ieve in Vietnamization. Fifteen days after his speech, the White house gave David Derge, who was the administrations private pollster, the instruction to include the following text in his next poll: There has been considerable discussion surrounding Presidents Nixons speech on Vietnam Monday night. Criticisms have been made by some commentators who disagree with the President in his views. 63 Percent of respondents agreed with the president's views on Vietnam, while only 15 percent concurred with the commentators. They published this in order to convince the public that what Nixons policy was good, and in order to withstand any further criticism. Nixon claimed that the public hears the poll results and that makes an impact on themAt first Nixon was quite popular with the public. He promised both troop withdrawals and an honourable peace. However he did not follow this plan at all in the months and years to follow. After January 1970 his plans already started to deteriorate. The reason for this being that Nixon only wanted to withdraw troops under 3 criteria: -Progress in the negotiations-Success in the training of South Vietnamese armed forces-Reductions of enemy activityHowever in January 1970 there were worsening conditions in Cambodia and Laos. The enemy activity increased, nevertheless, on April 20 1970 he announced that he would be sending 150,000 military personnel home in the next 12 months. But just 10 days after this announcement he had sent U.S. and South Vietnamese troops into Cambodia. The circumstances at that time didnt meet up to all 3 of his criteria. Reason enough for Nixon to forget his promise and get the troops more involved in the war than getting them out. There were in that time many polls that looked at the publics opinion concerning the activities of the president. The internal polls of the White House came forth with mostly positive results, in favour of the president. A June 1970 poll stated that 58% of the Am...
