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
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The Richard Nixon Experience
RICHARD NIXON in Episode 218 JIMMY CARTER (Part 28) John Connally the Advisor to Presidents: With Richard Nixon (Show 6 : Listening in on the Tapes )
In this episode, we look back at John Connally's relationship to President Richard Nixon. In this episode we feature two calls, one just after Nixon was re-elected President when you see that Connally has enormous influence over the President. He is giving the President advice on how to conduct the second term and which changes he needs to consider making for that term.
In another call we listen as the men discuss an incident that had occured at the White House just the day before. President Nixon had invited the Ray Coniff Singers to perform for a reception honoring the publishers of the magazine "The Reader's Digest" (My Dad's favorite magazine) . Just as the program was about to begin one of the singers, Carol Firace , confronted the President and implored him to stop the bombing of Vietnam and for God to bless Daniel Ellsberg. Firace got kicked out of the event.
We will look back at that event, the young lady it involved, the news coverage, and how it became a significant protest event in the history of the White House. Then we will listen in to President Nixon and JOhn Connally as they discuss what had happened.
We hope that after these three episodes you will have a better feel as to what a major figure John Connally had been in the previous 20 years of political life in America, especially the Southwest. We hope you also can learn enough to make your own decision as to whether you think he would have tried to sabotage the Carter Administration.
