Word: nixons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Ever since the middle of 1964 I have urged that we should cut our losses by extricating ourselves from the Viet Nam conflict under carefully planned conditions that would result in minimum damage to our interests and authority around the world. If that is what the Nixon Administration is at long last seeking to achieve, the effort has my sympathy...
...isolation at Camp David, there were no proposed drafts, no stacks of memos, no turgid position papers to help. "He's writing it himself-with his pen on his little yellow pad," confided Communications Director Herb Klein. Although he may not have wanted it that way, President Nixon's speech on Viet Nam this week had shaped up as one of the most important of his Administration to date...
...Nixon tried to hold his more routine appointments down to steal time for the speech. Lunch on several days was off a tray. Not since he secluded himself to draft the speech accepting his party's nomination had he devoted himself so totally to a writing job. He kept the content to himself, brushing off even the specific questioning of Republican congressional leaders at their weekly White House breakfast. He revealed only that the speech would be a review of "where we've been, where we are and where we're going...
...formal advice, Nixon held just one meeting. It was a conference of a close quartet: Secretary of State William Rogers, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and Attorney General John Mitchell. In the past, Laird and Rogers have privately advocated more urgent action to speed up troop withdrawals. Some White House observers assumed that Mitchell was there to help Kissinger argue for a more cautious troop policy that would enable the Administration to maintain negotiating pressure on Hanoi...
...gave critics time to offer public suggestions that created new pressure and expectations. A few critics expressed such surprising optimism about the speech that they seemed to be deliberately setting the President up for a public letdown. Even if there was no Machiavellian scheming, it was obvious that Nixon himself, perhaps unwittingly, had created a situation in which anything short of a dramatic announcement might lead to disappointment. But repeated White House warnings not to anticipate anything sensational finally managed to lower the pitch of public expectation...