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 Watergate 1973 (Part 24) A Ford not a Lincoln (Season Finale)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In our 1973 Enemies at the Gate season finale, we look at the explosive circumstances around the 2 missing calls and an 18 1/2 minute gap on one conversation in the tapes requested by the prosecutor's office. It sets the prosecutors off and the Judge does it all with the maximum of theatrics to insure the spotlight shines brightly on him, John J. Sirica. It will all set the stage for the contentious year to come in 1974.
At the sametime the appointment to the Vice Presidency sails through the Senate with a 97 - 3 vote to make Gerald R. Ford the 40th Vice President of the United States. We will sit in for the vote and hear the new Vice President address the nation. It is in this address he very humbly says to the nation "I am a Ford not a Lincoln". It is that humbleness that will serve Ford well over the next year as it becomes increasingly certain that he will end up President of the United States.
We wrap up 1973 with an address by President Richard Nixon as he lights the Washington D.C. Christmas Tree and tries once again to put the nation back on track. But 1973 turns out not to be the year the nation had hoped for after the long protracted war in Vietnam. The divisions caused by that war are now breaking apart the very administration that had been able to set us free from its poisonous effect.
But it appears that in 1974, Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, may end up its final casualty.
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