If you study tapes and documents released about RN’s predecessor, LBJ, you know that while his public statements reflected confidence and a sense of purpose, in private he agonized over the war. And what losing might do to U.S. prestige and standing in the world. Politically, from the time he took office, Nixon knew he had to end the war. His public statements have been available for study since the time he made them. The archival materials for his time in office show how he and his advisors reacted to that task in private. As you suggest, laying out the narrative, whether by historians or other observers, presents many challenges. One has to consider how the President handled his obligations as a leader and as a politician.

I’m reading Nixonland right now so Agnew’s speeches, the range of rhetoric and thinking within the anti-war movement, Kent State, all are in the forefront of my mind at the moment. Now, as then, I shake my head over some of the more extreme rhetoric of the anti-war left but I certainly understand why the war convulsed campuses full of young people. (I myself was a member of the Silent Majority while I was an undergraduate between 1969 and 1973 but, of course, as a female, was not subject to the draft.)

One of the most difficult issues for Nixon’s supporters to explain is why Agnew went ahead with his speech after Kent State, with what Perlstein calls “swipes at liberal elites.” What lay behind a political strategy that blamed the media and “elites” for unrest which primiarily was caused by a question which boiled down to, is Vietnam a cause for which members of the U.S. military, draftees and volunteers alike, should be asked to put themselves in harm’s way.

Yes, it was a difficult situation but in my retrospective view, it was one which cried out for more grown-up voices. (Perhaps difficult and unfair to ask for from among the youth on campus but what about the adults on both sides of the debate?) But why is it that there were there so few, on either side of the debate? Including the side I then was on, which was with Nixon. Being President isn’t just about making decisions or reacting to events. You and your surrogates have to explain where you are taking the nation and why.

I think one reason why some people are reacting to the tape revelations as they are — I’ve seen some glee although there is none in your thoughtful essay — goes back to Agnew’s blame-shifting rhetoric. If you cannot sell the product, if you cannot make a case for a war or for your efforts to end it on its merits, it only makes you appear weak if you blame it on the media or Harvard elites. Agnew’s speeches served a short term purpose in firing up the Silent Majority but may have done some long term harm, in many areas.