1. Vietnam & Nixon & Watergate
The Country Becomes Schizophrenic

2. Television War
• At the beginning of the war, General William Westmoreland kept declaring that the enemy is on the brink of defeat
• TV news reports showed a different story. Every night Americans saw young men dying and wounded and began to doubt the reports.

3. LBJ did not run for re-election due to unpopularity of the war
Election of 1968
Richard Nixon (R) vs. Hubert Humphrey (D)
• Nixon wins and promises to “Bring Us Together” and end the war
LBJ did not run for re-election due to unpopularity of the war

5. First Earth Day April 22, 1970
President Nixon looking for an issue that could unite the country
People becoming more aware that we were destroying our environment
Rally to “Save the Earth” became broad-based environmental movement
Nixon had already created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Two other bill:
Clean Water Act
Clean Air Act

7. Nixon and ‘Nam Vietnamization Nixon’s strategy for “peace with honor”
a gradual withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam
Turn control of the war over to the S. Vietnamese
Invasion of Cambodia
Nixon expanded the war
into Cambodia to stop VC
sparked protests

8. VP Spiro Agnew Quotes
A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.
In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4H Club the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.
This is the criminal left that belongs not in a dormitory, but in a penitentiary. The criminal left is not a problem to be solved by the Department of Philosophy or the Department of English; it is a problem for the Department of Justice. 
Yippies, Hippies, Yahoos, Black Panthers, lions and tigers alike -- I would swap the whole damn zoo for the kind of young Americans I saw in Vietnam.

9. Kent State Massacre 5/4/1970
Students held anti-war rally in response to Nixon’s expansion of the war into Cambodia
National Guard tear gassed them and then fired into the crowd killing four people.

10. Overtures to China: February 1972

13. Moscow Summit ~ Nixon meets Brezhnev

14. S.A.L.T. I May 1972
Detente

16. Watergate: Tricky Dick Returns
Republican “dirty tricks” unit burglarizes Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate Apartment complex during 1972 election.
Instead of admitting it, Nixon decides to cover it up and lies to Congress.
Tapes prove that Nixon and his top aides actively participated in a cover-up and Nixon’s impeachment becomes inevitable
Nixon resigns to avoid impeachment

18. Effects of Vietnam • Cost $150 Billion • Over 58,000 American Deaths
• Over 3 million total Vietnamese deaths (civilians/military)
• Considered by many to be the first US military defeat – Vietnam will be unified under Communism
Disrespect of troops upon returning home
“That was the feeling in the air that we were unclean.”
– Jan Scruggs, founder of Vietnam Veterans Memorial