PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 10/12/1967 - HFSID 44638

RICHARD NIXON
Nixon sends thanks for remembering his mother.
Typed Letter signed: "Dick", 1p, 7¼x10¼. New York, N.Y., 1967 October 12. On personal letterhead to The Honorable Spruille Braden, New York, New York. In full: "I want you to know how deeply all of us appreciated your very thoughtful letter. My mother had a very special place in our hearts and your remembering her in this way meant more than I can say. Sincerely," Narrowly defeated for the Presidency by John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon was counted out by the pundits after he lost a contest for Governor of California in 1962 and railed angrily at the press in a post-election press conference. By 1967, Nixon's prospects were rapidly improving as President Johnson's was undone by the Vietnam war, rising racial tensions, and other problems. The apparent frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 1968, former Michigan Governor George Romney, seriously undermined his own campaign by claiming (August 1967) that he had been "brainwashed" by the Pentagon into supporting the Vietnam war. Although he had to stave off a challenge by supporters of California Governor Ronald Reagan at the Republican convention, Nixon would win the nomination on the first ballot and proceed to a narrow general election victory over another Vice President, Hubert Humphrey. (Nixon would have won more easily except for the third party candidacy of Alabama Governor George Wallace.) To a nation deeply anguished by the continuing war in Vietnam, Nixon's foreign policy experience would prove appealing. Despite Nixon's praise in this letter, H. Read McGrath did not emerge as a foreign policy advisor to the new President. Fold creases not near signature. Fine condition.