RICHARD NIXON 1972 The Foundation of Peace (Part 17) Closing in on Victory (Part 1) The 1972 Campaign and Vietnam

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The 1972 conventions are over and the candidates hit the campaign trail. It is a year where major events seem to be happening every time you turn your head around.  President Nixon has a commanding 26 point lead in most national polls and he is in hot pursuit of not only a victory at the polls in November but also a successful end to the war in Vietnam, a peace with honor.
 
It is in the last half of 1972 that a high stakes game of International intrigue is being played to finally get the United States out of its longest and most divisive foreign conflict  but it is also a time period where a third rate burglary would begin slow festering a political cancer on the body politic that will change everything for the nation and sew the seeds of inner division that has never healed to this day.

In this episode we will listen in as President Nixon works for peace in Vietnam while on the phones with both his National Security Advisor  Henry Kissinger and his top aid General Alexander Haig. You will hear the President voice his frustration at the treatment of his wife at the hands of a press corp that rarely could find anything good to say about him or his administration. Plus you will hear his opponent both on the campaign trail an in an oral history nearly 40 years later.  This episode begins a long march toward the end of Vietnam, a peace in Southeast Asia, a 49 State re-election and a slow burning scandal that would eventually bring down the President.

This episode marks the beginning of our use of a treasure of tapes that show Richard Nixon at his finest. Listen closely because it will change everything you thought you knew about this extraordinary man.