1969: Nixon Gives Voice to the 'Silent Majority'

Richard Nixon was sworn in as the 37th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 1969, on a pledge to achieve "peace with honor" and end the Vietnam war. He found it a difficult pledge to keep, even with a "silent majority" backing his decisions.

Nixon's inauguration marked the former vice president's political rebirth. Having lost the presidential election in 1960, he ran for governor of California -- and lost -- just two years later. It was after that defeat that he famously declared that voters "won't have Nixon to kick around anymore."

But the Vietnam War ultimately forced President Lyndon Johnson's decision not to run for re-election in 1968, and Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey in November, completing his remarkable comeback. Two months later, in his 1969 inaugural speech, Vietnam was foremost in the new president's mind.

"The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker," Nixon said. "This honor now beckons America -- the chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil and on to that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization. If we succeed, generations to come will say of us now living that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world safe for mankind. This is our summons to greatness."

But he also sought healing in areas other than war, committing to equality and community as well as another view of the world from space.

To that end, Nixon had several achievements in his first year in office: He successfully appointed Warren E. Burger to be the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; he presided over the first budget surplus since 1960; he called for anti-hunger and welfare overhaul programs that eventually became law and expanded the early education program Head Start into a Cabinet level agency; he launched Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with Russia to freeze the number of ballistic missile launchers and he began the long thaw with China by relaxing a 19-year embargo.

The moon landing was also to go down in history as one of America's greatest moments.

Still, war became the marker of Nixon's first year in office and beyond.

Similar to pledges made in the 2008 general election, Nixon proposed an eight-point peace plan in May 1969 aimed at removing the U.S. from the war. It was followed by an announcement in June that 25,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn from South Vietnam by Aug. 31.

But by the spring, Nixon had appeared to the anti-war movement as someone willing to wage war at all costs, and protesters cynically viewed his September announcement that he was calling off the draft for November and December 1969 as a ploy to quiet student demonstrators.

On Nov. 3, 1969, the president gave a televised speech in which he said his administration had adopted a plan in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces "on an orderly scheduled timetable."

At the same time, however, he pleaded with "the great silent majority of my fellow Americans" for support of the Vietnam plan.

Later that month, Nixon signed legislation imposing a draft lottery. The war ended up lasting into his second term.

The State Department notes on its Web site that the January 1973 accords titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam and signed by the U.S., North and South Vietnam "neither ended the war (except for the United States) nor restored the peace."