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Nixon at War

PRX

Most accounts of the collapse of Richard Nixon’s presidency begin with Watergate — the now iconic tale of a bungled break-in and the misbegotten cover-up that followed.  But what led to Watergate?  How — and more puzzlingly, why — did one of the shrewdest, most gifted political figures of his time become embroiled in so manifestly lunatic an enterprise in the first place?  Intrigued by that question, writer/journalist Kurt Andersen takes a deep dive into the vast archives at the Nixon Library and emerges with an answer he wasn’t expecting: While Watergate doubtless accelerated Nixon’s spectacular fall, it was the Vietnam War that led inexorably to the break-in, and from there to the sinking of his presidency.For Andersen, who came of age in the Vietnam era, that answer in turn begs another, larger question: How did Richard Nixon, with all his foreign policy savvy, allow himself to get trapped in the same quagmire he had watched engulf his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson? These questions are the central concerns of Nixon at War.  Over the course of seven episodes, Andersen peels back the onion and emerges with a new and deeper understanding of both the man and the war, and of the complex linkage between them.

© Public Radio International. All rights reserved.

Most accounts of the collapse of Richard Nixon’s presidency begin with Watergate — the now iconic tale of a bungled break-in and the misbegotten cover-up that followed.  But what led to Watergate?  How — and more puzzlingly, why — did one of the shrewdest, most gifted political figures of his time become embroiled in so manifestly lunatic an enterprise in the first place?  Intrigued by that question, writer/journalist Kurt Andersen takes a deep dive into the vast archives at the Nixon Library and emerges with an answer he wasn’t expecting: While Watergate doubtless accelerated Nixon’s spectacular fall, it was the Vietnam War that led inexorably to the break-in, and from there to the sinking of his presidency.For Andersen, who came of age in the Vietnam era, that answer in turn begs another, larger question: How did Richard Nixon, with all his foreign policy savvy, allow himself to get trapped in the same quagmire he had watched engulf his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson? These questions are the central concerns of Nixon at War.  Over the course of seven episodes, Andersen peels back the onion and emerges with a new and deeper understanding of both the man and the war, and of the complex linkage between them.

© Public Radio International. All rights reserved.
12hr 25min
Thumbnail for "S2 Ep 7 - Post Script".
Historians reflect, 50 years later, on LBJ's Great Society and its long term impact on American life and politics.
Thumbnail for "S3 Ep 7 - Tangled Web".
“We’re not going to let this miserable little country destroy two presidents.” - Nixon to Henry Kissinger
Thumbnail for "S3 Ep 6 - Off the Rails".
"Somebody’s got to go to jail for this. That’s all there is to it." - Nixon to H.R. Haldeman
Thumbnail for "S3 Ep 5 - Beginning of the End".
“We can’t have [South Vietnam] knocked over before the election.” - Henry Kissinger, to Nixon
Thumbnail for "S3 Ep 4 - Searchlight on the Lawn".
"Don't worry about due process. These people have broken the law." -- Richard Nixon to aide H.R. Haldeman
Thumbnail for "S3 Ep 3 - Sideshow".
In the fall of 1969, with the anti-war movement newly mobilized and gaining traction across the country, President Nixon appeals to his base, and coins a new phrase — The Silent Majority.
Thumbnail for "S3 Ep 2 - Madame Chennault".
What won't Nixon do to win in the election in 1968?
Thumbnail for "S3 Ep 1 - October Surprise".
The release of the Pentagon Papers in June 1971 makes Nixon wonder what other secrets the press might uncover...
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From PRX, a fresh, provocative telling of the story of the Vietnam War and the president who oversaw its ugly end
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A look back at the legacy of the Great Society as a case study in what government can do, and what it can’t or shouldn’t.
Thumbnail for "S2 Ep 5 - Give Us the Ballot".
Why and how Johnson prevailed, where so many before him had failed, in passing the Voting Rights Act.
Thumbnail for "S2 Ep 4 - Medicine Man".
LBJ wants universal health care for older Americans, but the country’s doctors have killed every earlier attempt to pass it, and mean to kill this one as well.
Thumbnail for "S2 Ep 3 - The Bully Pulpit".
Johnson takes his anti-poverty case to the Congress and the country.
Thumbnail for "S2 Ep 2 - Mr. Poverty".
LBJ goes to war…on poverty.
Thumbnail for "S2 Ep 1 - The Great Unveiling".
To the country’s surprise, the little known Texan thrust suddenly into the Oval Office proves up to the task.
Thumbnail for "Trailer - Welcome to LBJ and the Great Society".
History, told by those who were there and had a hand in its making. Subscribe now to listen to the first episode on February 4th!
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Lyndon Johnson's March '68 announcement, that he would not seek re-election, stunned the nation and the world, and marked the effective end of a political career that had once seemed bound for Rushmore-level greatness. This special, long-form edition...
Thumbnail for "S1 Ep 6 LBJ's War - The Shock of Tet".
“Whammo, we got caught with our pants down,” a CIA analyst says of the Tet Offensive, the massive surprise attack that North Vietnam launched against American and South Vietnamese forces in the pre-dawn hours of January 31st, 1968. Just what...
Thumbnail for "S1 Ep 5 LBJ's War - The Preacher and the President".
“I’ll try to be worthy of your hopes,” LBJ told Martin Luther King, just days into his presidency, and for the next two years, largely made good on that vow. Dr. King, for his part, recognized their common goal – racial and economic justice...
Thumbnail for "S1 Ep 4 LBJ's War - Parting the Curtains".
For fifteen months, LBJ kept the country largely in the dark about the Vietnam War. Then, in February ’66, the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and its chairman William Fulbright, administered a strong dose of sunlight.
Thumbnail for "S1 Ep 3 LBJ's War - The Carrot and the Stick".
By the spring of 1965, pressure is building on President Johnson to make his case for the war to the American electorate. He resists, preferring to manage the conflict without public scrutiny, but finally agrees to go public,...
Thumbnail for "S1 Ep 2 LBJ's War - The Tonkin Incident(s)".
Twice in six weeks, in the late summer of 1964, U.S. destroyers reported they were under unprovoked attack, by North Vietnamese PT boats, while on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin. The first incident produced a massive airstrike...
Thumbnail for "S1 Ep. 1 LBJ's War - The Churchill of Asia".
“They started with me on Diem,” LBJ told an old friend, “that he was corrupt, and he ought to be killed. So, we killed him.”  Not quite true, it turns out, but the brutal assassination of South Vietnam’s...
Thumbnail for "Trailer - Welcome to LBJ’s War".
LBJ’s War is a podcast that tells the story of LBJ's fall from grace in the voices of those who were there. Subscribe now to listen to the premier on September 9!

S2 Ep 7 - Post Script

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March 17, 202053min 11sec

So what do historians think, fifty years out, about LBJ’s Great Society and its long term impact on American life and politics?  In early February, series correspondent Melody Barnes put that question to three distinguished scholars, gathered before a live audience at the Miller Center for Presidential Studies, at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  Their perspectives are a thoughtful summing up of the Johnson Years, and a good place, we think, to close out this podcast series.  The panelists: Kevin Gaines, the Julian Bond Professor of Civil Rights and Social Justice at the University of Virginia; Guian McKee, associate professor in Presidential Studies at the Miller Center; and Julian Zelizer, Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University.  Our thanks to them for their insights, and to you our listeners for your interest.