He wanted to tell them not to let their hatred of the war—which “I could well understand”—become hatred of their country and everything it stood for. Instead, the socially awkward Nixon rambled on about subjects like sports and international travel. “I hope it was because he was tired, but most of what he was saying was absurd,” a Syracuse University student who talked with him told a reporter. “Here we had come from a university that’s completely uptight, on strike, and when we told him where we were from, he talked about the football team.”
