Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the thirty-seventh President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. He was also the thirty-sixth Vice President (1953–1961) serving under Dwight D. Eisenhower. He is the only man to have been elected twice to the Vice Presidency and twice to the Presidency, and he was the fifth Republican President to be elected to two terms. Nixon is noted for his diplomatic foreign policy and moderate domestic policy, but he is also remembered as the first and only U.S. President to have ever resigned from office. His resignation came after a loss of support in Congress amidst impending impeachment proceedings related to the Watergate scandal.

Presidency

Nixon's post-election defeatist mood did not last. He and his family moved into a 12-room luxury apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Nixon worked as a prominent lawyer, using these so-called "wilderness" years in the private sector to earn more money ($250,000 per year, by some accounts--equivalent to over $1 million today) and to solidify his political base. During the 1966 Congressional elections, he traveled the country speaking in support of Republican candidates and preparing for another campaign of his own. In the election of 1968, he completed a remarkable political comeback by defeating Hubert H. Humphrey to become the 37th President of the United States, in a campaign where he promised to end the Vietnam War. He was the first Vice-President to be elected President who did not succeed the President under whom he had served.

Related Topics:
Fifth Avenue - New York City - Lawyer - 1966 - Republican - Election of 1968 - Hubert H. Humphrey - President of the United States - Vietnam War

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Nixon appealed to what he claimed was the "silent majority" of socially conservative Americans who disliked the "hippie" counterculture and anti-war demonstrators. Nixon also promised "peace with honor," and without claiming to be able to win the war, Nixon claimed that "new leadership will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific". When a reporter pressed Nixon for specifics, he did not reveal any details. Because of this, Nixon's opponents criticized him for not revealing his secret plan to end the Vietnam War, although Nixon had not used this famous phrase. Still, many voters supported Nixon because they believed he would end the war.

Related Topics:
Silent majority - Hippie - Counterculture - Anti-war - Pacific - Vietnam War

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He proposed the Nixon Doctrine to establish a strategy of turning over the fighting of the war to the Vietnamese. During the war, on July 30, 1969, Nixon made an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam, and met with President Nguyen Van Thieu and with U.S. military commanders. American involvement in the war declined while Nixon was in office. But there would be four more years of strategic bombing, with more bombs dropped than in World War II. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, fighting was left to the ineffective South Vietnamese army.

Related Topics:
Nixon Doctrine - Vietnamese - July 30 - 1969 - South Vietnam - Nguyen Van Thieu - Strategic bombing - World War II

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Nixon's administration secretly began a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia in March, 1969 (code-named Menu) to destroy what were believed to be the headquarters and large numbers of soldiers of the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam. The bombing campaign was kept secret from the American public and the U.S. Congress. Militarily ineffective, the bombing campaigns killed approximately one hundred thousand Cambodian peasants. However, NVA communist forces did use Cambodian soil as a supply line to the Vietcong in the south.

Related Topics:
Cambodia - March - 1969 - National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam - U.S. Congress - Cambodian - Vietcong

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In ordering the bombings, Nixon realized he would be extending an unpopular war as well as breaching Cambodia's "official" neutrality. He also understood that the war was politically un-winnable due to massive demonstrations. Details of the bombing were kept secret even from high ranking officials such as Secretary of State William P. Rogers and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. During deliberations over Nixon's impeachment, his unorthodox use of executive powers over the ordering of these bombings were considered as an article of impeachment, but the charge was dropped. This bombing (and an incursion by U.S. forces into Cambodian territory in April 1970) added to the administration's tacit support for the overthrow of the neutralist royal government of Norodom Sihanouk by the rightist military dictator Lon Nol, created chaos, and drove much of the peasant population of that country into the arms of the Khmer Rouge, a Maoist revolutionary movement that would eventually kill 1.7 million Cambodians after taking power.

Related Topics:
Cambodia - Joint Chiefs of Staff - Impeachment - Executive powers - 1970 - Norodom Sihanouk - Lon Nol - Khmer Rouge - Maoist - Kill 1.7 million Cambodians

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Nixon was also very vocal in supporting General Yahya Khan of Pakistan despite Genocide against Bengalis in East Pakistan. Recently declassified documents reveal the extent of support offered by Nixon to the dictator despite widespread human rights violations. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB79/

Related Topics:
Yahya Khan - Pakistan - Genocide - Bengali - East Pakistan

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On the morning of July 20, 1969, Nixon addressed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their historic moonwalk, live via telephone. Along with those of the astronauts, Nixon's name and signature were inscribed on the plaques left behind by Apollo 11 in 1969 and Apollo 17 in 1972. Ironically it was the Democrat controlled Congress and President Nixon who had wound down the NASA budget and curtailed the Apollo program due to budget pressures caused principally by the vast expense of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. On January 5, 1972 Nixon approved the development of the Space Shuttle program, a decision that profoundly influenced U.S. efforts to explore and develop space for several decades thereafter.

Related Topics:
July 20 - 1969 - Neil Armstrong - Buzz Aldrin - Moonwalk - Apollo 11 - Apollo 17 - 1972 - NASA - Apollo program - January 5 - Space Shuttle program

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Nixon halted circulation of high-denomination U.S. currency in 1969 by executive order. At the time, he stated that he was taking this action to "make life harder for the Mafia." His comment drew irate criticism from many Americans of Italian ancestry, who regarded it as an ethnic slur.

Related Topics:
High-denomination U.S. currency - 1969 - Executive order - Mafia - Italian - Ethnic slur

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In 1972 Nixon was re-elected in one of the biggest landslide election victories in U.S. political history, defeating George McGovern and garnering over 60% of the popular vote. He carried 49 of the 50 states, trailing only in Massachusetts. The strongest candidate against Nixon, Edmund Muskie, had been sabotaged by underhanded tactics, probably on Nixon's orders.

Related Topics:
1972 - George McGovern - Massachusetts - Edmund Muskie

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The 60s were a period of detente between the Western and Eastern Blocs. That changed dramatically by the early 70s. In 1960, the People's Republic of China ended the alliance with its biggest ally, the USSR, in the Sino-Soviet Split. As tensions between the two communist nations reached its peak in 1969 and 1970, Nixon decided to use their conflict to shift the balance of power towards the West in the Cold War. In what later would be known as the "China Card", Nixon deliberately improved relations with China in order to blackmail the Soviet Union. In 1972, Richard Nixon became the first US president to visit "Red" China. Fearing the possibility of a Sino-American alliance, the Soviet Union yielded to Nixon immediately. The first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks were finally concluded the same year.

Related Topics:
People's Republic of China - Sino-Soviet Split - Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

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On January 2, 1974, Nixon signed a bill that lowered the maximum U.S. speed limit to 55 MPH in order to conserve gasoline during the 1973 energy crisis. He established the EPA on December 2, 1970.

Related Topics:
January 2 - 1974 - Speed limit - MPH - Gasoline - 1973 energy crisis - EPA - December 2 - 1970

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On April 3, 1974, Nixon announced he would pay $432,787.13 in back taxes plus interest after a Congressional committee reported that he had inadvertently underpaid his 1969 and 1972 taxes.

Related Topics:
April 3 - 1974

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Cabinet

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Supreme Court appointments

Nixon appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

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• Warren E. Burger - Chief Justice - 1969
• Harry Andrew Blackmun - 1970
• Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr. - 1972
• William Rehnquist - 1972

Major initiatives

• Normalizing of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and partially abandoning the Republic of China on Taiwan as part of Realpolitik, a foreign policy eschewing moral considerations. In the short term Nixon was successful in playing the "China card" against the Soviet Union and its client state North Vietnam.
• Détente The beginning of the end of the cold war.
• Establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.
• Establishment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• Establishment of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
• Establishment of the Supplemental Security Income program.
• Establishment of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise
• Post Office Department abolished as a federal department and reorganized as the U.S Postal Service.
• SALT I, or Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, led to the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
• "Vietnamization": the slow withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam while dramatically increasing the scale of bombing.
• Release of the dollar from the fluctuating gold standard that had controlled its worth since the Bretton Woods Conference, allowing its value to float in world markets.
• Space Shuttle program started.