Nixon: Determined to Make a Difference
HE reached for a place in history by opening a dialogue with China, ending a quarter-century of vitriolic estrangement between two of the world's major powers. He embarked upon a dazzling round of summitry that will culminate in odysseys to Peking and Moscow. He doggedly pursued his own slow timetable in withdrawing the nation's combat troops from their longest and most humiliating war, largely damping domestic discord unparalleled in the U.S. in more than a century. He clamped Government controls on the economy, causing the most drastic federal interference with private enterprise since the Korean War. He devalued the dollar, after unilaterally ordering changes in monetary policy that sent shock waves through the world's markets, and are leading to a badly needed fundamental reform of the international monetary machinery.
In doing all that--and doing it with a flair for secrecy and surprise that has marked his leadership as both refreshingly flexible and disconcertingly unpredictable--Richard Milhous Nixon, more than any other man or woman, dominated the world's news in 1971. He was undeniably the Man of the Year.
Sharp Break. Each of the U.S. President's momentous moves was only a start--and each could fail. In fact, rarely have there been so many large ventures in mid-passage so late in any presidential term. Still uninspiring in rhetoric and often stiff in style, for the first time during his presidency he emerged as a tough, determined world leader. Finally seizing firm control of his office, he was willing to break sharply with tradition in his privately expressed desire "to make a difference" in his time. Should all his ventures succeed, history will indeed record not only that he made a difference but that 1971 was a year of stupendous achievement. Even now, with matters only well begun, few modern Presidents can boast of having done so much in a single twelve-month span--perhaps Lyndon Johnson with his great flood of legislation in 1965, certainly Harry Truman with the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and Franklin Roosevelt in the New Deal heyday of 1933.
There were, of course, others with prime roles on the world stage. Britain's Prime Minister Edward Heath, with whom Nixon met in Bermuda last week, scored a decisive and deserved victory in persuading the House of Commons to approve Britain's entry into Europe's Common Market in 1973. He thus ended an often bitter ten-year struggle, bringing a step closer Jean Monnet's grand vision of a united Europe. West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt won a Nobel Peace Prize for his continued efforts to reach a reconciliation between his nation and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, an Ostpolitik whose initiation helped make him TIME's Man of the Year in 1970.
Only Chou. In the nervous Middle East, Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir and Egypt's President Anwar Sadat clung to a precarious cease-fire and flirted warily with proposals to ease tensions, while talking as pugnaciously as ever. Whatever the merits of their long-range goals, Pakistan's President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan (now deposed) and India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi brought more suffering to the subcontinent, he by turning his troops loose in a murderous rampage against rebellious Bengalis in East Pakistan, she by reacting with full-scale warfare to carve out the new state of Bangladesh.
In the U.S., a hitherto obscure former Pentagon analyst, Daniel Ellsberg, became famous overnight; he illuminated the nation's Viet Nam policy process and precipitated a classic clash between press and Government by releasing most of a 47-volume secret Pentagon study of the war. The Nixon Administration's Justice Department, under the President's closest personal adviser, Attorney General John Mitchell, acted swiftly in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent newspaper publication of the papers, then moved to prosecute Ellsberg. It was Mitchell, too, who decided to bring conspiracy charges against Roman Catholic Priest Philip Berrigan and several others for, among other things, an alleged plot to kidnap Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger as a means of dramatizing opposition to the war.
If anyone could challenge Nixon's ranking as the year's dominant figure, it was China's wily Chou Enlai. He not only strengthened his own hand in a Peking power struggle, but succeeded in his policy of pushing China on to the world's diplomatic stage. Despite forlorn efforts by the U.S. to keep Taiwan in the United Nations as China was finally admitted, Chiang Kai-shek's government was expelled. It was Chou, as well as the remote Chairman Mao Tse-tung, who responded to Nixon's overtures and opened the Forbidden City to Henry Kissinger, who had some claim of his own to be considered diplomacy's Man of the Year. But only a U.S. President could take the first steps toward rapprochement, and perhaps only a Republican President named Richard Nixon could have brought it off with so little conservative outcry.
It was a year in which the nation's perception of its President shifted sharply. In the early months, still fresh was the memory of his strident 1970 campaign, which exploited fear and tried to connect Democrats with rising crime and unrest. This approach was rejected by the voters and gave Nixon's most likely 1972 opponent, Senator Edmund Muskie, a priceless chance to appear cooler and wiser in an Election Eve broadcast.
Overstated Views. Apparently stung, Nixon took a loftier route in 1971, although there were some lapses. To protect his political right flank, he recklessly intervened in the case of Lieut. William Calley Jr., who was convincingly convicted of mass murder at My Lai; Nixon had to be reminded by an eloquent Army prosecutor, Captain Aubrey Daniel III, of the higher legal and moral issues at stake. He again attempted to make the Supreme Court into a haven for conservative mediocrity; before getting two solid nominees approved, he considered a list of people so undistinguished that the American Bar Association found some of them "not qualified."
He hurt himself in earlier years by overstating his old views and now overstated his new ones, like a man who has learned a new lesson and repeats it too vehemently. Exaggeration continued to be one of the less attractive traits of Nixon's rhetoric in 1971. Thus he claimed, without the slightest qualification, that "Vietnamization has succeeded." He offered the sweeping opinion that "I seriously doubt if we will ever have another war." When he devalued the dollar, he declared it "the most significant monetary agreement in the history of the world."
Nixon remains a tempting target for satiric attack, such as Novelist Philip Roth's scatological book Our Gang, about the insane career of President Trick E. Dixon, and the Emile de Antonio movie, Millhouse, in which Nixon newsreels old and new are played in counterpoint. Yet this type of thing has been done to Nixon for so long that a certain fatigue set in; unless he provides a great deal of fresh ammunition, Nixon-hating will become a bore. If he still has a problem inspiring complete trust, it is no longer a simple matter of the old Tricky Dick image. He is still suspected of timing his major moves for political advantage, but perhaps not much more so than most other Presidents.
Even as the President threw his own energies into world affairs, the problems at home continued to cry out for attention and a further reallocation of national resources. The so-called Nixon Doctrine proclaimed at Guam aimed at reducing other nations' dependence on the U.S. for maintaining peace abroad, and his exaggerated protectionist trade posture immediately after the freeze contributed for a time to the introspective mood. The Senate's initial rejection of the Administration's foreign aid authorization bill symbolized the national detachment, though stopgap funding was finally voted. The President continued to brood about this apparent trend toward isolationism. He was worried that the mood might become permanent in the national revulsion over the Viet Nam conflict.
Overall, concludes TIME Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey, "it was a singular journey through the twelve months of 1971. His style is one of sheer doggedness. He outlasts the street people, the park preachers, the student revolutionaries, the Senate critics. He just stays in there, ducking, weaving, changing when the pressure gets too bad. Yet there was something about his presidency that nudged the country along and raised hopes, set the stage for a change in mood in international affairs and headed the economy off in a new direction."
The President's extraordinary year encompassed four major areas of activity:
I: THE WAR
Even on Viet Nam the President's performance in 1971 was a surprise -- because of what he did not do. Repeatedly, the advance billing of his announcements on troop withdrawals fed speculation that he was about to pull U.S. soldiers out at a dramatic rate or specify a date for the total end of U.S. involvement. Yet each statement revealed only a slowly accelerating withdrawal timetable. From its high point at the time of the Cambodia invasion and the killing of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent State in the spring of 1970, the antiwar movement had faded.
But with the U.S.-supported invasion of Laos in February and March of 1971, it briefly threatened to regain its fervor.
Even the White House conceded that the sight of South Vietnamese soldiers clinging to the skids of helicopters in flight from Laos had turned its claims of a military success into a "public relations disaster." Whether the Laos incursion was worth it may remain one of the many unanswered questions of the war; the Administration still insists that it helped take the pressure off Saigon and reduce the level of fighting within South Viet Nam. In April some 200,000 protesters massed peacefully in Washington. At the same time, one of the war's most moving demonstrations took place. Quietly, some on crutches and wearing tattered uniforms, 700 U.S. veterans of the war stepped up to a wire fence in front of the Capitol Building and threw their painfully earned Purple Hearts, Silver Stars and other decorations into a glistening rubbish pile of ribbons and medals. "To President Nixon, I send you greetings," said one youthful vet as he tossed his ribbons into the air.
Momentum Lost. But when a second wave of some 50,000 demonstrators vowed to "stop the Government," Washington police, federal troops and the Justice Department got tough. Carrying out mass arrests, most of them illegal, they pushed some 12,000 protesters into buses and locked them up. Most were soon released for lack of evidence or improper arrest procedures, but the Government still functioned and the movement's momentum was lost, perhaps permanently.
By year's end, American deaths had fallen to fewer than ten a week. While no end to the death of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians was in sight, Nixon had withdrawn nearly 400,000 U.S. troops, leaving a force of 140,000 on Feb. 1. By election time in November, the current rate of withdrawal would leave well below 50,000 troops, mostly Army support units. Even that involvement may be at an end by then, according to Nixon (see box, page 14). However, the Administration has said that the U.S. will continue to provide air support, from Thailand or elsewhere, so long as the South Vietnamese require it, and continue air attacks on Communist positions in Laos and Cambodia.
U.S. military commanders expressed confidence that the South Vietnamese would not collapse as soon as the U.S. withdraws. After South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu ran a farcical re-election campaign devoid of any opposition, there was less U.S. hope about the future of democracy in that nation.
In sum, there was no question that the President could have moved faster to get out of Viet Nam; considering his campaign pledge that he would end the war, it was remarkable that the U.S. was still involved three years and 15,000 American deaths later. Yet in essence, the ground war seemed over, and the President defended his slow pace as necessary to ensure that "we leave in a way that gives the South Vietnamese a reasonable chance to survive as a free people," and also in a fashion that does not undermine the credibility of U.S. commitments to other allies or further divide the nation at home.
II: THE WORLD
For sheer shock theater, none of the year's events equaled Nixon's 90-second television announcement on July 15 that he would confer with Chou and Mao in Peking and that Henry Kissinger had already been there to prepare the way. Rarely had official Washington ever kept so momentous a secret so well. Taiwan officials fumed, and Japan's Premier Eisaku Sato lost face because his longtime U.S. ally had failed to consult with him on such a historic development in his own backyard. Besides being humiliated, Japan felt isolated as the U.S. prepared to bargain with its Asian rival; some diplomats feared that it might react by swinging to the right, perhaps even by developing its own nuclear capability. South Korea, still facing Communist troops to the north, now felt less certain of U.S. support. South Viet Nam was equally shocked. "Thieu just couldn't believe it," observed a Western military adviser there. "Here was the representative of his No. 1 wartime ally going off to discussions with the benefactor of his No. 1 enemy, and Thieu wasn't informed in advance. It was an incredible insult by the Americans."
Yet in much of the world and in the U.S., the bold venture was greeted with elation; a sense of fresh possibilities stirred dusty chancelleries around the globe. France-Soir observed that Nixon's decision "radically alters the international situation. It opens immense perspectives for the future of the world." At home, though there was some scattered protest from the right, a Harris public opinion survey found the U.S. public approving of the China trip by a margin of 68% to 19%.
The move was far from a sudden Nixon impulse. Less than two weeks after his Inauguration, he had sent Kissinger a memo declaring: "I think we should give every encouragement to the idea that this Administration is seeking rapprochement with the Chinese." But it was typical of the Nixon style to camouflage his intentions, work quietly through Kissinger's National Security Council and order thorough study before unfurling his fait accompli. A Government-wide review of China policy, initiated by one of Kissinger's galvanizing National Security staff memorandums (there have been 143 so far) in 1969, took six months to complete. A second, begun in 1970, took five months. The secret documents steadily proliferated. Before he took off for Peking, Kissinger had accumulated three volumes of messages about the trip. Only Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers had copies. Kissinger's two-volume briefing books were marked: TOP SECRET/ SENSITIVE/EXCLUSIVELY EYES ONLY.
Meeting thrice weekly at 6 p.m. in the privacy of Nixon's hideaway in the Executive Office Building or in the White House Lincoln Sitting Room, Kissinger and the President plotted their elaborate exchange of signals with the Chinese. Kissinger concentrated on the broad strategy, while Nixon, says Kissinger, was "enormously ingenious" in originating about 70% of the secret ways of communicating with Peking. Although table tennis was hardly anticipated as the vehicle, Chou's willingness to invite Americans into China was not a surprise. After the table tennis team's visit, Nixon was ready with a response. He announced that the U.S. was eager to seek ways of trading with China. Kissinger's trip in July followed.
With his usual thoroughness, Nixon is rigorously preparing himself for his journey in February. He is reading Dennis Bloodworth's The Chinese Looking Glass, John K. Fairbank's The United States and China, Francis Hsu's Americans and Chinese. He is working his way through thickets of memos from Kissinger, who returned with 500 pages of notes from his two separate flights to confer with Chou. All of those notes have been broken down by topic; the Chinese position on each subject is being exhaustively researched and a Nixon response or initiative is being outlined. Such intensive study is as necessary as it is Nixonian. Presidential aides concede that China has little to lose at the summit; if there is any way to take advantage of Nixon, the Chinese undoubtedly will try.
Major Questions. More than anything else, Nixon's outreach to the East symbolized the end of old patterns in international affairs. China, Japan and a newly strengthened Western Europe would play increasingly important roles in a complex, uncertain, but potentially more peaceful world having several power centers. Yet, while the old bipolar system was obviously changing, the U.S. and the Soviet Union for the near future would still remain the two real superpowers and the only nations with intercontinental ballistic missiles targeted at each other's cities. Thus one of the major questions about Nixon's China move was the extent to which it was aimed at the Soviet Union.
In the short run, it seems to have had a decidedly beneficial effect in improving U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations in 1971. The two nations reached agreement to ban biological warfare and signed a Big Four preliminary agreement to ensure freer travel between the two sectors of Berlin. Significant progress was made toward a historic agreement on limiting strategic nuclear arms; the prolonged SALT talks are expected to result in restrictions on offensive and defensive missile systems early in 1972, a major breakthrough in relations between the old cold war antagonists.
The China move also led to the scheduling of a summit meeting in May, when Nixon is due to meet Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. No postwar U.S. President has ever been to the Soviet Union while in office. Eisenhower had his plans to go in 1960 shot down along with Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane; Lyndon Johnson's trip was wiped out by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. If Nixon is able to make it to Moscow, it will be no small achievement.
As 1971 closed, a new threat to Russian-American relations rose when war broke out between India and Pakistan. The U.S. abandoned neutrality to take a surprisingly strong stand in condemning India and supporting Pakistan's brutal--and losing--military government. Russia, just as vehemently, backed India, with which it had signed a treaty of friendship during the year. Yet even in that conflict, the two superpowers covertly cooperated to limit its scope.
In sum, it was a year of brilliant beginnings for Nixon in international affairs, a year in which the U.S. clearly regained the initiative and displayed both imagination and skill.
Ill: THE DOLLAR
Nixon's freeze on most wages, prices, rents and dividends, plus his 10% surcharge on most imports--and eventually his devaluation of the dollar --were the biggest shocks of all. This was especially true because he had spoken so often, right up to the last minutes, against such measures. But in the end he was forced to act because his "steady as she goes" economic policies were not working--a fact apparent early in the year to some of his economic advisers, whose warnings were ignored.
Nixon preferred to rely on what AFL-CIO President George Meany called the Administration's "bluebirds of happiness" to proclaim that every day in every way things were getting better and better. Although most of the economic indicators looked bad, Nixon himself predicted in March: "I think we'll have a hell of a good second half." When Federal Reserve Board Chairman Arthur Burns kept urging a get-tough incomes policy, Nixon told his top domestic affairs adviser, John Ehrlichman: "Let's try to get Arthur off this thing." Similar arguments from former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Murray Weidenbaum got an equally cool reception. "I felt like somebody who had walked into one of those fancy men's clubs with his fly unzipped," he recalled.
Never a Note. The key man in changing Nixon's mind was Secretary of the Treasury John Connally, the Texas tornado who moved into the job early in the year and quickly developed an amazing rapport with the President. A Democrat who had impressed Nixon by helping him find oil money in his 1968 presidential campaign, despite his own belated support of Hubert Humphrey, Connally had earlier turned down Nixon offers to become Secretary of Defense, but did serve impressively on a committee studying reorganization of the Executive Branch. The acquisition of Connally was another Nixon surprise and success, giving his generally gray Administration new lift and bounce.
Nixon and Connally began conferring on the inflationary economy and the unstable world money markets for two and three hours at a time. Unlike other aides, Connally never took a note, but remembered all. Keeping their plans secret for fear doubts would seep out, they began to sketch out the options open to the President. Yet publicly, they both sounded adamant against controls. Nixon was not at all certain that he actually would bite that bullet. He told a group of editors in Kansas City, Mo., as late as July 6: "You cannot have wage and price controls without rationing. They do not work in peacetime." About the same time, Connally was telling newsmen that there would be no wage-price freeze, no wage or price review boards, no tax cuts.
Despite Nixon's budget deficit --currently estimated at $28 billion for fiscal 1972, the largest since World War II--the economy was not responding, and inflation continued. Unemployment was not decreasing. The highly wishful estimate made in January of a $1,065 billion gross national product for calendar 1971 was out of reach; it is now expected to be $1,050 billion. By August, Nixon had an outline of potential controls ready. But Congress had adjourned and Nixon wanted to await its return in September before acting.
There was not that much time.
Connally, vacationing in Texas, was brought winging back by a telephone call on Aug. 13 from Under Secretary for Monetary Affairs Paul A. Volcker. Volcker told Connally that more than a billion dollars had shifted on the European monetary markets the day before, another $500 million in the morning. "It's a Friday and it ought to be a calmer day," advised the worried Volcker. The Bank of England was pressing for a guarantee that some $3 billion that was held in reserve would not be devalued. A panic seemed possible. "I'd better get up there," said Connally.
When Nixon called all of his top advisers to a climactic conference at Camp David, Connally clearly was second-in-command. Nixon laid out the problem in a crisp, 20-minute talk; Connally detailed the steps. Action would have to be fast. A dramatic impact was deliberately sought. "Much of the problem was psychological; much of the solution had to be psychological," Connally recalled. So Nixon went on TV on Aug. 15 to announce the historic policy shift to controls. He followed with the outlines of his longer-lasting Phase II machinery three months later.
First the freeze, then the flexible guidelines, produced considerable confusion. In the first month of Phase II, some 377,000 calls flooded Internal Revenue Service offices, which had been hastily pressed into service to answer questions from the public.
Connally, meanwhile, rushed into meetings with foreign finance ministers, dropped any pretense of charm, and freely used the 10% surcharge as a club to demand monetary concessions from the astonished officials. Worried about the global and domestic repercussions, Kissinger and Burns eventually asked Nixon to soften Connally's approach. Japan and Canada in particular were incensed at the trade penalties, since they rely so heavily upon U.S. markets. But the U.S. at year's end struck a good bargain. The deal was taking shape: a shift in the balance of world currencies in exchange for devaluation of the dollar and the dropping of the import surcharge.
In sum, Nixon acted belatedly but well on the domestic economy. Labor has won some big concessions from the Wage Board and removed some of the psychological tautness from the guidelines, thus diminishing the original sense of urgency created by the Administration. Nevertheless, many experts are optimistic about the ultimate effectiveness of the program, and TIME's Board of Economists is predicting solid economic recovery for 1972. The question remains whether the recovery will come quickly and widely enough to keep the economy from hurting Nixon in the election.
On the foreign economic front, Nixon and Connally played a daring and sometimes crude game of economic brinkmanship that at times seemed to threaten the entire fabric of U.S. relations with its friends and trading partners. While no one could foretell the long-range psychological effects and the resentments that might linger, by year's end Nixon and Connally had plainly cleared the way for the grinding task of renegotiating the Western world's trade and monetary system (see THE ECONOMY).
IV: THE U.S.
Except for his action on the economy, Nixon has failed to convey any feeling of urgency in his attacks on domestic problems. The "New American Revolution" that he sketched last January in his State of the Union speech never resembled John Mitchell's overblown description: "The most important document since they wrote the Constitution." But it did include some highly commendable ideas. None has yet been acted upon.
His "six great goals," except for his action on the economy, are all stalled. Welfare reform, revenue sharing, reorganization of the Executive Branch, improved health care and eliminating environmental pollution have been introduced in various forms but remain in limbo, only partially approved or ignored. Congress did vote $1.6 billion over three years for a concerted research drive against cancer and the Senate passed a far tougher water pollution bill than he sought.
Quiet Pride. Nixon's weak domestic record suffered further from the jolting defeat by Congress of his proposal to develop a supersonic jet transport aircraft. The event seemed to say that Americans are not only concerned about the environment, but no longer automatically buy the notion that the U.S. must always be first in everything.
Although a President is relatively powerless to reduce crime, Nixon had campaigned hard on a pledge to do so, and gave the impression that merely replacing Attorney General Ramsey Clark with a man like John Mitchell would work wonders. It did not; crime is still rising. While blacks have not been rioting, Nixon has done little to make them feel in the mainstream of the nation's life. Three times in the past year the watchdog U.S. Civil Rights Commission attacked his enforcement of civil rights legislation, once describing it as "less than adequate." Nixon repeatedly made plain his opposition to busing to achieve school integration, even as the courts often continued to encourage it. The President perhaps has a majority of Americans behind him in that view, but the fact remains that in many cities no other tool seems to exist to break up all-black schools. But the Nixon Administration takes quiet pride in its work in finishing the demolition of the dual school systems of the South, and also in encouraging craft unions, via the Philadelphia Plan, to admit and train minority members.
The Civil Rights Commission's chairman, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, said that "the Federal Government is not yet in a position to claim that it is enforcing the letter, let alone the spirit, of civil rights laws." Blacks see Nixon, claimed Clifford Alexander Jr., former chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, as "actively against our goals." The National Urban League's Harold Sims charged that under Nixon "the nation is still in the grip of a not silent but selfish majority."
Part of the problem with the New American Revolution is that many of Nixon's proposals are structural or procedural reorganizations--hardly the stuff of revolution. Besides, most social programs are harder to bring off than moves on the international chessboard. To succeed at home, a President must be able to move the nation as well as Congress. As for the nation, it remains in doubt whether he can indeed move it and (as he himself said he wanted to do) rekindle the Spirit of '76. As for Congress, Nixon does not relish the sweaty rituals of persuasion and blandishment that are necessary to marshal support on the Hill--especially when facing a Democratic majority. Indeed, one of the continuing surprises of Nixon's presidency is that Nixon, regarded as a master politician, is not very good at dealing with the politicians in Congress, even those of his own party.
Looking to 1972. As he heads into an election year, Nixon has the vast advantage of incumbency and of his own spectacular actions of 1971. His strategy will probably be to appear the cool and seasoned diplomat, the man grappling with lofty issues.
If the economy rebounds, the Democrats will be stuck largely with attacking Nixon's failure to solve social problems and deploring his personality. But a campaign based primarily on the President's personality will be difficult for any Democrat to carry off, and may backfire by building sympathy for a man who is clearly dedicated, clearly serious and hardworking, and who has surmounted formidable personal and political handicaps.
In 1971 President Nixon helped cool national passions. He made his bid for a historic niche on the issues of war and peace and in the business of keeping his nation economically solvent. Perhaps his major accomplishment was simply helping the U.S. to catch up. On the war, on China, on welfare reform, on devaluation, he moved the country to abandon positions long outdated and toward steps long overdue. In so doing, he also destroyed some once sacrosanct myths and shibboleths. The result in the U.S. was a greater sense of reality and of scaled-down expectations; given the temper of the times he inherited, that was mostly to the good. The ultimate judgment of his presidency will depend on how he manages to live within the new reality he himself tried to define--and on whether history accepts his definition.
Yet the standards he has set for his tenure are high. As Nixon mused one recent evening: "Nobody is going to remember an Administration which manages things 10% better." At the moment his adrenaline is flowing; his ambitions are large. Asked recently by an aide which of the earlier Presidents, exclusive of Washington, Jefferson and Madison, he most admired, Nixon ticked them off: Jackson, because he set the economy right; Lincoln, because he held the nation together; Cleveland, because he reasserted the strength of the presidency through his use of the veto; Teddy Roosevelt, because he busted the trusts; Wilson, because he fought for a noble dream; Franklin Roosevelt, because he changed the nation's social fabric. "They all made a difference in their time," said Richard Nixon, who is determined to do the same, and in some areas already has.
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