ietnam was running out. They desperately wanted an end to the war. In February 1973 the Paris Accords were signed. Through the Paris Peace Accords, Nixon wanted to achieve peace with honour. Polling influenced the White House and its decisions in two ways. The White House used symbolic polling to maximise its freedom of manoeuvre in trying to achieve peace with honour. And at the same time, however, its public opinion intelligence capacity kept the administration fully aware of the limits imposed by the public's war weariness. Nixon was certainly not the type to do exactly what the public demanded, but whenever he took aggressive actions, public opinion constrained him to take those actions even further. Nixon succeeded in the battle to buy time, but failed to build sufficient political support at home so he could fulfil his initial requirements for peace with honour in Vietnam. In the end, Nixons requirements for an honourable peace had to change in order to come to a quick agreement with North Vietnam. This proves just how important the public is in warfare. Even president Nixon, who had many polling results in his favour, had to change his ideals and demands for peace, just so he could please the public. ConclusionAfter making this project I have come to the conclusion that Nixon did indeed play a very important role in the Vietnam War. A very important factor in which type of role Nixon had, lies in the influence from the public. Due to a lack of public support Nixon could not handle the war the way he initially wanted to. Nixon didnt see how important it was to get the public on your side. He attempted to use poles to show people that many others did indeed believe that what he was doing was right. With this method he was able to suppress major uprisings of criticism for some time, but not for the entire war. It could be argued that if Nixon would have listened to the public, the war might have had a different outcome. If this outc...
