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Nixon was mightily assisted by the disarray of the Democrats and their ghastly Chicago convention. With much of the nation grown weary of constant turmoil and incessant criticism from within, Nixon vowed that he would listen to "the voice of the great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans, the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators, that are not racists or sick, that are not guilty of the crime that plagues the land." It was a clear call to the great "Silent Majority."
For all its timeliness, it almost failed. Despite a deficit in the polls of nearly 15% at the outset of the campaign, despite the defection of blue-collar Democratic votes to George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey nearly closed the gap. Some analysts contend that he would have won if Lyndon Johnson, who was anything but helpful to his Vice President, had halted the bombing of North Viet Nam a few weeks, instead of a few days, before the campaign ended. As it was, Nixon became the 37th President of the United States by a bare seven-tenths of 1% of the popular vote. It was only slightly larger than the margin by which he had lost the presidency in 1960.
The Cause of Peace
From the first he was an almost reclusive President. He surrounded him self with a zealous, jealous palace guard and made himself virtually inaccessible to all but a handful of advisers. He had no fewer than nine separate offices to work — or hide — in. His contacts with Congress were infrequent and before long the White House and the Hill were at sword's point.
It quickly became clear that what Nixon most enjoyed was the plot and play of diplomacy. In his first Inaugural Address he said: "I shall consecrate my office, my energies and all the wisdom I can summon to the cause of peace among nations. After a period of confrontation, we are entering an era of negotiation."
His foreign policy accomplishments were remarkable, beginning with the stroke of good judgment in appointing Henry Kissinger his chief international adviser. Despite occasional flare-ups of imperial rhetoric, he and Kissinger in effect redefined America's role in the world. They saw that the U.S. no longer was able, as it had been in the essentially abnormal period of World War II and its aftermath, to solve problems singlehanded, to carry the globe on its shoulders. They considered the U.S. still the world's most powerful country, but one that would have to negotiate, operate and maneuver from more modest and more realistic assumptions.
The rapprochement with Peking was a bold reversal of a longstanding and ultimately unrealistic U.S. policy that recognized the isolated Chiang Kai-shek regime on Taiwan as the legitimate regime of China and treated the Chinese Communists, who had ruled the country since 1949, as a regime of out