In 1952, Nixon was a US senator from California and was running for vice president under General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s campaign was successful, and Nixon served as vice president from 1952 to 1960. In 1960, he ran unsuccessfully for president against John F. Kennedy, but he was eventually elected as the 37th president of the United States in 1968, defeating Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Segregationist George Wallace of the short-lived American Independence Party. In 1974, a scandal that became known as Watergate led him to become the only US president ever to resign from office.

Nixon’s electoral success in 1968 owed much to widespread anxiety over the social and political turmoil of the era. He promised to return the country to a state of law and order and bring the war in Vietnam to a swift and, from the US perspective, successful end. As president, however, Nixon escalated bombing campaigns along the so-called Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia and Laos. These campaigns were meant to interrupt Viet Cong supply lines and force the North Vietnamese government to the bargaining table, but they resulted in high numbers of casualties, including among civilians, and led to intensified anti-war protests in the US.