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 12 ) The Public Debate on the Impeachment of Richard Nixon
This episode opens with President Richard Nixon's March 1974 visit to the Grand Ole Opry. Nixon was there to open the brand new Opry House on its first night after moving from downtown Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. It is a symbol of the one section of the country that never wavered, as President Nixon's problems mounted. In the South, we don't cut and run, especially when it is a President that stood strong during war time as this President had done.
Unfortunately, the public support was not translating to the Judiciary Committee's three influential Democratic Congressmen Representatives Walter Flowers of Alabama, Ray Thornton of Arkansas, and Jim Mann of my home state of South Carolina. They were moving toward impeachment, undercutting the President's support in their states delegations. President Nixon sensing the momentum shifting away from him, reached out to Governor George Wallace of Alabama to see if he could not help him sway Walter Flowers, when Wallace refused, it was the moment President Nixon knew this fight was lost. He would lose the southern firewall that stood between himself and Impeachment.
The President was also having trouble holding his Republicans together as Representatives William Cohen, Tom Railsback, W. Caldwell Butler, and Lawrence Hogan had decided to side with the democrats. As we listen in on the debate in this episode, you will hear these men, as some struggle to vote their conscience, and some make their decision in matter of fact fashion. You will get to hear the moments of high drama and one speech that has been an enormous part of the history of the moment from Representative Barbara Jordan of Texas. Jordan's speech contained many charges, most notably was that of Howard Hunt faking cables to embarrass the Kennedy Administration and involvement in the overthrow of the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.
While that charge of Hunt faking cables tying Kennedy personally to the assassination of Diem was faked, it was faked by a man who, as a member of the CIA, had seen the real ones that had tied Kennedy to the overthrow of the Diem Government. A fact hidden from the public and Barbara Jorden for years afterwards. This is but one of many examples of charges made that with time, unsealed documents, and an explosive set of Church Hearings in the United States Senate would later be proven untrue.
All to late for Watergate and Richard Nixon.
But the President did have defenders, Representatives Charlie Wiggins of California and Charlie Sandman of New Jersey. The case they made has, in reality, stood the test of time and you will hear it in this episode too. Plus we will dismantle the mythology of the Watergate debate that the defense case was dismantled by a hearing full of specific accusations concerning the President that overwhelmed his defenders and that President Nixon's attorney, James St. Claire, was actually able to perform a real defense of the President.
Neither was true and you will hear it here for yourself.
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