00100	AN HISTORICAL VIEW OF NIXON
00200	
00300	
00400		In my opinion, history may regard Nixon as the most competent
00500	U.S. president of the twentieth century, in the  sense  that  he  set
00600	himself the hardest tasks as president and achieved them.
00700	
00800		The  first of these tasks was settling the Vietnam war on the
00900	terms that he achieved.  This would not have been difficult if he had
01000	had  full  congressional and popular support, but given that congress
01100	was about to tie his hands, he found himself in a poker game with the
01200	North  Vietnamese  with  almost  no  cards  in  his  hands. The North
01300	Vietnamese were demanding that in order to get our prisoners back, we
01400	would have to overthrow the Thieu government for them.  A majority of
01500	Congress was either explicitly willing to accede to  this  demand  or
01600	was  trying  to  reduce  our  strength  to  an extent that would have
01700	required acceding to it.  Therefore, if the North Vietnamese had held
01800	out  for  a  few more months, they would probably have got their way.
01900	In order to achieve a settlement on his terms, Nixon had to make many
02000	sacrifices.  Here are some examples:
02100	
02200		1.  He  sacrificed  his  conservative domestic economic views
02300	making innumerable concessions to the Democratic Congress in order to
02400	keep them off his neck on the war issue.
02500	
02600		2.  He  appointed  fanatics  to  the Environmental Protection
02700	Agency trying to keep the environmentalists off his neck.
02800	
02900		3. He made big concessions to the Russians and the Chinese in
03000	order  to  get  some co-operation from them in dealing with the North
03100	Vietnamese.
03200	
03300		4. He went all out to win the 1972 election  by  as  large  a
03400	margin  as possible in order to show the North Vietnamese that he had
03500	popular support even though a majority in Congress was  against  him.
03600	This  included  promoting  the  excessively  partisan  spirit  in his
03700	administration that led to Watergate.
03800	
03900		5. He stretched his authorizations from Congress to the limit
04000	and past it in Vietnam itself in order to give the South Vietnamese
04100	a chance to defend themselves.