Globe. He served on the spotlight team. In his capacity as a journalist he has covered congress, the Supreme Court and every president ial campaign from 1980 through 2012. In addition he served as a senior politicals correspondent for the center for public integrity, a Nonprofit Center for Investigative Journalism in dc. In 1996 he received the prize and award from the White House Correspondent association for coverage of the presidency, the first time anyone had captured the first in a single year. Hes a frequent guest including at harvard, the us military academy, university of chicago and other institutions abroad. Hes the author of three books. Tonight his talk focuses on his third book about Richard Nixon, a biography of the 37th president of the United States. This book has won the award for best biography of the year, the New York Historical society and was a finalist for the pulitzer prize. After the program please join us in the atrium where his book is for sale for signing. Please give me a warm welcome and enjoy the program. That was terrific, thank you. Grow show marks used to say after pressure marks used to say after that introduction i had no idea what i was going to say. Its a great honor to be at the smithsonian because at a time when history and may be objective knowledge is under fire, the smithsonian is a great wonderful asset that we have and just today i was reading through the Smithsonian Magazine website and they have this marvelous story about how the black curator in an african of American Museum in virginia got together with the white curator of the museum of the confederacy and together they sat down over beers. He had three greatgrandfathers who fought for the south and together they sat down and combined their two institutions to this new movie museum collective, i think the museum of the civil war in richmond and it opened up. Its a marvelous story. I recommend you read it like a most everything in the Smithsonian Magazine. I think its a great illustration and example of where we can go if we forget a lot of that some of the things are going to talk about tonight. Thanks for coming out on a night where you can sit home and watch on cspan events very similar to those 50 years ago. One of the first questions i got asked repeatedly is why nixon now . I was accused of being something of an oracle when the book came out after donald trump had been elected facing off against a special counsel over a breakin at Democratic National headquarters, declaring war on the press and declaring the presses the enemy. Accused of colluding with a foreign power to legally affect the outcome of the president ial election. Obstructing justice. Erik kratz muttering about impeachment. A friend of mine from the faculty told me weve packed six years of nixon into two years of trump. Its like nixon speed dating. I feel a bit like richard white. I dont know how many of you are readers of the great oxford histories of america but basically they take civil war, the revolutionary period, the cold war, and give them to a fantastic scholar who writes a book of history about just this era. Richard wright got the assignment to do the gilded age and the reconstruction and had a reaction very similar to mine. He said ive written a book about a time of rapid and disorienting change and failed the politics and finished it in a parallel universe which reminds me of what harry truman said witches theres nothing new in human nature. Men dont change. The only thing new is the history that you dont know yet. We can be sure that somewhere from his perch in the great hereafter, that Richard Nixon is looking up at us now. [ laughter ] and saying you see bob, i told you they miss me when im gone. Why nixon now . For one reason, selling books is a commercial enterprise and one is that we have an amazing string of 50th anniversarys. This is the 50 year mark of the nixon presidency. 1968 the year he was elected began with the tet offensive in vietnam. Sen. Mccarthys in New Hampshire, Robert Kennedy, george wallace, Lyndon Johnsons abdication, the murder of Martin Luther king, the murder of martin of kennedy and the writing of the Democratic National convention in chicago which all led up to December November 1968 when he was elected. He almost didnt make it. He won by 500,000 votes in one of the closest elections ever and he barely clinched the republican nomination profiting mainly from the blunders of his rivals. Michigan gov. George romney. Mitt romneys dad was republican front runner until attempting to change his position on the vietnam war. He claimed that he had been brainwashed by the pentagon. Romney was considered a bit of a lightweight and this does not persuade a skeptical public that he had the brains and guts to be the commanderinchief. Eugene Mccarthy Rose to the occasion. Brainwashed, he said, a light wash would have been sufficient. It was during that race on the eve of the election that the Nixon Campaign pulled off a dirty trick that i argue in my book was worse than anything he did. In october Lyndon Johnson announced he had reached an agreement for peace talks with the north vietnamese. At the urging of the soviet union which was the armor and supplier, the United States would suspend bonding in asia and and returns the russians promised johnson that hanoi would engage in productive talks. Thats the word the russians use. But then there was a hitch, the South Vietnamese refused to join the talks. Johnson was furious. You can hear this on the johnson tapes which are online. All the more so when he learned that the Nixon Campaign official had been heard on an american wiretap of the Saigon Embassy in washington urging saigon to drag its feet. They were promised a better deal if nixon were reelected. Johnson got on the phone with the Senate Republican leader. We can stop the killing out there but they have this new formula put there. Namely, weight on nixon. They are killing 400 or 500 a day waiting on nixon. This is treason. I know said nixon. Johnson faced a choice that barack obama faced in fall 2016. He did not have proof of nixons personal collusion with a foreign power in nixon but he mentally denied it. Any of this sound familiar . Johnson like obama sat on the information. He sealed the records and documents in an envelope which became known as i kid you not, the xfiles. Somehow mysteriously as these things happen, the news of the affair licked out and became a grail for investigative reporters and historians to prove that he had been involved in activities. So you can go to the United States state Department Historian sites with a lengthy chapter on the incident to see how the pieces of the puzzle were put into place over the last 50 years as one researcher after another took up the chase. Nixon always denied a personal role and in his famous interviews with david frost he insisted he was not aware of nor had he authorized any contact with South Vietnamese could not have done that in good conscience. It was not until 20 it was not until 2013 when conducting my research that i found the notes of his chief of staff recording nixons orders to quote keep not working on the South Vietnamese and do what they could do to quote monkeywrench the announcement of the peace initiative. We cannot know what may have happened if the Nixon Campaign had not interfered in johnsons initiative. Most likely those of you who are my age can remember the enmity and stubbornness of north and South Vietnamese displayed toward each other in the years that followed. The promise of productive talks may have failed. But i made biographer, not a military war historian. I judge my subjects by what they knew and what they did at the time. Given his willingness to engage in such a dark and risky plot and given the debacle that would follow in cambodia and vietnam, hundreds of thousands of lives that would be lost, i came to the conclusion that indeed this was more reprehensible than anything that took place in watergate. That was 1968. 1969 50 years ago this summer, the moon landing. Woodstock. The moratorium. And and nixons great repose, the silent majority speech. The next spring at this time we will be witnessing the anniversary of the invasion of cambodia and the shootings and the debts at kent state. Then comes 1972. Just as we are beginning to think awful and nasty things about Richard Nixon he pulls a rabbit out of his hat. Why nixon now . We live in a world that Richard Nixon made. That opening to china, that planet stunning handshake set earth and its peoples on a new and liberating course. It was the first great crack of the cold war, the first bell tolling for the iron curtain, the indispensable step toward the integrated World Economy that would grant human beings a measure of peace. You can hear him talking with this vision in mind. The 1962 raise for the governor of california, the one where he held the famous last press conference and said you will have nixon to kick around anymore . He moved to new york and as an International Lawyer he roamed the world for a prominent client, pepsico. Everywhere he went, he would stop and talk to us diplomats and foreign statesmen, many of whom he had met on International Missions when he was Vice President under eisenhower. He was like one great post graduate seminar. Then in 1967 in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine called asia after vietnam, nixon described the world to come. Monolithic communism is doomed to. Theres a new age coming, and Information Age built around a technical revolution. Its going to be a computer revolution. Its going to require freedom, intellectual nimbleness, not factory lines or fiveyear plans. And so was especially ill suited to the musclebound totalitarian regimes like the ussr. The nations of the pacific, singapore malaysia korea would lead the way in this new age, but there was one great threat. China. The chinese had to be brought out of their shell and integrated into this new International Economic order because all of that progress and the promise of peace that could last a generation could be lost if a rampant Nuclear Armed china sought to solve the problem of 1 billion restless people with violent expansion and aggression. In 1969 almost as soon as he took office the chinese and the soviets engaged in a ridiculous order dispute over a godforsaken riverbank in siberia and the door to beijing was open to crack and beijing was prepared and had the foresight encouraged to reach out. In the 20 years of peace that he hoped for and talks about, which he defines not as a time where there would not be war but a time free from the battles he had witnessed in world war ii with the threat of a third world war is also now at 50 years and counting. Not for nothing did mr. Spock, urging the hot tempered capt. Kirk to negotiate with evil klingons, remind capt. Kirk capt. Kirk of a proverb, only nixon could go to china. There were domestic accomplishments as well. In the first week after he was elected i cant tell you what an impact it made. There was a Huge Oil Spill off of the coast of santa barbara. Nixon had already been well placed on the environmental issue. He had an advisor to his campaign and william ruckelshaus. He doesnt we for congress to pass a law, creates this thing called the Environmental Protection agency. A first look at the domestic and environmental competition and follows it up with a policy act. For anyone whos ever been in a fight over an impact statement you have nixon to thank for signing it. He signed legislation creating the National Oceanic and atmospheric administration. He signed the clean air act. Automobile emission controls, regulation of pesticides. A ban on ocean dumping. Detection of Marine Mammals and coastal zone management. Thats not all. He has a very sort of convoluted record on civil rights but there is no denying that he did more to integrate southern schools than any president before or since. Brown versus the board of education was 1953. They drag their feet and the administration a Justice Department file some suits. But it fell to Richard Nixon to get the schools integrated. When he came into office there were 186,000 africanamerican kids in desegregated schools in the south. In 1970 a year later that number had grown to 2. 5 million. Grants for integration went from 75 million to 2. 6 billion. Thats the single great expert. It was the greatest School Desegregation in american history. They created something called the philadelphia plan, the first muscular affirmative action program. It denied taxexempt status desegregated private academies. Those are the biggies. The environment and civil rights but there was more. He passed, in conjunction with Democratic Congress, tax reform for low income individuals increased aid to education, food stamp budget. Social security costofliving, the Occupational Safety and health act, the war on cancer. He doubled federal funding for ites for arts, signed the volunteer military, dropped the voting age to 18 and the most little noted accomplishments but something that if you ever go out west you will hear about on almost every indian reservation. He had a policy called sub determination for Indian Tribes which today makes him a hero. He had three biggies that did not get past and you will chuckle when you hear what they are. The first was something called nixon gear, the mandated private insurance with capsid government subsidy. If barack obama had gone out on the First Press Conference and said im asking the Republican Congress to pass, both democrats and republicans to pass Richard Nixons Health Program probably he would have gotten the republican votes and not the democratic but because it was called obama care the nixon plan when presented 50 years later was shot down by congress. There was also a great search that i found, the wonderful guy who went on to become ambassador to india and United States sen. From new york. Its a memo to the president that says scientists have come up with something more recent worries some. We are worried about this thing called Climate Change and Global Warming could be pro this is what he called it and apocalyptic danger to world civilization. 1969. The final third big he was that they dreamed up called the family assistance plan. Guaranteed basic annual income and job training. Replacement welfare systems completely. All of this liberal legislation bubbling up from the Nixon Administration in conjunction of course with the Democratic Congress. This is why many scholars like to look at the nixon years not sort of an isolated thing but as the third act of great fulfillment of the new frontier in the great society. If you take that time period from 19601972 its rare that we really built modern government structure in society that we have today. We may have seen it coming. He was elected to the house in 1946 and instantly made an impression on their leadership. When they needed a committee to travel to europe and evaluate the plan to rebuild a shattered continent, nixon was chosen. He roamed far and wide. He saw shattered cities of france and germany, he stood amid the ruins of hittner street hitlers chancellor where orphans came up to him trying to sell their fathers were metals. Much is at stake including his future because he came from Orange County california which in those days was republican and conservative. The very men who had plucked nixon from obscurity sent him to congress, built and paid for the campaign, and were thoroughly against the marshall plan. They saw it as socialism, a waste of money. Pouring money down a rat hole is what they told him. They told him not to count on their support if he endorsed mushy thinking but nixon saw that he must do. He returned to his district and for six months in 1947 and early 1948 he campaigned for the marshall plan. He went to every rotary club, every chamber of commerce, and American Legion hall. Every crowd that would take him he told them he owed him his best judgment and he convinced them. When the Party Primaries were held in california Richard Nixon did not just win the republican nomination. He won the