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From the Richard Nixon Foundation video collection introduction to this speech: 

"On January 14, 1971, President Nixon made an appearance at the University of Nebraska to present its football team with a presidential plaque recognizing them as undisputed national champions. The President also took the opportunity to address some of the problems currently facing the Nation, "common problems, for younger people and older people as well."

The speech is an excellent one with inspiring words for the University full of young people with deeper meaning than just giving an award to the National Championship Football team. I thought it a great speech to share with you.  That some hopes and thoughts about our country and its greatness and opportunities, especially for our young people, are timeless no matter how divided we are nor what era we are living in. 

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Each month on "Bridging the Political Gap" we try to provide up to 12 hours of history for our listeners. This month with season 5 ending a little sooner we ended up with an additional 3 hours and 44 minutes. So we put together a few bonus shows that we thought our listeners would enjoy. 

Our first bonus show is this one on Richard Nixon the Sports fan. He loved baseball and football and was actually fairly insightful in both sports. There are countless pictures of Richard Nixon over his long and storied years in the public eye at sporting events.  He also made a number of appearances on radio and television shows for the Major League Baseball Teams he loved to watch. We have a few for you here. 

In his retirement, he did an interview with the California Angels and then later the New York Mets for their radio broadcasts and while in the White House he talked with a reporter on the White House taping system about his all time all star baseball team. He also talked fondly of the man he considered the most courageous of all athletes, the late Lou Gehrig. 

We also will hear President Nixon talk football with the great Head Coach of the Washington Redskins (now Commanders) , George Allen. He once famously sent in a play to the Coach who actually called the play in a game. I understand the Skins lost yardage,  but oh well at least he gave it a good try!!

We also will get to hear a few words of inspiration from a speech Richard Nixon gave to the University of Nebraska after he went to the school to help celebrate their winning the National Championship in College Football in 1970. 

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Senator Orrin Hatch died on April 23, 2022 at the age of 88. He had just retired in 2019. He was a true giant in the history of the United States Senate and in History. He passed more pieces of legislation than any Senator living at the time of death. He reached across the aisle regularly and found workable solutions to problems even while being one of the Senate's most conservative members and he often did those things with Senator Edward Kennedy, no less, one if not the most liberal members of the U.S. Senate. 

It was a remarkable record and a remarkable career that stands as an example of what can be accomplished if we will just make the effort. It is also a remarkable testament to the greatness of America. For Orrin Hatch was born in abject poverty, the son of a carpenter in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania.  It is one of those great examples of someone who lived the American Dream and then left the country far better off than he found it. 

Orrin Hatch was also well known as one of the genuine gentlemen of Congress. Our host Randal Wallace met Senator Hatch in 2000 and found him to be a very gracious and thoughtful person during their brief interaction. Orrin Hatch was the real thing and he was without question one of the Giants in the history of the Senate. We were very lucky to have had his caliber of leadership for 42 years.

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As we finish the first half of our series on the Nixon Administration and its place in our much longer series of shows that covered the Vietnam Era, we thought we would preview the events on the way over the next 3 seasons of our show. This is the coverage of the fall of Richard Nixon and the scandal known as Watergate. 

It would undermine in the eyes of the American People all he had accomplished to bring peace to millions around the world, and to bring peace, prosperity, and a healthier, more equal country,  at home. 

This preview we hope will leave you asking a simple  question about Watergate. 

 Was it Fair? 

Was Richard Nixon and those defendants, tried and convicted of criminal acts in the scandal, really able to receive fair treatment in the eyes of the American people, or in the Federal Court System, and if not, is it now time to change it for the sake of a more  truthful and fair assessment for History. 

We are about to embark on one of the most comprehensive looks at Watergate ever produced, with new information and insights, and no longer through the eyes of the conventional wisdom that Richard Nixon was somehow the bad actor in the events of the final two years of his administration. 

Join us starting May 16, 2022, for the start of this Landmark Podcast Documentary event on Watergate.

It will change everything you thought you knew about President Richard Nixon.... 

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Our Season 5 Finale:

In this episode we listen in as a nation says farewell to one of its most  larger than life leaders, the former President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson. We tune in at his funeral services in Washington D.C. and in Texas. 

Then we travel halfway around the world to hear the signing of the Paris Peace accords that would effectively end the Vietnam War for America after a decade of lost youth and treasure. The South Vietnamese government would sign the agreement and President Nixon would secretly assure the South that if the North moved on them he would return to aid in their defense.  We had finally  gotten out of the war with honor and our POW's would soon be home. 

We end the season " 1972, The Foundation of Peace "  with a peace treaty  in Vietnam.

 Richard Nixon would go to sleep on the night of January 29, 1973, on top of the political world with what he thought was a secure place in history alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as one of the greatest Presidents in all of American History. He had plans for a second term that while less dramatic would have changed our nation dramatically, foreseeing the many issues we have today, from Healthcare, to the environment, to major welfare reform, to government restructuring, and revenue sharing, by a full half century. 

It all seemed to be coming together for this President like no agenda had ever been put together in our history. What could possibly go wrong?

On January 30th, the tenth day in this remarkable run by President Richard Nixon, the defendants in the Watergate trial would be convicted and the unraveling of a cover up by the President's men would lay in motion a set of events that would bring Richard Nixon down and overshadow all that he had achieved for America. 

 It has been decades since the Watergate Scandal removed Richard Nixon from office, but he always claimed that history would declare him one of our greatest Presidents, and that one day his side of the story would eventually emerge.  It never has.

But it will now, starting on May 16, 2022,  on our show "Bridging the Political Gap" 

and it will change everything you ever thought you knew about Richard Nixon........

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Dear Listeners,

I want to take a moment to say a simple thank you for tuning in to our show. This season "Richard Nixon: 1972 The Foundation of Peace" saw our little Podcast recognized as one of the 60 Best American History Podcasts of 2022 by Feedspot.com . We are enormously proud of that designation and very grateful to all of you for making that happen.  

 https://blog.feedspot.com/american_history_podcasts/

We also hope that you will stay tuned in and enjoy our look at Watergate, it will begin on May 16, 2022 with "Richard Nixon and Watergate  1973,  Enemies at the Gate"  this will be the first of three seasons that will look in-depth at the Watergate Scandal and other historic events of the last year and eight months of the Nixon Administration.  

We believe it will leave you with a lot of questions as to how fair the forced resignation of Richard Nixon was and how fair the convictions of many of his top aids were in an era of extreme upheaval that planted the seeds for much of the division that has grown in to the struggles we are dealing with today, a half century later. 

Also , we have a number of bonus episodes that will air in April for your enjoyment, and we hope you will tune in to them as well.

If you have found our podcast informative and enjoyed the show, please share it around, and please leave reviews to help us both grow our audience, give us some advice on what to make better,  and hopefully in a small way make a real difference in the public discourse in America. 

Again, Thank you so much for tuning in and we hope you will continue to do so.

Sincerely,

Randal Wallace
Host of "Bridging the Political Gap" 

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Finally, an agreement seems to be at hand and the war in Vietnam can be brought to an end for America. 

No one wanted to see this day more than former President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was a man who never wanted to be a wartime President. He had worked to stall making a decision to enter the war on a massive scale, he had tried all he could to find another solution to the growing issues in Vietnam, issues almost all of which had been created by an American decision to remove the leader of South Vietnam just before Johnson had ascended through assassination to the Presidency.  Johnson would sacrifice his entire career in a search for an elusive peace in South East Asia.

On the eve of that peace, Lyndon Johnson would die of a heart attack at his ranch in Johnson City, Texas. Fortunately, the Nixon Administration had informed him that a peace agreement was finally at hand. 

In this episode, we look straight into the ultimate irony of war.  As we listen to the back and forth between President Nixon and his negotiators halfway around the world in Paris and listen to the news coverage of the death of the man who tried so valiantly to find a peace in Vietnam for five years as President. 

When the deal finally was done, President Richard Nixon addressed the nation to inform them that our long nightmare was over and to also pay homage to a man who worked so hard to make America a better land for all of its citizens of every race, color, religion, and station in life. 

Richard Nixon, at his most triumphant moment as President, made it a point to say of his immediate predecessor, "No one dreamed bigger dreams for America, than did Lyndon Johnson".  

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Frustrating, frustrating is about the best way to put the ongoing negotiations and often the most frustrating part has been our allies not our enemies. 

Here we listen in on conversations between the President and his National Security team,  Advisor Henry Kissinger and General Alexander Haig, as they discuss the details of the agreement being negotiated and how to deal with their ally in South Vietnam. 

It is an insiders look at how the war was finally brought to an end. It was never easy and these calls show it right up to the last. 

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We start the ten days that elevated President Nixon to the status as one of the four greatest Presidents in American history with his second  Inauguration as President. In this episode we will plug into ABC News coverage of the day in 1973, with anchormen Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner.  It will include his entire second Inaugural speech, a real treat if you have never heard the speech before. 

President Nixon's speech looks forward to what he thought would be a more peaceful term because peace with honor in Vietnam was now about to be within his grasp. He knew he was only days away from finally having an agreement. 

On this January 20th, Richard Nixon had only the slightest of hints that over the next ten days he would see his place in history soar to a status only shared with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and on the last day, there would be a turn that would lead to events that would totally over shadow those tremendous accomplishments in the eyes of the American people for the next half century. 

The audio for almost this entire podcast episode comes from the legendary ABC News Network and its extraordinary team of top notch journalists, who were even in this era, the most fair to the figures they covered, in my opinion. 

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The Bombing of North Vietnam over Christmas 1972 finally has broken the will of the North to keep the fight going. The South Vietnamese will be forced by Nixon to accept a deal not totally to their liking. But finally this horrific War looks like it could be coming to an end. 

As we approach the end of the incredible year of 1972, we fast forward to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library , and an event hosted by the Richard Nixon Foundation. 

A panel of former members of the National Security staff will examine the chronology, key players, and impact of the Paris Peace Accords. The panel will include Winston Lord, John Negroponte, and Dick Smyser. Fox News national security analyst KT McFarland will moderate in an event on "Vietnam and the Paris Peace Accords" These were the people who negotiated us out of the war in Vietnam under the leadership of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon and their insights are important for anyone wanting to understand that war and the price America and Vietnam paid for the conflict. 

Finally, we go back to December 1972, as the year closes out, a year that saw Richard Nixon's greatest triumphs as President,  Time Magazine names both President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger as the joint Men of the Year. We end with an interview with Henry Kissinger in more recent times as he recalls the honor and the events of this most important year, 1972. 

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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