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
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.