And grew up in a lower middleclass family in california. He went to the local college, whittier college. And went to Duke University law school in the worst years of the great depression. The second world war, he joined the u. S. Navy. You can see the photo of nixon as a young navy officer. He served with distinction in the pacific, getting the right equipment to the right place at the right time and was given a series of commendations by his commanders. He was also a very talented offr player turn on his hours and he had a great ability to bluff. That is a valuable quality and someone undertaking Foreign Policy at a high level. Been46 after he had demobilized from the navy, nixon ran for congress. You can see the poster from his first election campaign. Ii veteransld war were elected into congress and the senate. Was nixon, one was john f. Kennedy. One was joe mccarthy. Career,arly political nixon rose very rapidly through the ranks. He was an odd anticommunist. He worked very hard to
Emory university provided this video. Prof. Allitt todays class is about president Richard Nixon and his National Security advisor, Henry Kissinger. In some ways, nixon is one of the most brilliant people ever to occupy the white house and had incredible political gifts. And on the other hand, hes one of the worst people to ever occupy the white house because he had a broad streak of paranoia. He was mistrustful, sometimes against the instruments of government like the state department. In the end, ruined himself by bringing about his own catastrophic downfall in the watergate scandal of 19721974. We are going to look at the good and the bad side of the nixon presidency and nixons partnership with National Security advisor kissinger. Im going to share the screen so we could look at powerpoint pictures as we go through the sequence. First of all, here is president nixon himself. He had been born in 1913. In whittier, california. He grew up in a lower middleclass family in california. He
Print things and publish things. It is not a freedom for what we now refer to institutionally as the press. Lectures in history on American History tv on cspan3. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lecture s in history is always available as podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. This week on q a, president ial historian Richard Norton smith discusses his book, an uncommon man, the triumph of Herbert Hoover. Richard smith, why kdid you call your book you wrote 35 years ago, uncommon man . Its taken from the title of a relatively famous hoover speech about the uncommon man. You remember Vice President henry wallace, who was the second of fdrs Vice President s, gave a famous speech in 1942, maybe 43, about the common man. And wallace, from the left of center, perspective, was projecting in effect the goals and am birgss of the generation that was fighting world war ii. It wasnt enough to simply beat the nadzis, but to create at home, a true democracy. A place where the common m
Captioning performed by vitac its a spy story, its a humanitarian story, its a political and diplomatic story. Hoover was not very diplomatic by nature. The interesting thing is lou said later on that he was never the same after belgium. What he saw particularly the children. Remember, he was an orphan. All his life, there was something about hoover, he was not naturally gifted in social interaction. But with children, there was a different person. And belgium stamped him, for better or worse. The other remarkable thing again, building on what we said earlier, it was all voluntary. He appealed to the American People. He said, again, the American People, if you tell them what you need, they will give you their shirt off their backs. And there is a you go to west branch, the records are there. It is its a remarkable story there was one group, i think there was a kansas club of new york, who were going to build a clubhouse. And instead of building the clubhouse, they gave hoover the 500,0
Richard norton smith, why did you call your book that you wrote 35 years ago uncommon man . Well, its taken, actually, from the title of a relatively famous hoover speech about the uncommon man. Remember, Vice President henry wallace, who was the second of fdrs Vice President s, gave a famous speech in 1942, i believe, maybe43, about the century of the common man. And wallace, from a left of center perspective, was projecting, in effect, the goals and ambitions of the generation that was fighting world war ii. And it wasnt enough simply to defeat the nazis, but to create at home a true democracy. A place where the common man would finally come into his own. And hoover approached this from a different place on the political spectrum. He was, in effect, making the case for what we might call a meritocracy. But something to say, that i shouldnt paraphrase it, but, you know, when you get sick, you want an uncommonly skillful doctor. When we go to war, we want an uncommonly able general. Yo