Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon was born in California in 1913 and built his career as an anti-communist Republican. He served in the House, Senate, and as Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president before narrowly losing the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy. After losing the 1962 California governor’s race, he returned politically and won the presidency in 1968 amid war, protest, and social unrest.

Nixon’s first term combined conservative politics with major policy innovation. He pursued “Vietnamization” to reduce U.S. ground involvement in Vietnam, though he also expanded the war through secret bombing in Cambodia. His administration created the Environmental Protection Agency, supported major environmental laws, and presided over the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969.

His greatest foreign policy achievement was détente with communist powers. Nixon visited China in 1972, opening a new era in U.S.-China relations, and pursued arms control with the Soviet Union. The Paris Peace Accords of 1973 ended direct U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, though the war continued until the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Nixon won reelection in a landslide in 1972, but the Watergate break-in and cover-up engulfed his second term. The subsequent congressional investigations produced a constitutional crisis, and Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, the only president to do so. Gerald Ford later pardoned him.