Amazing the abuses of power he committed, the actual crimes he urged, to win an election he won in a crushing landslide, anyway.
He won with not quite 61% of the vote and 520 EC votes to 17 for McGovern, who carried only Massachusetts and DC.
The polls always showed him with pretty strongly net positive approval ratings until well into 1973, when the Watergate scandal emerged.
Even at the end of his presidency he may have felt the war could have been won, that he was forced to back away from it by politicians at home.
He may have felt there was some price he could have imposed on the North and the VC that would have been, for them, too high.
He underestimated their willingness to "bear any burden, pay any price".
A willingness that meant the US could not win without genocidal, or nearly genocidal measures.
And that was a price too high for large parts of the American classe politique, who did in fact force him to back away, though lots of Americans would have been OK with it.
Although no doubt another reason for rejection of the war was utter disbelief in the domino theory according to which the loss of South Vietnam (a first domino) would ultimately threaten the loss of California (the last).
In fact, no further dominos fell in the path leading from Southeast Asia to North America, or indeed to anywhere, at all.
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