1965-1969:
Richard Nixon/John Linsday (Republican)
1969-1973:
Richard Nixon/John Connally (Republican)
With Kennedy seen as having literally nuked North Carolina by some more extreme and emotional members of the public, it was unlikely Nixon would lose his "re-match" especially as he headed relief effort in the states. When Kennedy resigned and Johnson became President it became even more obvious that Nixon was assured victory, and he won every state but Texas and Alabama at the 1964 election as George Wallace and Barry Goldwater (who never actually accepted his Dixiecrat nomination) destroyed Johnson's Southern base and gave Nixon an easy path to victory. The new President obviously set about trying to further relieve North Carolina following the Goldsboro disaster, but also pursued wide-ranging economic reforms including serious tax cuts which rivalled even Kennedy's proposals, whilst also committing the government to a more robust programme of weapons and power generation regulation. Travelling to Moscow in 1967, Nixon would negotiate important Arms Reduction Treaties, only to see the Soviet Union and China go to war three months later. As the world seemed torn apart by war, however, Nixon faced the fight of his political life, with Governor Ronald Reagan challenging him in the 1968 Primaries, a competition Nixon only won by slandering and smearing Reagan's personal life and past Democratic affiliation - with Reagan's loss of the California Primary his support evaporated, and Nixon waltzed into a coronation at the party convention in San Diego, winning the vote of every single delegate in the first round.
With all the controversy over the Democratic Nomination few in the press bothered to take notice when Nixon replaced New York Liberal John Lindsay with the former Democrat, Texan John Connally at the end of the party’s 1968 convention. Extensive reporting of the Reagan-Nixon Primary Fight had proven unpopular, with most Americans viewing it as distracting President Nixon from the important work which he was meant to be doing for the country. Still, this switch marked the high-point of Nixon’s power over his party; the Goldwater Conservatives had been vanquished, and the party was willing to accept any demands which the President made. It was in these conditions that Arthur Schlesinger Jr. first began to make references in his work to an “Imperial President” with total dominion over both the apparatus of his party and the apparatus of the state.
The 1968 Democratic Convention, on the other hand, went down in history as one of the most tumultuous to ever occur, with the only recently re-acceptedd "States’ Rights” faction demanding a more pro-States' Rights platform to allay fears caused by the Goldsboro disaster (and implicitly removing the commitment to federally guaranteed Civil Rights of the Johnson years), whilst the party's left-wing agitated for the adoption of a more interventionist platform. The Johnson-ites (or what remained of them) continued to aggressively push for the former President to make a comeback, however he was quietly resigned to the impossibility of pulling off the same trick President Nixon had. When it came down to balloting, however, the party found itself in a three way deadlock, with no candidate able to secure the required delegates, or willing to drop out. Johnson and his supporters seized the opportunity, arranging on the ninth ballot for Clarence Dillon (JFK and LBJ's Commerce Secretary and a Republican until offered the nomination, something which provoked no end of controversy) to be chosen as the nominee, in return for McGovern becoming the running mate after releasing his delegates. Johnson, for his efforts, was promised the State Department if Dillon won. This never came to be an issue, with Nixon cruising to re-election despite his controversial running mate and winning over 400 votes in the Electoral College. Lyndon Johnson retired from politics the day of the election, and handed control of the Texas Democratic Party over to his handpicked successors. Largely blaming McGovern for the loss, the party's Johnsonite moderates would commit themselves to a quest to seize the party entirely from "unelectable liberals".
Nixon's second term was, ultimately, uneventful, with the President continuing his flagging diplomatic efforts in the Far-East, only managing to mediate a ceasefire - and not peace - between China and the Soviet Union. From ideological disputes to differing views of where the Sino-Soviet border should be, there was simply too deep a divide between the leaders of the world’s two largest Communist nations. Even the threat of a US “peacekeeping” intervention was not enough to persuade the two sides that war would be disastrous. One small success, however, came in Nixon’s negotiations over the fate of Albania, the small Chinese aligned Balkan State had largely collapsed without the support of the Peoples’ Republic of China, but through US aid and intervention, the country was rehabilitated and democratised, known for much of the 60s and 70s as “The Jewel of the Balkans” for its flourishing economy and stable, participatory, governments.
Nixon had at one stage considered running for a third term, with opinion polls showing he would Garner around 60-70% of the vote as late as 1971, but ultimately decided against it - he was increasingly tiring of an office which had yielded only modest results. Even as late as 1972 he considered changing his mind, especially as the first quarter that year saw the highest level of GDP growth since the 50s as manufacturing weapons for both sides of the Soviet-Chinese Arms Race boosted American Arms Manufacturers and related industries (producing steel, copper and electronics). There was even a substantial grassroots movement to “draft Nixon” to run for a third term, with the “Committee to Re-Elect the President” (or CREEP) formed in 1972 as part of a last ditch effort to convince Nixon of his popularity with the people.
Nevertheless, Nixon eventually endorsed his Vice President as his successor, and bowed out gracefully, his final acts in office being the creation of the "National Basic Income" for all those making under a certain threshold, and an international agreement to destroy all nuclear weapons by 1992. The climax of an immensely popular career, these measures would endear Nixon to liberals as well as his own more conservative support base. Leaving office in 1973 Nixon tearfully bid goodbye to a nation whose politics he had been one of the Stars of for over twenty years, but the long and varied career of Richard Nixon was not over just yet...
