Nixon essay!

First of all, in your introduction it's very important you define "conservative". This will set up the rest of your paper. Divide your paper in terms of Nixon's actions politically, economically, and socially. In your conclusion, definitively state to what extent Nixon was a conservative based on your evidence.

Nixon was very anti-communism. He was the head of HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) and ran for president 1960, and governor of California 1962. So it's amazing he managed to win anything at all.

Vietnam became known as "Nixon's War". In March 1969, Nixon order a secret bombing of Cambodia because the Ho Chi Minh Trail that was used by the North Vietnamese passed through there. These bombings were kept secret from Congress. Since this bombing didn't help end the war, Nixon and Kissinger (national security advisor) began Vietnamization. This called for pulling out American troops and replacing them with South Vietnamese. After a brief invasion of Cambodia, the number of protests increased, leading to the Kent State shootings in May 1970. By June, Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and in 1971, people were made aware of the My Lai Massacre. But by then, the number of protests had declined, partly due to the success of Vietnamization. Nixon also promised to end the draft and institute and all-volunteer army. (This caused students to change their focus to feminism, gay rights, and environmentalism.)

Nixon had the most success in terms of foreign policy. His work in China and the Soviet Union led to the period of lessening tensions called detente. The signing of SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) with the Soviet Union was a huge step in the right direction, although it didn't do much to end the arms race. The pressure China and the Soviet Union put on North Vietnam to return to the Paris Peace Talks helped Nixon win the election of 1972. The Christmas bombings resulted in the withdrawal of American troops by 1973.

The price of Vietnam (over $150 billion), combined with the cost of Johnson's Great Society/War on Poverty programs caused the U.S. to be in a huge amount of debt, along with the obligatory inflation that comes at the end of any war. OPEC's oil embargo didn't help either. Nixon's policy of New Federalism wanted to decrease the huge amount of governmental power than had been increasing since the Great Depression. An important part of this was revenue sharing, where part of the money made from taxes was distributed to the states for their spending. Nixon tried to start welfare reform, but party conflicts in Congress didn't really allow for this. In fact, government kept expanding under Nixon, with the growth of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and new organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Consumer Products Safety Administration, and the Economic Stabilization Act.

Because of the whole energy crisis, as well as Americans buying more foreign goods than American goods, the economy was in terrible shape. To counteract this problem (what would later be called "stagflation") Nixon suspended the Bretton Woods System, used wage and price controls to try to stop inflation, and used deficit spending to try to help the economy. Deindustrialization also led to a decrease in power for labor unions.

Nixon also appointed four conservative judges to the Supreme Court. But these people didn't always make rulings that Nixon liked (i.e. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, Furman v. Georgia, and of course Roe v. Wade). Nixon wasn't outwardly pro-civil rights either because he didn't want to upset white southerners. His "Southern Strategy" helped him win the election of 1968. Other social things to talk about are the New Age religious movement, environmentalism, the consumer movement, women's movement in terms of abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment, gay liberation movement, affirmative action and Bakke v. University of California, the New Right (evangelical movement, Jerry Falwell and the moral majority), etc.

There is a lot to talk about with Nixon, obviously. The most important thing to remember though is that he was full of contradictions. He had a conservative agenda but his actions don't really support that, especially in terms of economics. He ushered in an era of conservatism, which he himself was not really responsible for. This tends to happen in history, whenever there is a highly charge period of liberalism (60s and early 70s) it will often be followed by the exact opposite period of conservatism (70s and especially the 80s).

I hope this helps and wasn't too much to take in at once.