Remembering 1968: The return of Richard Nixon

Richard Schlesinger looks back at the hard-fought race for the presidency in the turbulent year of 1968, when President Johnson withdrew from seeking re-election, and Richard Nixon – following losses in runs for the White House and the California Governor’s Mansion – won the Republican presidential nomination and, ultimately, the presidency. Richard Schlesinger talks with biographer Evan Thomas, Nixon aide Dwight Chapin and speechwriter Pat Buchanan, and with then-Senator Walter Mondale, about the unpredictable contest between a law-and-order candidate hoping to shed his image as a “loser,” and a sitting vice president breaking from his own administration to vow an end to the bombing of North Vietnam.