The presidential election of 1968 was like the year itself—unpredictable and scarred by violence. When Richard M. Nixon took office, America was a nation divided, with turbulence in our cities, ongoing protests against the Vietnam War, and still reeling from the assassinations of two more of our leaders. As president, Nixon’s first priorities were to resolve the Vietnam situation; better our relations with the Soviet Union; and return American society to a civil and harmonious union.
President Nixon would have some major accomplishments and would be reelected in 1972 in a landslide victory in which he carried forty-nine of fifty states. Two years later, he would leave the Office of the President in disgrace, and the country that elected him in trauma.
Suddenly, Gerald R. Ford would become the most powerful man in the world, under such extraordinary circumstances that Americans were in utter disbelief that this could have happened in our country.