RateItAll: The Opinion Network

I voted in this election and remember it well. George McGovern defeating Nixon in 1972? Yasser Arafat would have had a better chance being elected President of Israel.

This election wasn't much fun to follow. For one thing, Nixon had it wrapped up before it started, since his opponents had nominated the hysterically liberal McGovern. And as much as I detested McGovern's policies, I had to feel sympathy for him as he tried to get 7 or 8 different guys to run with him for V.P., finally having to settle for the ill-mannered Sargent Shriver. I remember hearing the first report of the Watergate break-in that morning in June, on my radio. I got a sickening feeling right then that the Press would do whatever it could to magnify it into a big scandal and use it to destroy Nixon. After all, they never could forgive Nixon for revealing the truth about Alger Hiss way back in the 1940s.

1972 was definitely Richard Nixon's year. It began with his breakthrough journey to China, where he sought to establish diplomatic relations with that country for the first time since the 1949 revolution. Detente was moving straight ahead with the Soviet Union. Nixon's foreign strategy was to relax tension with the two communist countries and then turn them against each other. In Vietnam, he was attempting to force the North Vietnamese into accepting a peace agreement while continuing to pursue the policy of Vietnamization which allowed for the South to continue the war while the US pulled out its troops, a popular move at the time. 2 days after Nixon was inaugurated for his second term, a cease fire between the US and the North was agreed to. On the domestic front there were some economic problems, but nothing like what would happen later in the 1970's. He put us off the gold standard by abrogating the Bretton Woods Agreement and imposed price and wage controls that in the long run hurt the economy, but it helped Nixon in 1972 because it artifically heated up the economy. Nixon was actually known for having a very progressive and expensive domestic agenda; government grew more under him than any other president. All of this combined to give Nixon a solid electoral victory unparalleled in American political history; he won 49 out 50 states and 61 percent of the popular vote. The size of the margin is attributable to the perception most people had that Nixon was very competent and capable and the Democratic opposition was too weak. Senator George McGovern ran a very weak campaign that was run by hippings and other people from the movement. The people who were thrown out of the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention were allow to select a president 4 years later. In 1972, the Democratic party was very divided and indeed a lot of Democrats joined Democrats for Nixon. McGovern was painted by Nixon's political operation as excessively liberal and McGovern didn't have the resources to fight back; granted he was excessively liberal! It would surprise most people that Nixon's large victory did not have any coattails; in other words, a lot of people voted for Nixon but then they went ahead and voted for the Democratic candidate. Nixon didn't run with the Republican party nor did he seek to establish cohesion between the election campaign and the other party candidates. As a result he won a big victory but he didn't take the House or the Senate from the Democrats. His snubbing of the Republican National Committee really didn't help his case when Watergate started to break. Because Nixon had stepped on so many toes within his own party, he didn't have so many people there to defend him in his time of trial. In politics, you need friends and allies; if you don't have them, then when the tough times come, no one will throw you a liferaft. That was one of the reasons why a president who was selected by 61% of the populace was thrown out of office.