ABSTRACT
Only Nixon could have done it. The Tory with the liberal principles, the internationalist with the hard-nosed reputation, the believer in free markets with the willingness, as he put it, to “leapfrog ’em all”—only Nixon, of all the men in the forefront of American public life, could have taken the steps he took in the eighteen-month period of 1971 and the first half of 1972.
