S3 Ep 7 - Tangled Web

Nixon at War

PRX

History

4.8 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the fall of 1971, Richard Nixon had reason to be optimistic. The long sought China Summit had just been announced, for the following year, to great (and deserved) acclaim. Vietnam, to be sure, remained an issue, but the continuing troop withdrawal had reduced its political drag at home. With his re-election campaign now looming, the polls showed him well out in front of the presumed Democratic front-runners.

But all this good news had little effect on Nixon’s deep-rooted obsession with a growing list of real and perceived adversaries at home. And so, even as the war in Vietnam slowly abated, the war at home only escalated and expanded, against liberals, anti-war activists, Jews, East Coast elites – anyone perceived, however remotely, as a threat to his presidency. “Lashing out was Nixon’s nature,” Jack Farrell tells Kurt Andersen. “His actions were reflexive, heedless of the peril” which lay ahead, and which would ultimately drive him from office.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I just start right at the top and fire some people.
0:04.3	The best politician of all is Nixon.
0:06.9	But boy, when you get in tight and close and he's under attack.
0:10.4	President Nixon heard today, the voice of the campus in a massive appeal.
0:14.6	He was known as the Madman theory.
0:16.3	Make those North Vietnamese think that he was just crazy.
0:18.9	Here was a fellow who seven years before was the biggest loser in American politics.
0:22.6	Astonishing.
0:24.6	It was a textbook or how to damage our democracy.
0:28.6	I have Dr. Kissinger calling you.
0:29.6	Nixon was a paranoid.
0:31.6	Everybody was told a different story.
0:32.6	Mr. President, you are saving this country.
0:34.6	I thought this is really what he means, and he's the president.
0:38.4	It was a very intense time.
0:42.0	From PRX, this is Nixon at war.
0:46.8	In 1971, the war in Vietnam was still going on.
0:51.4	But to Nixon and Kissinger, it was now a chronic annoyance that they were managing,
0:58.5	finally offloading. They saw Vietnam as an irrelevant backwater. Nixon biographer John Farrell.
1:06.2	Not terribly important to any United States strategic interests, except for the fact that we had to get
1:12.0	out there with a modicum of respect, with some flags flying, with some prestige intact, so that
1:18.5	we could continue to be a superpower elsewhere around the globe.
	...

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