President Richard Nixon came into office with a promise to end the war, but once taking power he instead chose to continue the fighting—and in many ways, ratcheted it up. Nixon planned to threaten massive military escalation if Hanoi did not accept U.S. terms in the negotiations, a concept he described to his senior aide H. R. Haldeman as the “madman theory” of diplomacy. To impress the Vietnamese and their Soviet supporters of his seriousness, Nixon increased the operational readiness of U.S. nuclear forces and placed nuclear-armed B-52 bombers on alert status.
The peace movement responded to Nixon with a massive wave of protest, culminating in the historic Vietnam Moratorium of October 1969, which called for people to pause business as usual and engage in local action for peace—a concept both innovative and extremely popular. As soon as it was created, the idea caught on like wildfire, winning the endorsement of trade unions and professional associations, prominent intellectuals and artists, and former officials and members of Congress. On the day of the Moratorium, an estimated two million Americans participated in local activities, ranging from a gathering of 100,000 people on the Boston Common to rallies and prayer vigils in hundreds of cities and towns. A month later, the organizers of the Moratorium joined with the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam to bring hundreds of thousands of marchers to the capital.
Nixon was shaken. Previously, he had declared that “under no circumstances will I be affected whatever” by protest. But now, just months into his presidency, the antiwar movement had applied so much pressure he was forced to change policy. As he later admitted in his memoir, “Although publicly I continued to ignore the raging antiwar controversy, I had to face the fact that it had probably destroyed the credibility of my ultimatum to Hanoi.”
Like Nixon, Trump is not immune to mounting political opposition from the “radical left lunatics” he claims to ignore. In the first months of his presidency, after facing protests and court challenges, the White House backed off on some of its initial measures, halting its freeze on federal grant and loan programs and cuts to the federal health program for 9/11 survivors. If confronted with persistent mass protest and political pressure, the administration will be forced to abandon still more of its agenda.