Presidency of Richard Nixon civil libertarians. In response to growing drug-related crime, Nixon became the first president to emphasize drug control, and he presided over the establishment of the Drug Enforcement Administration. After a nearly decade-long national effort, the United States won the race to land astronauts on the moon on July 20, 1969, with the flight of Apollo 11. Nixon spoke with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their moonwalk. He called the conversation "the most historic phone call ever made from the White House". Nixon, however, was unwilling to keep funding for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at the high
Presidency of Richard Nixon Presidency of Richard Nixon The presidency of Richard Nixon began on January 20, 1969, when Richard Nixon was inaugurated as the 37th President of the United States, and ended on August 9, 1974 when he resigned from office, the first (and to date only) U.S. president ever to do so. A Republican, Nixon took office after the 1968 presidential election, in which he defeated Hubert Humphrey, the then–incumbent Vice President. Four years later, in 1972, he won reelection in a landslide victory over U.S. Senator George McGovern. Nixon, the 37th United States president, succeeded Lyndon B. Johnson, who had launched