Sharing My Story

I was still too young to vote as the voting age
was 21 at the time. The day after the November
election had a somewhat was odd and eerie feel.
Nixon had won in a very close race. The students
in my art classes were clearly apprehensive about
what was going to happen next. Would Nixon bring
about the end of the war? How would he cope with
the growing domestic violence from the New Left
and terrorist groups like the Black Panthers?
Could this establishment Republican put it off?

Nixon’s first term was mixed. His solution to the
Vietnam war was to began pulling American troops
out of the conflict and instituting something called
Vietnamization. He also instituted a Draft Lottery
system that seemed to make the Selective Service
more fair by making it random. He later pushed
for an all volunteer armed forces—perhaps the
most enduring aspect of his years as President.
I personally felt these were good policies that
and helped to defuse somewhat the anti-war
movement. Oddly this seemed to energize the
more radical and violent prone elements of the
movement. National Review spunoff a companion
newsletter called Combat that spotlighted news
of domestic left wing terrorism that wasn’t being
covered thoroughtly in the mainstream media.
I subscribed to this newsletter in 1968 throught
the early 1970s.