sponsor these debates. And both the parties agreed to them because they realized that in this broader environment where there's more scrutiny,
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
This scrutiny was originally seen as essential to ensuring that there's no corruption or unethical behavior. Of course, this is part of this broader tension is that you have more and more media scrutiny, but also then more efforts to control images. And so both sides are polling responses and polling issues. So it's actually less authentic.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
but it was deemed as part of restoring authenticity to politics. And so it's this mass-mediated tension that really comes out of these debates. And it's part of this broader landscape that Ford and Carter are both navigating.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
I think that he really is this transition person, a person that attempted to restore faith and integrity in democratic institutions after they were really called in to question. And he really does try to fulfill that role. You know, he says that, look, this is an example that the system works.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And he tried to show that, you know, it tried to restore faith in the presidency and restore integrity in the presidency. But he's also in this transition role and where media and cynicism and entertainment become more of a factor in how people are consuming politics.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And so you mentioned Saturday Night Live earlier, but I think that's actually really significant, especially when we look at our current political landscape, is that he saw this criticism and Chevy Chase's performance gained resonance with the American public because it tapped into this broader narrative of this accidental president, right?
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And then he actually made him accidental and clumsy, right? But Gerald Ford didn't push back against that. He didn't try to censor that. He tried to embrace it and say, OK, like, I'm going to try to humanize the presidency. He wanted to show that he had a sense of humor. But what he does in that is that he then kind of gives by having his press secretary go on to host Saturday Night Live.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
by appearing as the, doing the opening, a clip from the Oval Office, live from New York. He's actually legitimizing the role of, elevating the role of entertainment in the political process.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Absolutely. And that's something that you could see throughout his congressional career. He was really respected as someone that everyone liked, didn't cause a lot of controversy, didn't cause a lot of waves. And indeed, when Nixon had to find and appoint a replacement for Spiro Agnew after he resigned, the Watergate investigation had been heating up. And Speaker of the House, Carl Albert,
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And so then that actually, you know, that paves the way for someone like Ronald Reagan and later on Donald Trump to kind of use their credentials in entertainment as justification for their political qualifications.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
He was very uncomfortable with this, I will say. His team was very, you know, they didn't know what to do because this was new terrain. Having, you know, a late night show impersonate a president, that was really new. And so they were trying to deal with this in a way that, you know, showed that he wasn't, you know, trying to control and manipulate images like Richard Nixon had.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
So again, this legacy of Nixon is looming over him.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
urged Nixon to pick someone that everyone liked. That was really what he urged. And he said, the person I encourage you to do, the one that everyone likes, is Gerald Ford.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Yeah, so the 1948 elections, especially in Congress, are really significant. You've got a very divided Democratic Party. And so the Democrats are really dividing between their southern wing. You have the Dixiecrats that kind of storm out of that convention. And so the Democratic Party is starting to come undone around some issues, especially around race in the aftermath of the war.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
The Republican Party is not that much more unified. It also has these disparate wings. You have these more conservative pulses that are critiquing this notion that the United States should be an active global leader. And I think that that's something that really kind of comes out. Gerald Ford is on the other side.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
He's very much part of this more moderate Republican party that is emerging that will coalesce.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
around Dwight Eisenhower in 52 and really gained strength that the United States could and should be a world leader and should not rescind from that global stage the way that many, this isolation impulse, both in the Republican Party and there's some in the Democratic Party, but there is an isolationist, more conservative impulse in the Republican Party that loses out in 48 and then again in 52.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Yeah, it really is the beginning of a partisan realignment where parties go from being more regionally. and kind of finding common ground economically to really becoming more ideologically different. And in 1948, they were not ideologically different. In fact, there were a lot of ideological differences within parties, a lot of regional divides, a lot of class divides as well.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And so you really do, it really is the beginning of the political realignment that you see particularly Bursting on the scene in the Republican Party in 64 and then very much on display in 1980. Right.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
So Spiro Agnew was a favorite of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. At this time, they were growing. They had been at the forefront of how Barry Goldwater won the 64 nomination for the Republican Party. But if you recall in 64, Goldwater gets smoked and it's a landslide election for Lyndon Johnson. But nevertheless, conservatives are starting to gain ground.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
They're very critical of the social welfare state that many moderate Republicans had bought into and had participated in building and expanding under Eisenhower and Johnson and Kennedy and even under Nixon in some capacities. And so there's this growing conservative wing that doesn't necessarily trust Richard Nixon. but they become much more trustworthy.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
They fall into line more so, not completely. There are some that like push for John Ashbrook to run in 72 to challenge Nixon, but they fall in line because they actually adore Spiro Agnew. Spiro Agnew is a vocal critic, especially of this liberal media bias and really was Nixon's attack dog against, you know, the liberalism and, you know,
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
started to kind of turn this anti-liberalism into more of a coherent conservative message. And so that's where Spiro Agnew really played a key role. And so when he ultimately had to resign because he was involved in these bribery scandals, this is a really key moment where conservatives are hoping that a conservative would be put in place.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And of course, that's not going to happen, given the realities of the Watergate scandal as it's playing out at the time.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Absolutely. He knows, again, this is the fall of 73 after the summer, the televised hearings. I mean, it's really Watergate is starting to intensify again. It's showing it's starting to show some very, very concrete links between the higher ups of the Nixon White House and not just the burglary, but of course, the cover up.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And so, you know, there's an intense political pressure and Nixon needs someone who is not controversial. And again, has this trust that a lot of people liked him and they trusted him. And so that's really why he decides on Gerald Ford.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Absolutely. And, you know, Democrats had dominated Congress for quite some time at this moment. And this is something that in 72, if you look at the presidential map, all of the country except for Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., go for Richard Nixon. And that looks like a landslide. But the reality is that the Democratic Party was deeply divided on the presidential level.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
They had over a dozen people that ran in an open primary system. It was a very new nominating system that year. And so the presidential process was very contested, fragmented and divided. However, at the state and at the national level in Congress, they still have a stronghold.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Yeah, and that's what's really interesting is because in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, there's a lot of attention to this question of succession and who has authority. But again, it hadn't actually been implemented until this. So it's the first time. So it's making constitutional history because it's the first time that they're following this new procedure.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
which ultimately says that when there's a vacancy in the office of the vice president, the president shall nominate a vice president that will have to then be confirmed by the majority of both houses of Congress.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
Well, again, I think it's important to remember that there was a sign that this was coming. There was a feeling that things were moving and that impeachment was very, very real. And that is the only reason that Nixon was willing to resign, because he understood that after in May, the House Judiciary Committee began debating articles of impeachment.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And then, of course, there is this legal debate over the tapes. And does Nixon have privilege over them? Are they his property? The Supreme Court weighs in on the tapes in July, and then it becomes very clear that this is going to be the hard evidence.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And then people in Senate, notably Barry Goldwater, one of, again, the leader of this conservative wing, the Republican Party, who had gotten behind Nixon, who, as he was embattled, felt that they found common ground. They argued that it's this liberal media that's out to get Nixon. And so they found this common ground.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And then Barry Goldwater, when the evidence of the tapes comes out, he feels that Nixon had lied to them. He felt very betrayed, as did many people across the ideological spectrum in the Republican Party. And so he walks very famously down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Oval Office and tells Nixon that he has lost the support of his most ardent supporters.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And so then it becomes very clear that there's going to be this transition and that he's either going to be impeached or he needs to resign. What's really interesting is, you know, of course, Gerald Ford gets this phone call. But one of the really interesting people that I studied in my recent book on cable television is this person called Clay Whitehead.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
And he was actually part of this team that was assembled of... of former Nixon advisors and people that were really trusted, not because they were outside of the inner circles of this Watergate. And they started preparing for this transition. So they're starting to think, what will a transition look like? And, you know, this is happening throughout the summer of 74. So there's an entire team.
American History Hit
Gerald Ford: The Unelected President
So it's not just Gerald Ford that's thinking through it. There's an entire team of people that, you know, were not embroiled in the Watergate scandal, that were known for bringing, you know, this public service, this commitment to public service, not this partisan politics, this corrupt politics from the Nixon administration that then were helping Gerald Ford prepare.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
He logged so many tens of thousands of miles crisscrossing the globe as Vice President. And really thought that that was going to be the launching pad for him to become President in 1960. That he could say in this very fraught moment across the globe, here was somebody who had this real experience. and could lead the US through this very precarious moment in the Cold War.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
He doesn't get that shot in 1960, but then in 1968 he finally has his hand on the wheel and is eager and excited to reshape global politics.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
There's this saying that comes after the opening of China, which is, only Nixon could go to China. And what that saying means is that only Nixon could do it without being red-baited by Richard Nixon. Because had an earlier president tried to do it, Nixon would have accused them of being communists. That's where he sort of built his reputation.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
And in fact, the opening of China brings him into open conflict with the conservative movement in the United States, who are actually like, wait a second, we thought you were one of us, that you understood that communists were an existential threat. What are you doing, like sitting down with these butcherous enemies?
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
And they actually break with Nixon right ahead of the 1972 election because of this. They support minor third party candidates. But Nixon stays the course because he realizes that by the time the 1972 election is rolling around, that he's got that one. He doesn't necessarily need the William F. Buckley Juniors of the world to be on his side.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
I don't think he understood where the US and China relations would be in the 21st century. He understood that there was opportunity in that moment, that there could be this new realpolitik way of viewing the power on the global stage. So I think he understood the potential of a rise in China. But I think that he was more hoping to harness opportunity.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Rather than where we are now, where the US is really entering in some ways a new Cold War with China on very different economic terms.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Es ist eine tolle Frage. Ich bin nicht sicher, wie viel er mit einer neuen ökonomischen Ordnung im Kopf hat. Er hat sicherlich verstanden, dass die USA in einige herausfordernde ökonomische Zeiten entstanden sind, weil so viel der Post-Kriegs-Prosperität aus zwei Dingen gebaut wurde.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
China hatte sich kinderlich gekleustert und geschlossen und war also nicht eine zentrale Teil der globalen Ökonomie, aber auch... Japan and Europe and all these places have been destroyed in World War II. And so they weren't challenging the U.S. in terms of manufacturing. And Richard Nixon is becoming president at a moment in which that is shifting. Right. Europe is powering back up.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Japan is powering back up. They haven't yet reached critical mass. I'm just not sure how much he understood that China was part of that equation. It's entirely possible that he did.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Those conversations are happening under Nixon. And again, Nixon understands how power works. He knows these people who are running the countries in the Middle East and the Sultanates and all of these different governments. And again, is looking for a way to stabilize power. Right.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
To stabilize power in these different places like the Middle East, instead of having them be simply pawns in US-Soviet conflict, to empower them and to bring them sort of into this new political order that he is helping to shape in this moment.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
The very idea of the American century, the idea that Henry Luce puts forward in 1941, that the U.S. would be an active leader on the international stage. The founding generation would not have even really conceptually understood that. Not only because the U.S. didn't have that kind of power back in the late 18th century. But because they just had a very different vision of how the U.S.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
would operate in the international space. And a lot of that was like, we're going to stay over here. Europe and its problems can be over there. We're not going to worry about those so much, except on the rare occasions when it interferes with our economic interests.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
So yes, this was just an entirely new vision for the US's place in the world that had been building, I think, since the late 19th century as the US is becoming more of an empire. And then with World War II and the Cold War, but Nixon really brings it to its apotheosis.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
New Federalism is this idea that the federal government is going to begin to devolve power back to the states. That you're still going to have federal programs that are interested in funding things like early childhood education or that is interested in the desegregation of workspaces and those kinds of things. But it's going to be done at the state level.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
So instead of having these big federal programs, you'll instead give block grants to the states and the states will figure out how best to spend that money.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
It's a conservative idea, but that again is this idea of sort of slowly transitioning away from New Deal, Great Society, big government that is located in the federal government and taking that federal money and devolving it back to the state level. And so that's the big driving idea.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Yeah, it really depends on where you sat, how much you saw it as a problem to be resisted or something to be embraced. In the U.S. South, there was quite a lot of interest in having...
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Aber für Menschen, die ihre Karriere investiert haben, in die Bildung dieser föderalen Agenzen, die Verständnis, dass es auf dem föderalen Niveau gerecht werden musste, um es zu machen, dass es konsistent und fair ist, aber auch, um sicherzustellen, dass es die neuen Regeln der Zivilrechts-Ära folgt. Making sure that money was getting to Black residents and to women and to Latino residents.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
This was part of the understanding that federal control meant fairness and that state control meant something else. And for Richard Nixon, who had run on the Southern Strategy, he was more interested in having that state control than federal control.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
I think that especially first term Richard Nixon is someone who understands he has to compromise. Republicans do not control the Senate and the House. They're still in the Great Society era. And when he moves, he has to move strategically. And so he doesn't say, let's dismantle the welfare state. He says, what about this idea of having a guaranteed annual income?
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Oder der föderale Regierung gibt Menschen einfach Geld und sie finden heraus, wie sie es so sparen. Oder sogar für etwas wie eine affirmative action, eine liberale Politikidee. Nixon verabschiedet es, aber er verabschiedet es bis zum Ende, um die Unionen zu verringern. Und so eine der Dinge, die Nixon in seinem ersten Termin macht, ist, dass er versucht, herauszufinden, wie man
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
liberal means to reach conservative ends so he does oversee things like the development of the environmental protection agency but his ultimate goal is to have a more conservative federal government he just doesn't have a lot of space to do that in his first term where he's barely eked out of victory and is working in what is clearly just like a more liberal america
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
I think the important starting point has to be that the Watergate affair, the scandal, starts during the 1968 election before that big landslide happened. Nixon had, of course, in 1968, as we've mentioned... Ich glaube, das ist ein sehr, sehr wichtiger Punkt. Be careful reading your own tea leaves, I suppose.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
The Darker Side peaks out now and then in public. So he has a kind of viciousness toward the press that you later learn is actually being actualized into a war on certain journalists. They're being investigated by the IRS and the FBI and he's keeping an enemies list. That is the real Richard Nixon. You know, he cuts loose Vice President Spiro Agnew. Und dann...
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Honestly, it speaks to what white elite life looked like in the United States in the mid-century. It had become unpalatable to use racial slurs in public, to talk about the Jews in negative ways in public. And yet behind the scenes, you know, in those places that were out of the spotlight and off camera, there was a lot of this. And Nixon embodied it. He had terrible things to say about racism.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Black people, about Jewish people, about women. And that all comes out on the tapes. And that is part of the story of his downfall, is that people see this kind of bigotry and meanness that Nixon has, that he's able to largely disguise in public. But that is very evident on those hidden tapes.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Undermining it in so many different ways, because, yes, on the one hand, you have this Nixon who is, you know, promoting affirmative action for in his Philadelphia plan and who is crisscrossing the world and talking to people of all different kinds of backgrounds and religions and belief systems and pulling them together in international politics.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
But who harbors a great deal of bigotry in his own personal life. And that also, you know, while he's building this enormous national majority in the 72 election, is also behind the scenes breaking law in order to make sure that he wins that election. So this is the break-in to the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate. but is also going after his political enemies.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
You mentioned the Pentagon Papers, which were released in 1971, and the Nixon administration fought tooth and nail to try to keep those from being published in the New York Times and the Washington Post, where they were ultimately revealed.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
But part of the crime spree in 1972 is going after Daniel Ellsberg, who's the person who released the papers, breaking into his psychiatrist's office in order to try to get dirt on him. That sort of...
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Revenge-Mindedness trips him up again and again and leads him to break the law at a time when presidents have so much power that there was probably things he could do legitimately to discredit someone like Ellsberg, but that's not the path he chose.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
It's a great question, because on the one hand, we often talk today about how great it would be to have a president who is deeply knowledgeable about the world and treats the world as it is. And I think that that is something that is laudable and that we want. We want presidents who are sincerely interested in peace and who are engaged and understand both how power and people work.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
And in a lot of ways, Richard Nixon had those qualities. At the same time, the way that he went about getting peace in some of these places, including Vietnam, involved war crimes and lawbreaking, as in the case of the bombing of Cambodia.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Yeah. The body count of the Nixon administration is not something that can be set aside. The chaos and the destruction that his administration caused in pursuit of those loftier goals. The loftiness of the goals does not excuse the criminality on the world stage and then the criminality at home.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
I think one of the lasting legacies of the Nixon administration is that he did have a lot of supporters, people who felt that he was unfairly prosecuted and persecuted through Watergate and who then spent the next several decades trying to create a world in which the next Republican president wouldn't be held responsible if he committed crimes in pursuit of his goals.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
And that's the world we live in now. And so, you know, I think that you can tally things up on a ledger. About the good and the bad of the Nixon administration. But I think we have to take into account the destructiveness of that legacy, which, you know, Nixon probably couldn't have foreseen that he would have loosened the constraints on presidents going forward.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
That wasn't, I think, what he saw as the lesson of his presidency. But nonetheless, we are living in the world that Richard Nixon created. And looking around right now, it doesn't feel like a very good world to live in.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Boy, are they ever. And many of them, you know, worked within the Nixon administration. So there's a lot of overlap.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Er ist der neue Nixon. Er wird nicht so alt sein wie Nixon. Du erinnerst dich an ihn als den typischen schiffigen Kerl aus den 1950er und 1960er-Jahren, den verletzten Nixon der frühen 1960er-Jahre. Aber der neue Nixon wird populär und mehr wichtig sein. Right. The silent majority played a big part in this, right, in his mind. Very much so.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Nixon understood American politics as being on the one hand this very loud, noisy, protesting minority that was clamoring for attention and was getting all of the attention. But actually they disguised this silent majority of white, middle-class Americans who were
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Und er sah diese Amerikaner als nicht nur seine Basis für Unterstützung, sondern die Amerikaner, die er am meisten benötigte, während er im Büro war.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Ja, sehr viel. Wenn Sie heute in die Nixon-Bibliothek gehen, ist Peacemaker immer noch der Titel, den sie für Richard Nixon drücken. Und es war etwas, was er wirklich, wirklich wollte. Er wollte, weil er dieses enzyklopädische Wissen der Welt hatte, weil er alle diese Weltleute kennengelernt hat, er glaubte wirklich, dass er die Welt formieren könnte.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Er glaubte, dass er domästisch Policien einstellen könnte, die den domästischen Unruf unterbrechen und die Menschen in diese neue goldenen Ära führen würden. Events were less his problem than he was. He was paranoid and constantly looking for ways to use power that were outside of the bounds. And as he did that, he got into a lot of trouble.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
And in fact, he was already getting himself into trouble during the 1968 campaign. als er hinter den Szenen mit Leuten arbeitete, um die Peace-Talks mit Vietnam zu veröffentlichen. Er sagte ihnen, dass sie keine Verhandlungen mit Lyndon Johnson machen. Wenn ich in die Büchern komme, kann ich euch etwas viel Besseres anbieten.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Und so wurde der Peace-Maker tatsächlich in den Weg der Frieden und seiner Befugnis der Macht. Und das war etwas, was wir während seines Präsidentschafts sehen würden.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Vietnamisation was the idea that you would slowly pull out the American troops and replace them with South Vietnamese troops. So it would become a war that was taking place in Vietnam between Vietnamese people and the U.S. would pull out of it.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
And the reason that was so important to him was because it was this high cost of life, the draft, all of this treasure and personnel that was being poured into Vietnam that had been the source of so much unrest. The Americans, I don't think, cared that much whether there was a war in Vietnam. They cared that the U.S.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
was involved in a war in Vietnam and that it was their children who were being drafted into that war, they themselves who were being drafted into that war. So Nixon's plan was, well, if I can't get a peace between these different factions in Vietnam, at least I can get the U.S. largely out of it.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Very much so. And that expansion of the war has two components that are really unpopular. The first is that he's expanding it in the first place. And so, you know, he's come in promising he's going to end this war and instead it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And also that he's doing it secretly. Yeah.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
That had been one of the major issues in 68 during the Tet Offensive, was that the generals had been promising one thing, we're about to win this war. And then facts were playing out on the ground where people were like, well, but the Vietnamese that we're fighting are much, much stronger than we had been told.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
And so the American people already had this perception they were being lied to about the Vietnam War. And the expansion of the bombing into Cambodia only reinforces that sense.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
This is the story of the Cold War Presidency, that it accrues more and more and more power in all sorts of ways, through the intelligence agencies, through the ability to wage war, through just the growth of the executive state. You end up having power because so much is focused on foreign policy and strategies for nuclear war.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
So much of that power sits in the executive and rests on the person of the presidency. So Nixon is really the heir to power.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Nixon war überrascht von den Protesten. Er fühlte sich, als ob die Protesten illegitimiert waren. Er dachte nicht, dass die Protestanten patriotisch waren. Aber das gesagt, eine der Dinge, die Nixon während eines seiner dunklen Nachts des Sohnes gemacht hat, war, dass er runterging und mit Protestanten gesprochen hat, die in Washington, D.C. waren, die die Kriegspolitik protestierten.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
So there really were these two sides of Nixon. You listen to the tapes and the secret tapes that he recorded in the Oval Office and he often says the worst things about protesters. He talks about wanting to shoot Quaker protesters in the face, despite the fact that he himself was a Quaker. But he also then goes down and he talks to these protesters who are gathered in the National Mall.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
trying to have like this rap session with them to show that he hears them and sees their protests. So I think that this is part of the two sides of Richard Nixon that play out over these protests.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Right. And that conflict that's taking place within the person of the president becomes the country's conflict because of all that power he has.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
He does. I mean, this is part of a celebratory moment in the Nixon presidency. It really is kind of like the climax before the day tomorrow of this presidency. Because he's coming off of this trip to China, where he's opening the U.S. to communist China. And then he has these peace talks. And he really does see himself in this moment as the person who is bringing order to the world.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
And of course, behind the scenes, the negotiation is... Okay, we're going to declare peace with honor in 1973. And there's a kind of side negotiation with the North Vietnamese. They won't attack until 1975. And so you have actually what ends up being a chaotic and disorderly retreat from Vietnam that happens in 73.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
And then in 75, the complete collapse, but in some of those enduring images of the U.S. Embassy being evacuated.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Yeah, it happens after he's left the White House. And he, I believe, takes credit for getting the U.S. out, right? Like, you can't control what happens in Vietnam going forward, but the U.S. got out and for a while there was some stability in Vietnam, but ultimately, you know... couldn't stay there forever.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
He was fascinated by foreign policy. He was fascinated about the way that power flowed around the globe. And he had read so much on it. And he had theories about what would become known at the time as realpolitik, right, that we needed more realism in foreign policy and less ideology. And this really is a turning point. in how presidents think about the Cold War.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
It had been seen in the 1950s and 60s as this clash between incompatible ideological worldviews. Nixon takes a step back and he's like, well, actually, I've talked to people in all these different parts of the world and Der Kommunismus in der Sowjetunion ist nicht das gleiche wie der Kommunismus in China.
American History Hit
The Fall of Richard Nixon
Und in Wahrheit gibt es einen Weg, uns zwischen diesen zwei kommunistischen Supermächten zu triangulieren und sie zu verbinden und mit China zu öffnen, obwohl es eine kommunistische Regierung hat. Und so bringt er eine wirklich studierte und erfahrene Außenpolitik. Es endet einfach nicht sein, dass es sein Legitimum ist, weil von allem anderen.