Title Card: Part Two: Triumph

NARRATOR: Less than six months after his humiliating defeat in California, Nixon appeared on The Jack Paar Show, playing a tune he had written himself. Although no one in the audience could have known it, this was the beginning of one of the most remarkable comebacks in American political history.

JACK PAAR, Host: Can Kennedy be defeated in '64?

NIXON: Well, which one? Just to be very serious, I know, of course, you're referring to President Kennedy and I under no circumstances would speak disrespectfully even of him or of his office.

Mr. PAAR: Aren't you kind of friends? Were you kind of friends at one time?

NIXON: Oh, certainly. We came to the Congress together ...

Mr. PAAR: I know you were.

NIXON: ... and we were low men on the totem pole on the Labor Committee together. And we remained low men until he ran for president. Now he's up and I'm down.

Mr. PAAR: My little daughter said today that... you know, she said, "Is Mr. Nixon going to be on?" I said, "Yes." She says, "I do hope that man finds work."

NARRATOR: Nixon found work as a Wall Street lawyer, determined to succeed at what he called "the fast track." Pat Nixon had never been happy with the constant demands of politics and welcomed the prospect of a more normal existence. "I hope we never move again," she told him when they settled in New York. But politics had been Nixon's whole life, all he had ever known. He soon told friends he would die of boredom if he stayed in private life.

Ninth NEWSCASTER: Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas.

NARRATOR: To some, it seemed that Kennedy's assassination might open the way for Nixon in the next election, but sensing the mood of the country, Nixon concluded that Lyndon Johnson, the new president, would be unbeatable in 1964.

Second REPORTER: Are you writing yourself off at this point as a political candidate, as a presidential candidate at any time?

NIXON: Well, I've made it clear that I am not a candidate for public office. I shall not become a candidate in this year, 1964, and I certainly have no plans to become a candidate in the future. I also want to make it clear at the same time, however, I'm not writing myself off as a political leader in the United States.

NARRATOR: As Nixon expected, President Johnson overwhelmed Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the party lost disastrously in Congress. But in the ruins of that defeat, Nixon saw his way back to power. He worked the Republican congressional circuit tirelessly, traveled to 35 states, barnstormed for 105 candidates. And when the party made a dramatic comeback in 1966, there was hardly a Republican who didn't owe Nixon a favor.

LEONARD GARMENT, Law Partner: He was uncomfortable with all of the obligatory activities of politics. Those were the dues one paid in order to gain admission to the arena and he paid them. He flinched on occasion, but he paid them. He learned to do what he had to do.

NIXON: [campaigning] Hey, how are you doing, boys?

VOTER: Good to see you. Good to see you.

NIXON: Get this boy in now. You got to get him in.

VOTER: We're going to.

NIXON: You know, this is your old district. You get him in now.

VOTER: We're going to get him in.

NARRATOR: Nixon promised his family a moratorium on politics in 1967, but immediately took off on a grueling tour of four continents. Traveling as a private citizen, the former vice president could still command a crowd in the most remote reaches of the globe. His trips kept him in the news and strengthened his grasp of foreign policy. Once again, Richard Nixon was aiming for the presidency.

Mr. EHRLICHMAN: He had this absolutely core fire that he wanted to be president of the United States, I think for several reasons: probably to prove a lot of things to himself, but also because he sincerely wanted to take the country in a direction that he felt was the right direction.

NARRATOR: As Nixon officially announced his candidacy in February 1968, the events of that tumultuous year moved him closer to the office he had sought for so long. In Vietnam, Communist guerrillas fought their way to the very doorstep of the American embassy in Saigon. Never had the prospects for victory looked more bleak. At home, anger over the war tore the country apart and forced Lyndon Johnson to withdraw from the presidential race. Robert Kennedy was just beginning to emerge as the Democratic frontrunner when he was killed an assassin's bullet. Race riots following the murder of Martin Luther King turned many cities into battlegrounds. The country had not suffered such upheaval since the Civil War. Many American yearned for a leader who promised safety and stability.

In Miami Beach, safe from the crises that engulfed the country, the Nixon family watched as Republicans chose their candidate.

Candidate NIXON: [at hotel] There. We worked for those. Ha ha.

WISCONSIN DELEGATION LEADER: [1968 Republican National Convention] Wisconsin is proud to cast its 30 votes for nominee of this convention Richard M. Nixon.

Candidate Nixon: [watching results] Sit down and get to work.

NARRATOR: As he accepted the nomination of his party, Nixon offered himself as the man who could bring order out of the turmoil of 1968.

Presidential Candidate NIXON: When the strongest nation in the world can be tied down for four years in a war in Vietnam with no end in sight, when the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness, when a nation that's been known for a century for equality of opportunity is torn by unprecedented racial violence, then it's time for new leadership for the United States of America.

NARRATOR: Republicans once again pinned their presidential hopes on Richard Nixon. To them and to many in the press, he seemed a "new Nixon," better prepared than the man who had lost in 1960. But the Democratic frontrunner, Hubert Humphrey, said he'd seen it all before.

Senator HUBERT HUMPHREY, Presidential Candidate: They started the renewal job in 1952, a "brand-new" Nixon. There was some reason for it, too. Then they had another renewal job in 1956. Then they had another renovation operation in 1960. Then, when he went to run for governor in California in 1962, they renewed him again. And then, in 1964, another touch-up. And now, I read about the "new Nixon" of 1968. Ladies and gentlemen, anybody that had his political face lifted so many times can't be very new.

NARRATOR: Boating in the Florida keys, Nixon was relaxed and confident. He was running far ahead of Humphrey in the polls and the Vietnam War was splintering the Democrats.

ANTI-WAR DELEGATES, 1968 Democratic National Convention: [chanting] We want peace now. We want peace now. We want peace now.

NARRATOR: At their convention in Chicago, the anti-war wing of the party pressed for an end to the bombing and a negotiated withdrawal of U.S. troops, but Humphrey stuck by President Johnson's policy.

Senator HUMPHREY: [1968 Democratic National Convention] And I think that withdrawal would be totally unrealistic and would be a catastrophe.

NARRATOR: As the Democrats fought over Vietnam, Nixon avoided the issue, promising only that he would find "an honorable end" to the war. Along with millions of Americans, he watched on television as anti-war protests outside the convention hall exploded into violence. In the chaos, Nixon saw an opportunity. A few days later, he moved through the same streets in a motorcade. Four hundred thousand people turned out to cheer him. He chose the city which had seen open war among the Democrats to sound one of the central themes of his campaign.

Vice Pres. NIXON: [1968 campaign] This is a nation of laws and as Abraham Lincoln has said, "No one is above the law, no one is below the law," and we're going to enforce the law and Americans should remember that if we're going to have law and order.

NARRATOR: The emphasis on law and order appealed to millions of Americans. Nixon's television commercials hammered it home.

NIXON, Presidential Candidate: [television commercial] In recent years, crime in this country has grown nine times as fast as population. At the current rate, the crimes of violence in America will double by 1972. We cannot accept that kind of future for America. We owe it to the decent and law-abiding citizens of America to take the offensive against the criminal forces that threaten their peace and their security and to rebuild respect for law across this country. I pledge to you ...

NARRATOR: To the Democrats, Nixon's call for law and order played to the worst in Americans.

Senator HUMPHREY: But you can't vote your anger, you have to vote your hopes. You can't vote your hates, you have to vote your hopes.

The preamble to the Constitution doesn't just say "Double the rate of convictions," it doesn't just say, "Law and order," it says, "To ensure justice." And if Mr. Nixon hasn't read it, then I'll send him a copy.

NARRATOR: But Nixon had a feel for the issues that moved the middle American voter. They were the same issues that moved him. Blaming liberal Democrats for the upheaval in the country, he sought to rally a new Republican majority.

Vice Pres. NIXON: The new voice that is being heard across America today. It is not the voice of a single person, it's the voice of a majority of Americans who have not been the protesters, who have not been the shouters. The great majority finally have become angry, not angry with hate, but angry, my friends, because they love America and they don't like what has been happening to America for the last four years.

Third REPORTER: You've just heard Richard Nixon refer to you, among all these people, as the "forgotten Americans." What do you think he's referring to?

MAN ON THE STREET: Well, I sort of think he's talking about the people that are paying the taxes, that are supporting the schools, the churches, the people that are ... they are sort of forgotten because everything's aimed at welfare and things like that.

NARRATOR: Nixon's call to the "forgotten Americans" appealed to a bread band of voters, mostly white middle class, hawkish, patriotic. It was a group that felt ignored and excluded in the upheavals of the Sixties. And the strategy seemed to be working. Nixon held his strong lead into the fall.

Then, just before the election, President Johnson suddenly stopped the bombing of North Vietnam. Humphrey surged in the polls.

Senator HUMPHREY: We're going to have the biggest election surprise that America's known in 20 years. We're going to win this election! Thank you very much.

NARRATOR: By election night, Nixon and Humphrey were dead even. Nixon prepared his family for the possibility of still another defeat.

WALTER CRONKITE, CBS News: We see that Nixon has closed a little bit in the last few tabulations there.

GENE BARRY, Actor, Humphrey Supporter: I think before the morning is out, Hubert Humphrey will be the next president of the United States.

Mr. CRONKITE: And there have been no changes. None of those bit states have fallen yet, the ones we are waiting for.

NARRATOR: All night long, the lead shifted back and forth. The results weren't announced until 8:00 the next morning.

Mr. CRONKITE: With the 26 electoral votes in Illinois, Richard Nixon goes over the top with 287 electoral votes, he needed 270 to win and that seems to be the 1968 election.

COMMENTATOR: [at victory party] And he is beaming, Pat Nixon is beaming. One can't help but think back to 1960, when a tearful Pat Nixon was choking back the emotions. It was a totally different scene, of course, then. Here is possibly one of the most fantastic political comebacks in American history.

President-elect NIXON: I saw many signs in this campaign. Some of them were not friendly. Some were very friendly. But the one that touched me the most was one that I saw in Deshler, Ohio, at the end of a long day of whistle-stopping. A teenager held up the sign, "Bring us together," and that will be the great objective of this administration at the outset, to bring the American people together.

NARRATOR: Nixon spoke of unity, but his margin of victory had been extremely narrow. He had not reached out to blacks or the poor or opponents of the war. And a nation as badly divided as America in 1968 would not be easy to lead.