“We’ve got those liberal bastards on the run now,” he gloated, “and we’re going to keep them on the run.” To this end, Nixon unleashed Vice President Spiro Agnew, the administration’s acid-tongued attack dog, to denounce antiwar activists as “candle-carrying peaceniks” and “pusillanimous pussyfoot[ers]” whose “course will ultimately weaken and erode the very fiber of America”—red meat rhetoric to aroused conservatives.
