The Richard Nixon Experience
It has been 50 years since the Administration of Richard Nixon. In that time, the left has waged a war on history to define Richard Nixon as a failure as President. For much of the half century Richard Nixon's name was synonymous with corruption and Government overreach. Podcasts, Documentaries, Cable Network specials have all controlled a narrative that cast Richard Nixon as the 20th centuries great American Villain.
But all of that has changed. First in 2013, Geoff Shepard, Richard Nixon's youngest Watergate Defense team member, petitioned the National Archives for access to sealed Watergate materials. What he found was a treasure of exculpatory material that has sent shock waves throughout the world of serious historians and legal scholars. Was there more to the story of Watergate? The documentation he exposed certainly seems to say so and that is not the only area where scholars are finding that there was way more to Richard Nixon's tenure than had ever been appreciated.
Richard Nixon worked to protect civil rights, advance women in government, protect the environment, set new higher standards for workforce safety, share revenues with local government, restructure the inner workings of the Federal Government, with plans to make it work more efficiently and more effectively and he even worked to provide a better healthcare and welfare system some 40 years ahead of his time. He opened up women's sports, lowered the voting age, ushered in an era of Judicial restraint, desegregated the Southern School system, poured millions into entrepreneurial programs for minorities, passed tough laws on organized crime, ended the draft and passed billions of dollars into cancer research that has led to most of the advances against the wide variety of deadly diseases we see today.
And that list does not even get into the Foreign Policy achievements we associate with his incredible five and a half years as President.
We thought it was time to tell that story and over the next year and half we will tell that story on this podcast. The story of the experience of a nation, at war in Vietnam, and often under siege, and at war with itself, here at home. An experience that created a great gash in the body politic that we are still healing from today. It is the story of the man who saved our Union from the growing disaster an upheaval experienced in this era.
The story of the experience of a nation as it wrestled with titanic changes in culture, the experience of a nation ripped from its foundations, and the experience of the historic leader that set that nation back on course to its rightful place as the beacon of light for freedom and prosperity to a troubled world . The experience of the late 1960's and early 1970's, the experience of the most divisive era in American history, other than the Civil War, the experience of the United States of America and the leader who fixed it all.
Welcome to "The Richard Nixon Experience" Podcast
(FAIR USE NOTICE : This presentation contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The use of this footage is for educational and historical commentary. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material.)
The Richard Nixon Experience
RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE, 1974 THE FALL ( Part 4 ) The House Judiciary Committee Begins the Impeachment Hearings
In this episode we cover the opening day of the Impeachment Hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. We listen to staffers of the committee and a couple of the committee members as they discuss the way the committee operated and the issues they faced as they moved forward to really look at the events. You will also hear from the members of a quiet coalition of southern Democrats all of whom are struggling between their feelings of loyalty to both a President and a constituency that is counting on them to do the right thing, and the overwhelming nature of the evidence that is in front of them. This evidence totally coming from two sources, the Senate Watergate Committee staffed with partisan Democrats put together by Senator Ted Kennedy's office, and the Rabid Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office.
None of those facts was known at the time this debate raged by this set of politicians tasked with making the final judgement as to whether to impeach the President
As all of this pressure continues to build we will look into the toll it is taking on the President's mental health. Just how well was Richard Nixon coping with the disintegration of his Administration. There are various rumors circulating that it was not to well. Yet, other staffers such as Alexander Haig and Ray Price take issue with those reports. We will hear from various people who witnessed the President up-close as all of this was unfolding.
Then we close out the episode hearing from the man himself, President Richard Nixon. In 1983, just nine years after these events transpired, then Former President Richard Nixon sat down with his former staffer Frank Gannon for an in-depth, non adversarial, much more relaxed, set of interviews. We will be sharing portions from those interviews in our remaining broadcasts. They will provide you with some extraordinary insights from what the President was thinking in these final months of his administration.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
BOB DOLE : The Life that Brought Him There
Randal Wallace