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It was at best a list of unmet challenges, at worst a catalogue of failure. The President has indeed ended U.S. involvement in the war and brought home the prisoners, but he has failed to realize most of his domestic goals. His price freeze has given way to Phase IV, and across the nation the cost of food and other commodities is soaring to record levels. The Department of Agriculture estimates that food prices will rise 20% this year; in New York City, the cost of groceries jumped an appalling 3.9% in the space of seven days (see THE ECONOMY).
In trying to put Watergate aside and get on with the nation's problems, Nixon may well be in tune with the country's mood. But that was not the same as restoring trust. As Senator Barry Goldwater put it, "In my opinion, he did not add anything that would tend to divert suspicion from him."
The President had spent long days in mulling over his line of attack. On Aug. 7 Nixon awoke at 2 a.m., took a notebook from his bedside table and wrote a six-page outline of the main points he wanted to make. That evening he sailed on the Potomac for two hours aboard the presidential yacht Sequoia with his favorite speechwriter, Raymond Price. The following day he asked his chief of staff, Alexander Haig, to poll the White House senior staff and others for their thoughts on what he should say and how he should say it. Suggestions ranged, as one staff member later described it, from "mea culpas to a two-fisted hard-line approach." But the consensus was that the speech should be "moderate, dignified, strong in adherence to principle and hopefully presidential in character." Nixon's legal advisers, J. Fred Buzhardt, Leonard Garment and Charles Alan Wright, went to work on a statement that was to be released simultaneously with the TV speech. The statement proved to be a slightly more detailed version of the speech but, unlike the President's May 22 statement on Watergate, contained few facts or legal arguments.