ABSTRACT
Richard Nixon entered the presidency as the liberal consensus on reform and intervention abroad was already broken. After Nixon defeat in the 1960 presidential election, Nixon wrote a memoir, Six Crises, in which he described how he had handled difficult political crises. Nixon's first interest was foreign policy, and he traveled the world in the years out of office and thought much about new possibilities. Nixon's search for a middle way in domestic policy had to be a process of muddling through. Relations with the Soviets were productive in the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) treaty, but the cold war continued, primarily in third-world nations. As policy advisers floundered in disagreement, he eventually charged his White Housed counsel, John Ehrlichman, with coordinating the development of domestic policy. Johnson's policy analysts had begun to explore new ideas, and some of them stayed to help formulate what became a welfare reform proposal.
