Agnew. In the campaign, Nixon appealed to a nation tired of crime, protests and the kind of violence that had marred the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Nixon won a sparse 31.770.237 votes to 3.270.553 for his Democratic opponent, Vice-president Hubert H. Humphrey and 9.906.141 for former Alabama governor George Wallace, who ran on the American Independent Part ticket.

The Presidential Years
Nixon carried into White House his moderately conservative approach to domestic affairs. In the face of strong Congressional opposition, he pared federal spending for social programs; dismantled the Office of Economic Opportunity, created in 1964 to deal with problems of poverty; launched a new farm program reducing subsidies; spoke out firmly against busing as a means of achieving racial balance in schools; and denounced a growing permissiveness that had fostered violent demonstrations. He named strict constitutional constructionists to four Supreme Court vacancies, halting the court’s nearly two-decade-old liberal swing. He capsuled his philosophy of a new self-reliance for America’s citizens in his second inaugural address when he said, “In our own lives, let each of us ask not just what will government do for me, but what I can do for myself.”
Internationally, Nixon was preoccupied from the outset with his campaign pledge to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and bring “peace with honor.” At a stop in Guam during a seven-nation world tour in July 1969, Nixon announced his intended policy: that while the United States would continue to aid Asian nations resisting Communism, it would no longer engage troops in Asian land wars. This “doctrine” carried a message for all U.S. allies to do more for themselves but did not suggest that Nixon intended for his nation to relinquish any of its status as a superpower. He made this point clear in April 1970, when he ordered troops into Cambodia to destroy Communist “sanctuaries” and bolster a newly established pro-Western government. The action unleashed a fresh outbreak of campus demonstrations, which resulted in the deaths of four students in Kent State University in Ohio at the hands of National Guard troops. Nixon ignored the national outrage and continued “Vietnamization,” turning the ground combat role over to South Vietnamese troops. In May 1972he ordered the mining of North Vietnamese ports and waterways. On October 26, just before the 1972elections, his national security adviser, Henry A.