See also the preceding Category:Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson and the succeeding Category:Presidency of Gerald Ford
1. Presidency of Richard Nixon – He was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford, who had become vice president nine months earlier, following Spiro Agnews resignation from office. A Republican, Nixon took office after the 1968 presidential election, in which he defeated Hubert Humphrey, four years later, in 1972, Nixon won reelection in a landslide victory over George McGovern. Overall, he won 60. 7% of the popular vote, Nixon, the 37th United States president, succeeded Lyndon B. Johnson, who had launched the Great Society, a set of domestic programs financed, in contrast, Nixon advocated a New Federalism domestic program model, one in which certain powers would devolve back to the states. Nixons primary focus while in office was on foreign affairs, Nixon pursued a detente with the Peoples Republic of China, taking advantage of the Sino-Soviet split and significantly altering the nature of the Cold War. Nixons many accomplishments as president were however, largely overshadowed by the scandals that enveloped his administration, regarding his lasting legacy, historian Stephen Ambrose wrote, Nixon wanted to be judged by what he accomplished. What he will be remembered for is the nightmare he put the country through in his second term, Nixon was inaugurated as president on January 20,1969, sworn in by his onetime political rival, Chief Justice Earl Warren. Pat Nixon held the family Bibles open at Isaiah 2,4, which reads, They shall beat their swords into plowshares, in his inaugural address, which received almost uniformly positive reviews, Nixon remarked that the greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. Nixon made fifteen international trips during his presidency and his first was an eight-day European visit starting in Brussels on February 23,1969. He met with Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Wilson in London and Frances President Charles de Gaulle in Paris and he also stopped in Bonn, Berlin and Rome and met with Pope Paul VI in Vatican City. He also made groundbreaking trips to several Eastern European Communist nations, including, Romania, Yugoslavia, even those who hated Nixons presidency occasionally praise his work in China. The extent to which his visit had any consequences of note, however. Assisting him in this venture was his National Security Advisor and future Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, with whom the President worked closely, bypassing Cabinet officials. A breakthrough came in early 1971, when Chairman Mao invited a team of American table tennis players to visit China, Nixon followed up by sending Kissinger to China for clandestine meetings with Chinese officials. On July 15,1971, it was announced by Beijing. The secrecy allowed both sets of time to prepare the political climate in their countries for the contact. In February 1972, Nixon and his wife traveled to China, Kissinger briefed Nixon for over 40 hours in preparation. Upon touching down, the President and First Lady emerged from Air Force One, Nixon made a point of shaking Zhous hand, something which then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had refused to do in 1954 when the two met in Geneva
2. 1973 oil crisis – The 1973 oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo occurred in response to United States support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War, by the end of the embargo in March 1974, the price of oil had risen from US$3 per barrel to nearly $12 globally, US prices were significantly higher. The embargo caused an oil crisis, or shock, with many short- and long-term effects on global politics and it was later called the first oil shock, followed by the 1979 oil crisis, termed the second oil shock. The embargo was a response to American involvement in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, six days after Egypt and Syria launched a surprise military campaign against Israel, the US supplied Israel with arms. In response to this, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries announced an oil embargo against Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the crisis had a major impact on international relations and created a rift within NATO. Some European nations and Japan sought to disassociate themselves from United States foreign policy in the Middle East to avoid being targeted by the boycott, Arab oil producers linked any future policy changes to peace between the belligerents. To address this, the Nixon Administration began multilateral negotiations with the combatants and they arranged for Israel to pull back from the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. By January 18,1974, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had negotiated an Israeli troop withdrawal from parts of the Sinai Peninsula, the promise of a negotiated settlement between Israel and Syria was enough to convince Arab oil producers to lift the embargo in March 1974. The embargo occurred at a time of rising petroleum consumption by industrialized countries and coincided with an increase in oil imports by the worlds largest oil consumer. In the aftermath, targeted countries initiated a variety of policies to contain their future dependency. The 1973 oil price shock, with the accompanying 1973–74 stock market crash, was regarded as the first discrete event since the Great Depression to have a persistent effect on the US economy, the embargos success demonstrated Saudi Arabias diplomatic and economic power. It was the largest oil exporter and a politically and religiously conservative kingdom, in 1970, US oil production started to decline, exacerbating the embargos impact. Following this, Nixon named James E. Akins as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia to audit US production capacity, the confidential results were alarming—no spare capacity was available and production could only decrease. The oil embargo had little effect on supply, according to Akins. OPEC was organized to resist pressure by the Seven Sisters to reduce oil prices, at first, OPEC operated as an informal bargaining unit for resource-rich third-world countries. OPEC confined its activities to gaining a share of the profits generated by oil companies. In the early 1970s it began to exert economic and political strength, on August 15,1971, the United States unilaterally pulled out of the Bretton Woods Accord. The US abandoned the Gold Exchange Standard whereby the value of the dollar had been pegged to the price of gold and all other currencies were pegged to the dollar, shortly thereafter, Britain followed, floating the pound sterling
3. Space Race – The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union and the United States, for supremacy in spaceflight capability. The technological superiority required for such supremacy was seen as necessary for national security, the Space Race spawned pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, unmanned space probes of the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and to the Moon. The Soviet Union beat the US to this, with the October 4,1957 orbiting of Sputnik 1, the race peaked with the July 20,1969 US landing of the first humans on the Moon with Apollo 11. The USSR tried but failed manned lunar missions, and eventually cancelled them, the Space Race has left a legacy of Earth communications and weather satellites, and continuing human space presence on the International Space Station. It has also sparked increases in spending on education and research and development, the origins of the Space Race can be traced to Germany, beginning in the 1930s and continuing during World War II when Nazi Germany researched and built operational ballistic missiles. Wernher von Braun, a young engineering prodigy, was recruited by Becker and Dornberger to join their secret army program at Kummersdorf-West in 1932, von Braun dreamed of conquering outer space with rockets, and did not initially see the military value in missile technology. They led the team built the Aggregate-4 rocket, which became the first vehicle to reach outer space during its test flight program in 1942 and 1943. By 1943, Germany began mass-producing the A-4 as the Vergeltungswaffe 2 and its supersonic speed meant there was no defense against it, and radar detection provided little warning. Germany used the weapon to bombard southern England and parts of Allied-liberated western Europe from 1944 until 1945, after the war, the V-2 became the basis of early American and Soviet rocket designs. The United States also acquired a number of complete V2 rockets. The German rocket center in Peenemünde was located in the part of Germany. On Stalins orders, the Soviet Union sent its best rocket engineers to this region to see what they could salvage for future weapons systems, the Soviet rocket engineers were led by Sergei Korolev. He had been involved in clubs and early Soviet rocket design in the 1930s. After the war, he became the USSRs chief rocket and spacecraft engineer and his identity was kept a state secret throughout the Cold War, and he was identified publicly only as the Chief Designer. In the West, his name was officially revealed when he died in 1966. They were not allowed to participate in final Soviet missile design, with their help, particularly Helmut Gröttrups group, Korolev reverse-engineered the A-4 and built his own version of the rocket, the R-1, in 1948. Later, he developed his own designs, though many of these designs were influenced by the Gröttrup Groups G4-R10 design from 1949. The Germans were eventually repatriated in 1951–53 and he also started developing liquid-fueled rockets in 1921, yet he had not been taken seriously by the public
4. United States presidential election, 1968 – The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5,1968. The Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon, won the election over the Democratic nominee, analysts have argued the election of 1968 was a major realigning election as it permanently disrupted the New Deal Coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years. The 1968 Democratic National Convention was a scene of violent confrontations between police and anti-war protesters as the Democrats split into multiple factions, Richard Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore law and order to the nations cities and provide new leadership in the Vietnam War. A year later, he would popularize the term silent majority to describe those he viewed as being his target voters, Nixon won the popular vote by a narrow margin of 0.7 percentage points, but won easily in the Electoral College, 301–191. The election also featured a third party effort by former Alabama Governor George Wallace. He carried five states in the Deep South and ran well in some ethnic enclave industrial districts in the North. This was the first election after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and it was the last election in which New York had the most votes in the electoral college. After the 1970 census, California gained the most electoral votes and has remained the most populous state since then, in the election of 1964, incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson won the largest popular vote landslide in U. S. Presidential election history over Republican Barry Goldwater, despite making significant achievements, his popular support would be short-lived. At the same time, the country endured large-scale race riots in the streets of its cities, along with a generational revolt of young people. The most important reason for the decline of President Johnsons popularity was the Vietnam War. By late 1967, over 500,000 American soldiers were fighting in Vietnam, draftees made up 42 percent of the military in Vietnam, but suffered 58% of the casualties as nearly 1000 Americans a month were killed and many more were injured. Though a U. S. military victory, Tet led many Americans to ponder whether the war was winnable or worth it, in addition, voters felt they could not trust their governments assessment and reporting of the war effort. The Pentagon called for sending several hundred thousand soldiers to Vietnam. The Secret Service also prevented Johnson from appearing at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Vice President Hubert Humphrey Senator Robert F. Kennedy from New York Senator Eugene McCarthy from Minnesota Senator George McGovern from South Dakota President Lyndon B. As a result, it was assumed when 1968 began that President Johnson would run for another term. Despite growing opposition to Johnsons policies in Vietnam, it appeared that no prominent Democratic candidate would run against a president of his own party. Even Senator Robert F. Kennedy from New York, a critic of Johnsons policies with a large base of support
5. United States presidential election, 1972 – The United States presidential election of 1972, the 47th quadrennial presidential election was held on Tuesday, November 7,1972. Overall, he won 60. 7% of the popular vote, Johnson’s in 1964, but with a larger margin of victory in the popular vote, thus becoming the fourth largest in presidential election history. He received almost 18 million more votes than McGovern, the widest margin of any United States presidential election. McGovern only won the votes in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. It was also the first time that Hawaii was carried by a Republican, together with the House and Senate elections of 1972, it was the first electoral event in which people aged 18 to 20 could vote in every state, according to the provisions of the 26th Amendment. It was also the first election in which California had the most votes in the electoral college, furthermore, the presidential term of 1973–1977 is notable for being the only one in American history in which both the original President and Vice President fail to complete the term. Ultimately, the 1973–77 term would see two different Presidents and three different Vice Presidents, as of 2016, this is the last time Minnesota voted for the Republican candidate. Overall, fifteen people declared their candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination, mcCarthy, former Senator from Minnesota Henry M. C. The favorite for the Democratic nomination then became Senator Ed Muskie, Muskie’s momentum collapsed just prior to the New Hampshire primary, when the so-called Canuck letter was published in the Manchester Union-Leader. Subsequently, the published an attack on the character of Muskie’s wife Jane, reporting that she drank. Muskie made a defense of his wife in a speech outside the newspaper’s offices during a snowstorm. Nearly two years before the election, South Dakota Senator George McGovern entered the race as an anti-war, McGovern was able to pull together support from the anti-war movement and other grassroots support to win the nomination in a primary system he had played a significant part in designing. On January 25,1972, New York Representative Shirley Chisholm announced she would run, Hawaii Representative Patsy Mink also announced she would run and became the first Asian American to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. On April 25, George McGovern won the Massachusetts primary, once middle America – Catholic middle America, in particular – finds this out, he’s dead. ”The label stuck and McGovern became known as the candidate of amnesty, abortion, and acid. It became Humphrey’s battle cry to stop McGovern—especially in the Nebraska primary, alabama Governor George Wallace, an anti-integrationist, did well in the South and among alienated and dissatisfied voters in the North. What might have become a campaign was cut short when Wallace was shot in an assassination attempt by Arthur Bremer on May 15. Wallace was struck by five bullets and left paralyzed from the waist down, the day after the assassination attempt, Wallace won the Michigan and Maryland primaries, but the shooting effectively ended his campaign and he pulled out in July. In the end, McGovern won the nomination by winning primaries through grassroots support in spite of establishment opposition, McGovern had led a commission to re-design the Democratic nomination system after the divisive nomination struggle and convention of 1968
6. War on drugs – However, two years prior to this, Nixon had formally declared a war on drugs that would be directed toward eradication, interdiction, and incarceration. Today, the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for an end to the War on Drugs, oNDCPs view is that drug addiction is a disease that can be successfully prevented and treated. Making drugs more available will make it harder to keep our communities healthy, one of the alternatives that Kerlikowske has showcased is the drug policy of Sweden, which seeks to balance public health concerns with opposition to drug legalization. The prevalence rates for use in Sweden are barely one-fifth of those in Spain. The report was criticized by organizations that oppose a general legalization of drugs, the first U. S. law that restricted the distribution and use of certain drugs was the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. The first local laws came as early as 1860, in 1919, the United States passed the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, with exceptions for religious and medical use. In 1920, the United States passed the National Prohibition Act, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established in the United States Department of the Treasury by an act of June 14,1930. In 1933, the prohibition for alcohol was repealed by passage of the 21st Amendment. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt publicly supported the adoption of the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act, the New York Times used the headline Roosevelt Asks Narcotic War Aid. In 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed, several scholars have claimed that the goal was to destroy the hemp industry, largely as an effort of businessmen Andrew Mellon, Randolph Hearst, and the Du Pont family. These scholars argue that with the invention of the decorticator, hemp became a cheap substitute for the paper pulp that was used in the newspaper industry. These scholars believe that Hearst felt that this was a threat to his extensive timber holdings, however, there were circumstances that contradict these claims. One reason for doubts about those claims is that the new decorticators did not perform satisfactorily in commercial production. To produce fiber from hemp was a process if you include harvest, transport. Technological developments decreased the labor with hemp but not sufficient to eliminate this disadvantage, the Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies, the antiwar left and black people. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, did we know we were lying about the drugs. - John Ehrlichman, to Dan Baum for Harpers Magazine in 1994, about President Richard Nixons war on drugs, in 1973, the Drug Enforcement Administration was created to replace the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. The Nixon Administration also repealed the federal 2–10-year mandatory minimum sentences for possession of marijuana and started federal demand reduction programs and drug-treatment programs
7. Vietnam War – It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The war is considered a Cold War-era proxy war. As the war continued, the actions of the Viet Cong decreased as the role. U. S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, in the course of the war, the U. S. conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam and they viewed the conflict as a colonial war and a continuation of the First Indochina War against forces from France and later on the United States. The U. S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and this was part the domino theory of a wider containment policy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism. Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina, U. S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. Regular U. S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965, despite the Paris Peace Accord, which was signed by all parties in January 1973, the fighting continued. In the U. S. and the Western world, a large anti-Vietnam War movement developed as part of a larger counterculture, the war changed the dynamics between the Eastern and Western Blocs, and altered North–South relations. Direct U. S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973, the capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities, estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3.8 million. Some 240, 000–300,000 Cambodians,20, 000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U. S. service members died in the conflict. Various names have applied to the conflict. Vietnam War is the most commonly used name in English and it has also been called the Second Indochina War and the Vietnam Conflict. As there have been several conflicts in Indochina, this conflict is known by the names of its primary protagonists to distinguish it from others. In Vietnamese, the war is known as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ. It is also called Chiến tranh Việt Nam, France began its conquest of Indochina in the late 1850s, and completed pacification by 1893. The 1884 Treaty of Huế formed the basis for French colonial rule in Vietnam for the seven decades
8. Wilson desk – The Wilson desk is a large mahogany desk used by Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the Oval Office as their Oval Office desk. Nixon chose this desk for the Oval Office because of his belief that former President Woodrow Wilson had used it there. In 1971 Nixon had five recording devices secretly installed in the Wilson desk by the United States Secret Service and these recordings constitute some of the Watergate tapes. In actuality, the desk was never used by Woodrow Wilson in the Oval office, Nixon was informed by one of his speech writers, William Safire, that the desk was actually used by Vice President of the United States Henry Wilson during President Ulysses S. Grants administration. This also appears to be untrue, since the desk wasnt ordered until 1897 or later, the Wilson Desk appears to be a misnomer, as it has never been continuously used by anyone with the last name of Wilson. The Wilson desk is a desk built of mahogany. Its workspace is 58 1/4 inches by 80 3/4 inches and it is 31 inches high and it has drawers in both pedestals, and the knee-hole extends all the way through the desk. During its time in the White House a glass top was used on top of the desk and this sheet of glass covered the whole workspace of the desk. Someone at the White House noticed the marring of the desk and. When Nixon returned and saw what had been done he supposedly stated, I want to leave my mark on this place just like other Presidents. Garret Augustus Hobart, the 24th Vice President of the United States, while in office he purchased and ordered many lavish furnishing for the Vice Presidents Room of the United States Capitol, then the official office for the vice president. When Nixon became president the desk was placed on loan to the White House, Nixon took a liking to the desk during his terms as Vice President because he was under the incorrect impression that it was used by Woodrow Wilson during his term as President. During February 1971, Nixon had an audio recording system installed in the Wilson Desk. There were seven microphones in total installed in the Oval office, one on side of the fireplace. These microphones, as well as recording devices in the Cabinet Room were all wired to central mixers and recorders in an old room in the White House basement. Not long after April 9,1973 a switch was installed in the desk to allow Nixon to turn the microphones on, previously they turned on automatically whenever someone began talking. Throughout Nixons presidency he referred to the Wilson desk hundreds of times in official speeches, such as the Silent majority speech, during official White House tours, guides wrongly told of how Woodrow Wilson used the desk. This misconception was first discovered to be untrue by an assistant curator at the White House and this assistant curator came to yet another incorrect conclusion about who had previously used the desk
The "Statement on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs" was a speech delivered on November 25, 1969, …
Nixon delivered his statement from Fort Detrick, home of the One-Million-Liter Test Sphere, used for testing static aerosols of biological agent, pictured here in 1968
Stockpiled wheat stem rust (pictured) and other anti-crop agents were destroyed in 1973 as a result of Nixon's statement
The presidency of Richard Nixon began on January 20, 1969 when Richard Nixon was inaugurated as President of the United …
Senate Minority Leader Dirksen administering the oath of office to Agnew (left to right) : outgoing President Lyndon Johnson (the 37th Vice President), incoming President Richard Nixon (36th), Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, Spiro Agnew sworn in as Vice President (39th), and the outgoing Vice President Hubert Humphrey (38th), at inauguration, January 20, 1969.
The madman theory is a political theory commonly associated with U.S. President Richard Nixon's foreign policy. He and …
On Watch: A Memoir is one of two books written by U.S. Navy admiral Elmo Zumwalt. Published in 1976, it is largely a …
Zumwalt used his memoir to criticize the Nixon administration, which he felt was too accommodating to the Soviet Union.
Operation Sandwedge was a proposed clandestine intelligence-gathering operation against the political enemies of the …
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973 (Public Law 93–87; 87 Stat. 250) is legislation enacted by the United States …
The Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that promotes …