Episode 51 RICHARD NIXON : The Remarkable Run (Part 1)

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The opening episode of Season 1  of "Bridging the Political Gap" is a particular thing of excitement for me. Richard Nixon is one of my political heroes and most responsible for my interest in public service. I have been a fan since I discovered a scrapbook saved by my Mother from a class she was student teaching in 1960. A full decade before I was born. 

 I have long felt that no full length , in-depth, look at the life of Richard Nixon has ever been done that did not attempt to paint the life, career, an administration of Richard Nixon in a negative light. That has, thankfully,  in recent years begun to change, with great books written by Conrad Black, Jonathan Atken, Evan Thomas, J.A. Farrell, and most recently several books by Historian Luke Nichter, especially  his book "Richard Nixon and Europe: The Reshaping of the Post War Atlantic World" 

This Podcast Documentary, that begins with this episode, will I hope contribute to showing the remarkable life of Richard Nixon with the appreciation he deserves. This Podcast series will span four seasons worth of shows. This first season will cover his career through the end of the Vietnam War in January of 1973. We will then comeback in Season five to look at Watergate and the other events of his final year and 8 months in office, and then an epilogue of events that shows what happened after he left, to both the country, and to him.  

I cannot say thank you enough to several sources of information that have made this podcast documentary possible.  They are:  the national archives for several oral histories, the television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, & CNN)  for historic coverage and , most especially, the Richard Nixon Foundation and the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace, that have created many of the short features I used, and events where people talked about their time with, or their studies of,  President and Mrs. Nixon. 

I would also like to say a special thank you to Historian Luke Nichter for his work with chronicling and making accessible the Nixon tapes through the site NixonTapes.org. We use them extensively, especially as we drew closer to the end of the Vietnam War. This I hope will be an opportunity to hear President Nixon guide us through the end game, out of Vietnam. Most people have never heard these tapes and I hope you will tune in to those episodes most especially. 

This show begins at the end, on the night that former President Richard Nixon  passed away. We will look as the the world stopped to take a pause and reflect on his amazing life. Much to the chattering class and media elites amazement, Richard Nixon's passing led to an outpouring of grief from the heartland of America, the common people, the folks Richard Nixon had always represented and in whose interests he served. We then will take you through a two part tour of his amazing career from running for Congress, to the Senate, the Vice Presidency , his 1960 and 1962 losses, and then back to the 1968 election he won in our last documentary. ( see the shows  we just completed in Season 3 on Lyndon Johnson and 1968)  

Then we will move on to Richard Nixon's Presidency and what many have called "The Age of Nixon" 

Questions or comments at , [email protected] , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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