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Nixon remains a tempting target for satiric attack, such as Novelist Philip Roth's scatological book Our Gang, about the insane career of President Trick E. Dixon, and the Emile de Antonio movie, Millhouse, in which Nixon newsreels old and new are played in counterpoint. Yet this type of thing has been done to Nixon for so long that a certain fatigue set in; unless he provides a great deal of fresh ammunition, Nixon-hating will become a bore. If he still has a problem inspiring complete trust, it is no longer a simple matter of the old Tricky Dick image. He is still suspected of timing his major moves for political advantage, but perhaps not much more so than most other Presidents.
Even as the President threw his own energies into world affairs, the problems at home continued to cry out for attention and a further reallocation of national resources. The so-called Nixon Doctrine proclaimed at Guam aimed at reducing other nations' dependence on the U.S. for maintaining peace abroad, and his exaggerated protectionist trade posture immediately after the freeze contributed for a time to the introspective mood. The Senate's initial rejection of the Administration's foreign aid authorization bill symbolized the national detachment, though stopgap funding was finally voted. The President continued to brood about this apparent trend toward isolationism. He was worried that the mood might become permanent in the national revulsion over the Viet Nam conflict.
Overall, concludes TIME Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey, "it was a singular journey through the twelve months of 1971. His style is one of sheer doggedness. He outlasts the street people, the park preachers, the student revolutionaries, the Senate critics. He just stays in there, ducking, weaving, changing when the pressure gets too bad. Yet there was something about his presidency that nudged the country along and raised hopes, set the stage for a change in mood in international affairs and headed the economy off in a new direction."
The President's extraordinary year encompassed four major areas of activity:
I: THE WAR
Even on Viet Nam the President's performance in 1971 was a surprise — because of what he did not do. Repeatedly, the advance billing of his announcements on troop withdrawals fed speculation that he was about to pull U.S. soldiers out at a dramatic rate or specify a date for the total end of U.S. involvement. Yet each statement revealed only a slowly accelerating withdrawal timetable. From its high point at the time of the Cambodia invasion and the killing of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent State in the spring of 1970, the antiwar movement had faded.
But with the U.S.-supported invasion of Laos in February and March of 1971, it briefly threatened to regain its fervor.
Even the White House conceded that the sight of South Vietnamese soldiers clinging to the skids of helicopters in flight from Laos had turned its claims of a military success into a "public relations disaster." Whether the Laos incursion was worth it may remain one of the many unanswered questions of the war; the Administration still insists that it helped take the pressure off Saigon and reduce the level of fighting within South Viet Nam. In April some 200,000 protesters massed peacefully in Washington. At the same time, one of the