Most accounts of the collapse of Richard Nixon’s presidency begin with Watergate — the now iconic tale of a bungled break-in and the misbegotten cover-up that followed. But what led to Watergate? How — and more puzzlingly, why — did one of the shrewdest, most gifted political figures of his time become embroiled in so manifestly lunatic an enterprise in the first place? Intrigued by that question, writer/journalist Kurt Andersen takes a deep dive into the vast archives at the Nixon Library and emerges with an answer he wasn’t expecting: While Watergate doubtless accelerated Nixon’s spectacular fall, it was the Vietnam War that led inexorably to the break-in, and from there to the sinking of his presidency.
For Andersen, who came of age in the Vietnam era, that answer in turn begs another, larger question: How did Richard Nixon, with all his foreign policy savvy, allow himself to get trapped in the same quagmire he had watched engulf his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson? These questions are the central concerns of Nixon at War (http://nixonatwar.org). Over the course of seven episodes, Andersen peels back the onion and emerges with a new and deeper understanding of both the man and the war, and of the complex linkage between them.
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.
19 Jul 2021
S3 Ep 6 - Off the Rails
With the publication of the Pentagon Papers in June ’71, the demons that Richard Nixon has wrestled throughout his presidency – indeed, through much of his public life – begin to gain the upper hand. “The strain of office, and the belligerency of his enemies,” Nixon biographer Jack Farrell says, “have begun to unsettle the president, dispelling the ‘mellow’ Nixon of 1968 and unleashing the self-injurious behavior of old.” Kissinger and others assure the president that he has nothing to fear from the Pentagon Papers, and might even benefit from the unflattering light they will cast on his predecessors, but the act of publication of classified documents – thousands of pages worth -- rankles deeply. Very quickly, the president’s long festering paranoia and indignation zeroes in on two of his most despised “enemies” – the press, for publishing the government’s closely held secrets, and the leakers within his own deep state, now personified by Daniel Ellsberg, for the growing threat he believes they pose to his own buried secrets.
11 Jul 2021
S3 Ep 5 - Beginning of the End
In early February ’71, with pressure building at home to complete the withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, Nixon puts his Vietnamization program to a crucial and very public test. With the world watching, the South Vietnamese army launches an invasion into Laos, where they will engage a formidable North Vietnamese force. US air power will support the South, but for the first time they will be on their own on the ground. The test is a debacle: facing superior military forces, the South Vietnamese sustain heavy casualties and are quickly compelled to withdraw. Nixon and Kissinger spin the defeat as best they can, but privately, it is a moment of reckoning: after six years of war, South Vietnam shows little sign of being able to sustain the war without continuing US help. Through the spring, opposition to the war grows and spreads beyond the traditional leftist and student base. In April, Senator William Fulbright’s powerful Foreign Relations Committee hears testimony from a young vet by the name of John Kerry, representing a new force – Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Clearly, the tide is turning. Faced with a grim reality, Nixon and Kissinger recognize they must find a way to prop up South Vietnam at least long enough to avoid having it collapse before the ’72 election, now only a year away.
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