The Mysteries of History (May 9 Edition)
Nixon Meets Protesters
1970 — Nixon Meets War Protesters
public domain image from wikimedia commons
Following the Kent State National Guard murders reported here, U.S. President Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon (1913-1994) couldn’t sleep one night, and so early in the morning the next day, on May 9, 1970, ended up rousing his valet and taking along a contingent of Secret Service Agents to personally meet with Vietnam War protesters who were camped out at the National Mall near the Lincoln Memorial there in Washington, D.C.
Nixon’s view of the interchange with the protesters differed from their perspective of it. Nixon claimed that he had them in his thrall and that their conversation was civil. According to his account, Nixon started off by telling them: “I know probably most of you think I'm an SOB. But I want you to know that I understand just how you feel.”
The student protesters view of the impromptu gabfest was that he spoke in non-sequiturs and flawed English (“As far as sentence structure, there was none,” one of them said).
The hawkish Nixon and the dovish students explained their viewpoints to each other for over an hour, neither side convincing or converting the other.
Harry Robbins “H.R.” (aka “Bob”) Haldeman (1926-1993), Nixon’s chief of staff, concurred with the students’ dismay at what Nixon chose to speak about and how he spoke. Haldeman reported to his diary: “I am concerned about his condition ... He has had very little sleep for a long time and his judgment, temper and mood suffer badly as a result.”
Questions: Does this account about Nixon change your opinion of him in any way? How far along the insanity spectrum would you place Nixon (none of us are completely sane, and are somewhere on the spectrum). Were you alive during the Nixon presidency? If so, on a scale of -1 to 17, how shocked were you when the Watergate scandal “broke” (with -1 being not shocked at all, believing all politicians to be corrupt and rotten to the core, and 17 being shocked out of your skull because you thought politicians were “knights in shining armor”)?
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