In 1968, the U.S. held it’s 46th presidential election. After former democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson won by a landslide in 1964. Winning 44 out of the 50 electoral votes. The highest percentage of votes since 1820. He managed to piss off enough Americans by getting more involved in Vietnam and losing thousands of young American men that he didn’t even attempt to run again in the next election.
So who came next? Richard Nixon, the Republican and Hubert Humphrey, the democrat. While the popular votes were only about 1,000,000 votes apart, Nixon won 301 of the electoral votes while Humphrey only won 191. Some of the main reasons Nixon won was because he lied…his lies and political deception may have won him the election but they caused him to lose it all in the end. He promised to restore “Law and Order” to the American society. He also said he would work on ending the war in Vietnam, which about 90% of Americans wanted at that time. Instead, Nixon not only sent more troops to Vietnam, he invaded Cambodia asking for 150,000 more men to be drafted.
This caused riots and protests across colleges and universities throughout the country. One of the climax events occurred in 1970 the Kent State tragedy where 900 national guardsmen were sent to a college campus to “control” a protest by the students about Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. Instead of controlling the protest, the guardsmen threw tear gas and opened fired into a crowd of students who were simply throwing rocks and screaming and gathering together in a mostly peaceful manner. Sure they burned down a building but shouldn’t that be taken up by a court? Not the military. Well they ended up killing four students and injuring nine more. One of which wasn’t even a protestor, just a student walking to class who got mixed up in all the chaos. Not very good shots I guess. Nixon later made a public apology about this tragedy…well thanks for saying sorry bud, but four kids are dead. So my opinion on Nixon was he was a sly crook who used slick tongue to trick Americans into thinking he’d do the right thing. Well at least he got caught in 1973 when he had 5 men break into the Democratic National Committee to steal and burn documents and take money from his opponents political fund. Not to mention he was caught wire tapping the phones in his offices and recording many conversations. Busted dude. He did not wait for his punishment, he resigned as president to avoid impeachment. But that’s only my opinion and a few facts. What do you think of president Nixon?
