agenda of a select few. so let's shed our irrational negativity and go back to the basics with the a, b, cs and make our assets work for us, pass an honest budget and have zero tolerance for corruption and let's make this the year of the cities and towns. let me close by returning to those lines of charles dickens. it was just the best of times and the worst of times, the age of wisdom sxl age of foolishness. he called it the season of light and season of darkness, but those things do not exist at the same time. they do not coexist at the same time. in fact, at this time of year we move towards the season of light out of the winter of despair comes the spring of hope and i can't think of a better concept for rhode island as we move

confidently into a new year. as you've heard tonight, we have no shortage of leadership in the key is working together. thank you.

he is now a best seling author and political commentator. this semester class focused on the road to the white house with a look at the issues and seefts shaping current campaign as well as historical perspective from past presidential elections. this is a little over one hour. >> on behalf of the students

joining us at george mason university at fairfax, virginia and at the washington center in washington, d.c. we want to welcome to the c-span classroom pat buchanan. thank you for being with us. >> thank you, steve. >> let me begin with the obvious. why did richard nixon run that year? >> i think richard nixon wanted to be president of the united states certainly almost back into the early 1950s. he had run in 1960, and i think he felt he had made some mistakes then. he almost, i think, considered trying to move in ahead of goldwater after goldwater ran into difficulty in 1964. he felt he was more mature and that this would be his time in 1968 and all the planets came into alignment for him. it was an extraordinary year, but i think he sort of always wanted to be president of the united states from the time he became vice president. >> he was the so-called new

nixon. was he knew or different from 1960? >> he would tell me about certain people that had worked with him. he said pat, they're eight years older than they are, and i'm eight years younger. there was no question about it. nixon had matured in a way up there out of office, been humiliated with the defeat in 1962 in california. he had come to new york and written off politics and all of a sudden he had seen this opening. in 1965 when i went to work for him as the first aid, he came aboard. it was pat buchanan in the office with rosemary wood, a little tiny off off his office in the law firm and mrs. ryan who was patricia ryan nixon, the president's waif was down there handling phones for him in his law office calling herself miss ryan. he saw p in '65 and told me in

'66 whether i run in '68 or not will depend on how well we do this year. if he we do as well as i think, a comeback of 40 seats or more in the house, i think the presidential nomination would be worth something and gave me the impression we would definitely go for it. >> what was he like? >> he was the most interesting man in a lot of ways i've ever met. he had an inexhaustible demand for information to hear what you had to say on arguments. what did the conservatives think? what do you think of this candidate? even political gossip, and i would work outside his office and write his correspondence and do memos and do the inbox for him in terms of clippings and things. at times he would call me in for three hours on a stretch and argue about an issue, what do you think of this, pat? why do you think this? we would go back and forth and back and forth. this was a way he developed, i think, even in the white house. it would be frankly when he was in the white house he would

bring halderman in. you see the notes, and when handerman and he met, ron ziegler and al hague was in there for mouhours and hours on end. he talked incessantly and argued back and forth. he did an enormous amount of reading, but he really wanted to understand why you thought what you naught and why you thought it. >> i want to go back to many of the events which shaped 1968 that led to richard nixon's nomination, but i want it to talk about the tell metic side. you had the assassination of martin luther king. this occurred in vietnam, and then we got into new hampshire against governor romney who was up there for a couple of months.

he quit the race two weeks before new hampshire. robert kennedy got into the race when gene mccarthy did well in mid-march. nelson rockefeller go the up and was supposed to get in but he got out. lyndon johnson, i was waiting for nixon to come back from smith where he visited julie, and he said listen to johnson's speech and tell me what he said because the press is is out there on the tarmac. that's when johnson resigned. three or four days later dr. king was shot and there were riots and that was followed by columbia university went up and mark rudd and the whole gang took it over. i remember the oregon primary and seeing bobby denky make that concession. we won. the first time the kennedys had lost an election. i was as close to him as i am to you. he brought his dog up and everything from california. very gracious to gene mccarthy who beat him.

in the next week we were out of california because reagan had a disfavorite son. i was watching -- i was at home on the east side of new york and i got a call from jeff bell, and he said bobby kennedy's been shot. i called vice president nixon mr. nixon, and david and julie were over there and they'd been watching and nad already told him. and so from there i went to the convention in chicago for nixon after our convention. and i was p in chicago in the 19th floor of what we call the comrade hilton hotel after we'd been gassed down the street watching out the window. i was by myself comes after that. we all went to the windows and i saw the police come down balboa, michigan and balboa. they were coming down in a large number, and all of a sudden they fanned out and went through the

pa park. and wallace, governor wallace was at 23, but we were only at 42. so humphrey had had a horrible time all during september, the dump the hump and all these horrible things they were saying to him at the convention continued until that salt lake city speech you talked about. and then they said if you mean it, we're with you. i was really alarmed because i said if the democratic party which is twice as large, p if they come together we can't win. what happened is the northern wallace vote, the unions and the catholics and all of them10% we

humphrey. i heard your first guest say, you know, that he didn't know whether wallace helped or hurt humphrey or not. wallace almost killed nixon because wallace took the goldwater states, south carolina, mississippi, louisiana, alabama. those are the states wallace took, and wallace took the conservation active rural vote from texas tipping it along with john conley's help tipping it it with humphrey. that's where we wound up at the end of the campaign. i was really concerned. i asked the president, we hadn't stranged strategy and we ought to and we wouldn't. i said let's help agnew. i helped vice president agnew under real duress in the campaign. i remember being in the wall dofl astoria when the returns came in. it was a remarkable night. >> one of the ads from the nixon

campaign aimed at vietnam. >> never has so much military, economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively as in vietnam. if after all of this time and all of this sacrifice and all of this support there is still no end in sight, then i say the time has come for the american people to turn to new leadership, not tied to the policy and mistakes of the past. i pledge to you we shall have an honorable end to the war in vietnam. this time vote like your whole world depended on it.

>> pat buchanan, give these students a sense of what was going on that year just with vietnam and the draft. >> well, the country was coming apart. in 1968, it was one of the seminal years of the century and of american political history. you had the demonstrations and the riots on campuses largely tied to the vietnam war. you had the urban riots and disorders that culminated after dr. king was murdered in 100 american cities including my hometown of washington, seventh street and street corridors. these places were burning. in vietnam you had the ted offensive which brought the american establishment, which had taken us into vietnam. people forget, vietnam was a democratic war. when dwight eisenhower left office, we had 600 advisers in

vietnam. by the time richard nixon took over in 1969, there were 535 american troops in vietnam or on the way. what nixon -- nixon understood was that the american people did not want to lose the war in vietnam. it was a different america. they desperately did not after all that sacrifice, 30,000 were already dead, at the same time they didn't want to continue the war. i think they trusted richard nixon because of his foreign policy experience, and i believe what that was was probably a clip tied to the footage you had of nixon's speech at the miami convention. now, that speech whatever people -- i know people ridiculed it, but we took pieces of that speech and turned nixon's on own words into ads tied to the footage that you saw there. i think that was one of the convincing things, was that

johnson had been with lyndon johnson. he was broken on the wheel of vietnam. he had stood down, and quite clearly one argument we had was if the democratic party cannot unite itself, it's fighting in the streets of chicago. this isn't experience unparalleled in mystery. 32 years from now most of

americans living today will celebrate a new year that comes once in a thousand years, eight years from now in the second term of the next president we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the american revolution. by this selection we all listening on television and radio, we will determine what kind of nation america will be on its 200th birthday. we will determine what kind of a world america will live in in the year 2000. >> as you know, pat buchanan, every campaign is about the future as much as it is about the past. >> i give the president great credit. he was always looking to the future. he was always talking about the younger generation in the year 2000, and this was the greatest time and place to be alive. i think he really believed that. he had a tremendous -- he was very well-schooled in american

history, and i think he saw that. he had been in dair he had already been a tremendous part of history. go back. i was fen years old when he exposedal engineer hiss as a first term congressman in california. he was nominated for re-election and he was the second youngest vice president in the history of the united states. he won the largest majority california had ever seen, and he was in the kitchen debate with khrushchev over the eisenhower heart attacks. he had stone down there in caracas and was in the race with jack kennedy is one of the closest elections many american history. he was a real part of american history, and i think he saw himself in that. he saw himself as part of this great movement of american history and himself at a real pivotal time there. >> another moment from that speech. this is how richard nixon began his acceptance speech in miami,

1968. >> my fellow americans. 16 years ago i stood before this convention to accept your nomination as the running mate that americans of our time, dwight d. eisenhower. eight years ago i had the highest honor of accepting your nomination for president of the united states. tonight i again proudly accept that nomination for president of the united states.

bullet i have news for you. this time there's a difference. this time we're going to win. we're going to win for a number of reasons. first, a personal one. lies critically ill in the walter reed hospital tonight. i have talked however with mrs. eisenhower on the telephone. she tells me that his heart is with us, and she says that there is nothing that he lives more for and there is nothing that would lift him more than for us to win in november. i say, let's win this one for ike!

>> pat buchanan. >> that was a great night down there in miami. i remember eisenhower's at walter reed, and i can remember when ike died aa few months later, i believe, and we were by then in the white house. the old man dais -- we called he old man by then. his limousine headed out to walter reed. that was a great moment for nixon. in his speeches, he did write them himself. we went out to montauk, we were the only ones with him at the point. he went out to the end of long island and wrote it, and the way he would write the speech, he'd work on it. he'd say, buchanan, and he called me by the last name. give me three good paragraphs on "law and order" and the phone would hang up. he'd weave what you wrote into

his speech, and that speech was a smashing success, as i said, after the two conventions, nixon was leading humphrey 42-29, which in those days was an insurmountable lead and television can change things. ed lead did mooen -- humphrey closed it up to 42 or 43 all. but nixon that night, i can remember him up -- reed was at the "playboy" hilton or something like that. i went up and after that we all did the talk on the daishg no, it was ease yerl than that. we did the vice presidential things. we had them all in there, and nobody knew what he was thinking as he threw out various names and there was a staff group and others. i think the political guy thur man and tower and goldwater and those folks. we met there and talked with him for hours on who the vice president ought to be. >> one of the questions from

brian was wondering why nixon chose spiro agnew? why not george romney. you mentioned nelson rockefeller. >> you couldn't take rockefeller. it would have torn the party apart. rockefeller by 1968 was an aid v add vis sear of goldwater. i think what nixon did and the last two he thought of is one reason he picked agnew. agnew had a very good record on civil rights. he had run against george your home is your castle mahoney in the '66 election to win. that's when i wrote the -- >> as maryland's governor. >> i said it's the party of maddox, mahoney and wallace. they were all very anti-civil

rights. so we got agnew for two reasons. one reason was that during the riots in april -- even though he was strong on civil rights, he had called in these civil rights leaders and asked why aren't you condemning the violence? the objection a lot of people made was he brought in tv cameras and read him the riot act. i took agnew's statements and marked them up and sent those things in to nixon. he was very impressed by his toughness. he was very impressed by the time he met agnew. agnew had been rockefeller's number one booster. so agnew was boosting rockefeller, and brings in all the reporters and said rocky is going to announce. rockky did not call agnew and tell him i'm going to announce i'm not running. he's rockefeller's booster and he brings all these reporters in and rockefeller says he's not running. agnew has egg all over his face.

nixon called him right away and said i'll come down and see you. he's an independent someone fellow on the other side of the party. it's more liberal, and also his toughness would help us in the border states. you don't win alabama, louisiana, georgia, mississippi. but tennessee, arkansas, texas, florida, the upper outer south. we could win that and that's what we had agnew down there in those states being hard lined, but obviously nobody can out-wallace wallace so you don't tried to do something like that. he had a good record, and i think nixon felt he was a strong figure. he was new and fresh, but agnew really got creamed in that campaign by the media. that's one yeen i was riding around on the bus, and he wasn't saying the same speech over and over again. i thought we were losing ground, and we were in october. i asked them, i said, look, imt

not doing any good here. let me help vice president agnew. i think i can. >> you remember this ad from the humphrey campaign taking aim at spiro agnew? >> is the the 45 seconds? [ laughter ] >> i remember that very well. 45 seconds of mocking laughter. it happened because vice president -- mr. agnew, governor agnew had made some gaff es and he was in hawaii. the reporter said how is the fat jap, which was politically incorrect. they had known him by that phrase apparently. that got a huge play. agnew stepped into a lot of

things, made a lot of statements that enabled the press and others to portray him and the democrats to portray him as sort of a ridiculous figure and a joke. it was felt that he was hurting the republican ticket. i don't think -- i don't think he did hurt the ticket. i'll tell you, when we got into the white house, when we delivered the des moines speeches and some of those other speeches and during the great battle over the november speech where nixon on november 3rd called for the silent majority to stand up with mihm against the 500,000 demonstrators that came to washington, d.c. to brake the president. agnew delivered that sfeech in des moines attacking the networks for the first time, by december he was the most admired man many america. >> let me go back to iconic moments of '68 and bob lick ter will weigh in as well.

as you look at the demonstrat n demonstrations going on in the streets of chicago and around the country, richard nixon kept talking about the silent majority. these are scenes you remember so very well. burning the american flag. get out of vietnam. a lot of uncertainty about young people that felt they would be drafted into the war that they didn't know what the purpose was about. give these students a sense of the fabric of the country that year. >> the country was polarized and divided, but the vast majority of the country was with nixon, was with basically standing by the troops in vietnam. and the demonstrators, leett's take the ones in chicago. the vast majority of americans, people, the vast majority of americans felt the cops were their kids. let me tell you a story, wroit a state when mark rudd and the others took over colombia.

it really just blasted the students for what they were doing. they took over the dean's office and trashed his office. there were all sorts of things that went on that were premt disgusting. a wrote a statement for nixon condemning and blasting that. some of the nixon staff were apauled by it t. a "new york times" poll found that 95% of americans agreed with me and disagreed with the demonstrators. the problem was not the position they took. skepticism about the war was common in america, and many americans were concerned about t. these people burning american flags, they were perceived as treasonous. jane fonda went to hanoi. when nixon got into the white house he basically in april -- june announced withdrawal of

100,000 troops. johnson but 535,000 in, and we started 100,000 out. so nixon goes out to san clemente and comes back, and there were 500,000 demonstrators in october. they recognize we have to stand up, and you have to defy them. they're into the breaking of the president. david brodeur wrote a problem. he said they're out to break richard nixon, and there's a good probability they'll succeed again. i sent these in to nixon, and said this is a real presence on the line. nixon went out to the country and said i want the silent majority to stand with me. i'm bringing the troops home, and the country stood with him. that's when the networks got out there and started trashing him. that's when agnew counterattacked the networks and snit nixon by december riched 69% approval in this divided

country which was the highest he ever achieved until the end of the vietnam war when he announced that. so what happened was did nixon basically every presidency, i think there's a moment when he becomes president in the mind of american people. i think with kennedy it was the missile crisis. with reagan it was when he was shot, and people who didn't -- people were very moved. they really took him to heart. i think they understood that nixon is now our president, and in that november period. i think nixon held that all the way flew 1972. look, 1972 george mcgovern was the candidate of the count culture and anti-war movement. he had a tremendously powerful movement like the gold waurlt movement in terms of intensity and belief and conviction. my friend rick sterns were organizing it. he won it. we won 49 states. a