wever, Nixon and his aides still felt undersized during the summer of 1970-from the media, movement, and Congress. For whatever reasons, campus demonstrations and general antiwar activity declined after the spring of 1970. The number andsize of marches and protests declined as reported by the mass media. For Nixon, the nation was full with marches, strikes, boycotts, and other forms of activism during the last two years of his administration. Some protesting still lingered, and in the late summer on August 7, 1970, when a young researcher at the University of Wisconsin was killed when the building in which he was working was fire bombed. But the Dove rallies were poorly attended; the movement was winding down. It was not just that the movement was doing poorly, as Nixon himself was doing much better, becoming a popular Democratic spokesperson. On September 16, he appeared to cheering crowds at Kansas State University. The antiwar movement figured indirectly in the outcome of Vietnam. After Saigon fell, the Watergate affair crippled Nixon'spresidency and dominated his political life until his resignation in August 1974. During this period, he was far too weak to contest with Congress over a renewal of American military involvement in Vietnam. As the crisis in Southern Vietnam now deepened in the middle of 1974, the new president, Gerald Ford, wanted to increase military aide to the faltering Saigon regime. Congress refused his requests to what it saw as pouring more money and lives away. Continuing in 1974 to 1975, the public with the movement, led by Congress and the media, all influenced the arguments presented to more financial and militarycommitments in Vietnam. The struggle of the American minds was over, for there would be no more Vietnams in the near future. ( VN H. and P.). Among the most convincing theories of the movement were that it exerted pressures directly on Johnson and Nixon it contributed to the en...
