richard nixon

Our Season 3 Premier and the first in our NIXON and WATERGATE series:

This season opens just as the Vietnam War ends for America. Even as the treaty is signed there are still last minute maneuverings that President Nixon and Henry Kissinger have to deal with in order to get our Prisoners of War out of Vietnam. You will listen in on the discussions between the President and his speech writer Ray Price and then Dr. Henry Kissinger as the war finally comes to an end. 

Then we will listen to the memories of the brave soldiers of that war and the ordeals they suffered through as Prisoners of War in the Hanoi Hilton. The most famous of which, the future Senator from Arizona, John McCain, recounts his years in the prison and the moment that the Vietnamese almost broke his indominable spirit. You will hear several other soldiers tell their stories as well.

Then we will shift gears to the burgeoning scandal that would soon dominate the Nixon Administration, Watergate. You will hear ABC News set the stage for the coming sentencing of the Watergate burglary defendants and we will be introduced to a cast of characters from G. Gordon Liddy, to Judge Sirica to future Chairman of the Watergate Committee in the Senate Sam Irvin of North Carolina. 

In this episode we will also meet Geoff Shepard, the last living defense Attorney for Richard Nixon, he had been a mid level employee, and White House Fellow , there working on policy. He would move up to being Nixon Attorney Fred Buzhardt's right hand man.  He will play a major role in the telling of our story on "Bridging the Political Gap" over the next three seasons. 

You can read up on Mr. Shepard and get copies of his three landmark books at his website:

 https://shepardonwatergate.com/

 and starting with this episode you will hear excerpts from his extraordinary  podcasts with the Nixon Foundation and its then President Hugh Hewitt titled "Known Unknowns" , here is a link to the first episode and you can then go from there to the rest. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWxWKSK0cmc 

We will be using a lot of these conversations throughout our series on Watergate over the next three seasons

Finally our show will then return to the POW's as they are released and we get to hear their stories of returning, finally, home. 

It remains perhaps the true high point of one of the greatest Presidencies in all of American History, the Presidency of Richard Nixon. 

In this episode we look back at the early career of George H. W. Bush, as we review his father's term in the United States Senate, his own race for the U.S. Senate against Senator Ralph Yarborough, his time in the U.S. House of Representatives, and his defeat at the hands of Lloyd Bentsen in 1968. All this from a comprehensive report by NBC News with Brian Williams that gives a great overview of the former President's career. 

We will then follow NBC News' Brian Williams  to the look at the help and connections that Bush received from  President Richard Nixon. Nixon had been a friend of Bush's father , Senator Prescott Bush, who was an old golfing buddy of President Dwight Eisenhower. That connection and Nixon's need to elevate the defeated Republican from Texas as cover in order to also place the former Democratic Governor, John Connally, in as the Treasury Secretary, led to the door opening for George Bush to become the Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. It would be in that role that George Bush would shine and see his star finally begin to rise in Republican circles. 

It will be here that we begin to let you listen in to the interaction between the new Ambassador and his benefactor, President Richard Nixon. We will insert into the report full conversations between Nixon and Bush as they discuss issues in the United Nations and positions the President wants Bush to pursue.  One you will get to listen into is the work Bush did in the UN to help Pakistan as it was invaded by the Indians in 1971. It is a fascinating look behind the scenes of American Foreign Policy concerning one of the most dangerous regions of the world both then and now, the border between India and Pakistan. 

You will also again get to listen in as President Nixon moves Kansas Senator Bob Dole out as the Chairman of the Republican Party in order to move George H. W. Bush in after the historic landslide victory of the President by the largest margin in history, a 49 state landslide. But the job won't turn out to be as good as it seemed as Watergate would soon overwhelm the President and put George Bush in as unenviable a position as could possibly be imagined. Then we bring you through the Ford years and the eve of Bush's run for the Presidency in 1980.

Finally our episode will conclude with an interview of George H. W. Bush conducted in 1999 with C-Span's Brian Lamb where the former President discusses these years and his own relationship with former President Richard Nixon, (though this interview was conducted long before we knew so much about the wrongs done to Nixon by the WSPF) It is a fascinating look at the relationship between Bush and the man who made his subsequent career possible, Richard Nixon. 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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In this special edition we will examine the recently declassified letter written by former President Richard Nixon to President Bill Clinton just after his two week trip to Russia and Europe. In the letter Richard Nixon gives the young President a thorough examination of what he thinks is happening in Russia, Ukraine and in Europe. In it he stresses the importance in helping Russia preserve its new found freedoms and helping it get on its feet economically and he discusses the dire consequences that could happen if we fail. 

It reads as though a psychic wrote it. It is a powerful letter and it was appreciated at the time by President Clinton and it is even more appreciated today. It really puts on display the brilliance of our former President and a man who ranks among our greatest American leaders in the history of the Republic. Here is a fine example, bold, strategic, insightful and full of visionary advice, as to why that latter statement is true. 

Our ad for our sister podcast "The Richard Nixon Experience" 

We have repackaged our Richard Nixon sections on Vietnam and his Administration and our Landmark  Docuseries on Watergate into an overall Docuseries Rebroadcast that will air over the next year to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the end of the Nixon Administration. 

The episodes are still available here on our back catalogue as well. 

The Richard Nixon Experience is available at wherever you get your podcasts. 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1532626 

Questions or comments at , Randalrgw1@aol.com , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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This episode opens in the final two days of the 1968 campaign as the election polls  have tightened to an even race. Vice President Hubert Humphrey has made up enormous ground and with the announced bombing halt of North Vietnam it looks like all the momentum is with him. Here you see both Humphrey and former Vice President Richard Nixon out on the stump working overtime trying to get the race won. In a last day rally in Texas at the Houston Astrodome President Lyndon Johnson comes out to sway Texas voters on behalf of the Democratic standard bearer. 

The race is to close to call but finally by the closest of  margins, even closer than the 1960 election, Richard Nixon holds on to win the Presidency. Hear both candidates speak to their supporters and hear President Lyndon Johnson console the Humphrey's just moments after Vice President Humphrey concedes the race. 

Then we listen in as President Johnson puts to use all his skills to persuade Senator Everett Dirksen and President - Elect Richard Nixon to work on making the Paris Peace talks happen. It is in these calls, and in another to Florida Senator George Smathers, that we hear what Johnson really thinks about who has been meddling in the attempts to bring the South Vietnamese to the table. It is the Un-smoking gun that sinks the Chennault Affair as being an act of treason committed by Richard Nixon, if you really care about truth that is.  

You will also hear a promise from Richard Nixon to Lyndon Johnson the we will see Richard Nixon live up to throughout the next four years, at his own political detriment. 

It is a fascinating end to a fascinating year of massive UPHEAVAL in our country, the United States of America. 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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This episode opens with the country ablaze after riots break out in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  The country struggles with how to cope with the loss of the leader who had preached nonviolent resistance, and who had died such a violent death. 

The one city that did not have a riot the night of the assassination was Indianapolis, Indiana. It was there that Senator Robert Kennedy had planned to address a crowd about his campaign for President. Instead he told them of the death of Dr. King and then expressed his own emotion from the death of his  brother, President John F. Kennedy. Both men had died at the hands of white assassins'. 

These events elevated Senator Kennedy's cause to a higher one and gave him momentum going into the primaries where he would face  Senator Eugene McCarthy, and also now an establishment candidate, the Vice President of the United States, Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey was  gathering delegates from favorite son candidates and endorsements from the party bosses, because  he entered the race to late to be on the primary ballots. 

Listen in as Robert Kennedy campaigns in Oregon and California and as he and McCarthy have a debate. Plus the Republicans have a race too. Kennedy would lose Oregon and Nixon would win it on his side, and that would make California make or break for the candidates. 

It would be a tough campaign but Kennedy would win California. He would come out and excitedly address the crowd, firing them up for the showdown in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Kennedy seemed poised to win.

Then, yet another tragedy would strike. 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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Not since the Civil War had America been this divided. The decisions to both go to war in Vietnam and to pass several Civil Rights Bills that changed how America interacted socially led to an explosive Presidential Election year.  Never had their been a campaign with more extreme lows as this one had. 

First came a major offensive by the enemy in Vietnam during the Vietnamese New Year known as Tet. The offensive was actually a military failure but you would never convince anyone of that in the United States. It led to an upstart Senator from the State of Minnesota named Eugene McCarthy to challenge his own party's President in the New Hampshire Primary. He nearly won capturing over 40% of the vote. 

That brought in the younger brother of the slain former President, the former Attorney General turned New York Senator, Robert F. Kennedy into the race for President.  Over on the Republican's side, several Governors, George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller and even the new California Governor Ronald Reagan saddled up to run against Lyndon Johnson, but on that side of the aisle there was one clear front runner, Vice President Richard Nixon. 

Just six years before, in 1962, Nixon had lost a bid for the California Governorship and appeared totally washed up in politics. He had appeared to be a loser. But after the Republican's nominated an extremist candidate for President in 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater, many Republicans had abandoned the party and voted for President Lyndon Johnson in an unprecedented landslide election. Richard Nixon had not. He stayed loyal and worked harder for Goldwater than Goldwater did.  He then went out and campaigned all over the country for Republicans in the 1966 mid terms. 

Now Nixon was back, rested and ready, with a platform he had developed over many years in the wilderness and he, like all the democrats in the race, set dead aim on Lyndon Johnson, but LBJ had a surprise for them and when he bowed out it turned the entire election upside down. 

Sadly, just a few days later the Civil Rights Leader  who had led a movement of nonviolence and helped change the country for the better, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. It set the country on fire, and was just the first of many tragedies that 1968 would see happen. Relive this period of tumult in this first episode examining the critical year of Upheaval that was 1968. 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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Few relationships in the history of our country were as important as the one between President Lyndon Johnson and his Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and fewer still, were as bad. The two men could not stand one another and it was like that from the start. In 1960, Bobby Kennedy had tried to get Lyndon Johnson to back out of his acceptance of the Vice Presidential slot on the Democratic Ticket. It was a slight that had never been forgiven.

Through out the Kennedy Administration Robert Kennedy had marginalized LBJ, and kept him out of major policy decisions. Many around the President had often joked to one another, out in the open, "What ever happened to Lyndon Johnson?" 

On November 22, 1963, an assassin changed everything, suddenly Lyndon Johnson was the center of the political universe. But he still needed the Kennedy family and that meant keeping Robert Kennedy in place, at least for the immediate future. The two men tried to make it work and together they managed to get one of the main pieces of civil rights legislation in history passed in 1964. 

But as the Democratic Convention grew nearer the strains in their relationship grew more extreme. Robert Kennedy had ambition to be Vice President and get himself in line to reclaim the Presidency that had once been his brother's job.  Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, would have preferred, as Presidential aid Dick Goodwin said, Ho Chi Min himself to having to put Robert Kennedy on the 1964 ticket. Here we look at all the maneuvering in both directions that was done by one man to get on the ticket and by another to prevent it from happening, all with a scandal mixed in in between. 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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This episode opens as Lyndon Johnson declares War on Poverty in America. LBJ had a vision of the America he wanted to create and unlike many of our Presidents this man was the quintessential legislator.  Johnson's ability to get legislation passed was an area of his job in which there has been no equal, whether you like what he passed or not. Johnson's Great Society changed America in fundamental ways and redefined what many Americans looked for in their Federal Government. 

One of the centerpieces of Johnson's Great Society was in the area of Civil Rights. He was a Southerner from the State of Texas and as such he knew what racial divisions looked like. As a former school teacher he saw the inequities in the lives of his students in Cotulla, the small Texas town he had taught in. He was determined to change the Jim Crow laws of the South.

On the eve of the passage of his landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 , which would guarantee access to all public accommodations and ending segregation, three civil rights workers would disappear in Mississippi. Listen in as the President deals with this horrifying development.

 Listen as he talks to the Senator and Governor of the State of Mississippi, to an FBI Director who was himself no friend of the struggle for civil rights, listen as he calls one of the students mothers  and also listen as he closes the deal he needed to get the 1964 Civil Rights Bill passed. It is a fascinating look inside the wheeling and dealing this President would become famous for, and an education on the complexities of the job he had, and the times in which he served. 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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The start of Season 3, begins on the Tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base on November 22, 1963. A new President addresses reporters and the American people after the assassination of a young and vigorous President. The New President was an old hand in Washington, with a larger than life persona and an ego as large as the State he had represented in the United States Senate, the state of Texas. 

This show will introduce you to the man , Lyndon Johnson. He would preside over one of the most divisive eras in our history, and yet, he would pass a monumental amount of legislation that would change our country, and he would escalate a war he inherited into a full scale land war in Asia. This season we will be examining how he did it, and how the events unleashed in this period would overwhelm his Presidency. 

But for this first hour we will just take a look at him, the man, Lyndon Johnson, warts and all, with the bark off. 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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Questions or comments at , Randalrgw1@aol.com , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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Season 3 of  "Bridging the Political Gap " takes us through the most controversial period in our history other than the Civil War. 

In this season we will cover one of the most controversial an arguably most consequential Presidencies in the entire history of our nation. The Administration of Lyndon B. Johnson. 

Here is a preview of what promises to be a long, hot, summer....

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In this second part in our celebration of the life of George Shultz,  we look at his many wise thoughts on the problems our country and world face today, and how he felt they needed to be addressed. He tells stories from his time in public office as both a cabinet member,  an education leader, and his career in the private sector. 

There is a lot to learn and a lot we can all be thankful he shared with us through his writings and interviews.  This is George Shultz unfiltered, with little commentary, in his own words. 

It was a remarkable , long  life, extraordinarily well lived. 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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"He was a gentleman of honor and ideas, dedicated to public service and respectful debate, even into his 100th year on Earth. That’s why multiple presidents, of both political parties, sought his counsel. I regret that, as president, I will not be able to benefit from his wisdom, as have so many of my predecessors." - President Joe Biden

George Shultz died on February 6, 2021 at the age of 100. He lived an extraordinary life, advising many Presidents and political figures and serving in four cabinet positions, something only one other person in history has done. Over the next 3 episodes, we look at this remarkable man who is one of my  political heroes. 

Here in part one, we look at his service to two of America's greatest chief executives ; Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.  As Nixon's Secretary of Labor, Office of Management and Budget and Treasury, He helped guide Nixon's work dealing with labor  and civil rights issues. He played a strong hand in developing the Philadelphia Plan and in desegregating the southern Public School System, a challenge Nixon undertook two decades after the Brown vs the Board of Education Supreme Court Decision had actually been made.

 It was Richard Nixon not Dwight Eisenhower, nor John F. Kennedy, nor Lyndon B. Johnson who actually made sure it became a reality, and it was George Shultz who made it happen. He tells that story here. This episode also goes through many of the major events of the Reagan years where as Reagan's chief diplomat, George Shultz helped shepherd the end of the Cold War. 

We have two more parts to the George Shultz remembrance scheduled they are :

Part 2 "The Wisdom of the man"
&
Part 3 " Reagan at Reykjavik" 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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Questions or comments at , Randalrgw1@aol.com , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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