3. Nixon’s the One, 1968

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about Nixon’s victory in the 1968 presidential election, focusing in particular on: (i) Nixon’s political prospect following his defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial election; (ii) the growing unpopularity of President Lyndon B. Johnson from the mid-1960s onwards, especially as he escalated the American commitment to Vietnam; (iii) the stark difference between the optimism felt at the beginning of the decade and the cynicism and confusion that characterised its end; (iv) Nixon’s responses to the two great issues of the day: Vietnam and civil rights; and (v) the basic similarity in the political beliefs of Nixon and Kennedy.

Course

In this course, Dr Kevin Yuill (University of Sunderland) explores the presidency of Richard Nixon, 1969-74. In the first module, we think about the incident for which Nixon is best known and which dominated his final year in office – the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation on 9 August 1974. After that, in the second module, we go back to the beginning of the story and trace Nixon’s rise to power between from his childhood in Yorba Linda, California to his losses in the 1960 presidential election and 1962 California gubernatorial election. in the third module, we continue the story up to Nixon’s victory in the 1968 presidential election, before turning in the fourth and fifth modules to Nixon’s time in the White House.

Lecturer

Dr Kevin Yuill is Associate Professor of American History at the University of Sunderland. His primary interests are in the intellectual history of the United States, particularly race and equality in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, attitudes to suicide and death, and attitudes to the possession of firearms. His recent publications include (as co-author) The Second Amendment and Gun Control: Freedom, Fear, and the American Constitution (2017) and Assisted Suicide: the Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalization (2013).