Richard Milhous Nixon was an American politician who served as the 37th president of the United States from 1969 until 1974.

He served on active duty in the Navy Reserve during World War II. His unit prepared manifests and flight plans for R4D/C-47 operations and supervised the loading and unloading of the transport aircraft. For this service, he received a Navy Letter of Commendation.

Nixon and Franklin Roosevelt are the only two candidates to appear on a national presidential ticket five times. Nixon won election in four of the five races, as did FDR. Nixon was the winning vice-presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956, the losing presidential candidate in 1960, and the winning presidential candidate in 1968 and 1972. Roosevelt won four presidential elections and lost as a vice presidential candidate in 1920.

A member of the Republican Party, Nixon rose to national prominence as a representative and senator from California.

He was the running mate of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party's presidential nominee in the 1952 election, subsequently serving for eight years as the vice president.

In September 1952, the Republican ticket faced a major crisis when it was discovered that Nixon had a political fund, maintained by his backers, which reimbursed him for political expenses. With pressure building for Eisenhower to drop him from the ticket, Nixon went on television to deliver what would later be called the Checkers speech, stating that the donors had not received special favors. He painted himself as a man of modest means and refused to give back one gift in particular: "a little cocker spaniel dog ... sent all the way from Texas. And our little girl--Tricia, the 6-year-old--named it Checkers." The speech prompted a huge outpouring of support for Nixon, and Eisenhower decided to retain him on the ticket.

He unsuccessfully ran for president in 1960, narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy. Nixon then lost a race for governor of California to Pat Brown in 1962. In 1968, he ran for the presidency again and was elected, defeating Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace in a close election.

While Nixon called for increased spending on such high-profile items as sickle-cell disease and for a War on Cancer, at the same time he sought to reduce overall spending at the National Institutes of Health.

President Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States and mainland China after years of diplomatic isolation.

Nixon was ahead in most polls for the entire election cycle, and was reelected on November 7, 1972, in one of the largest landslide election victories in American history. He defeated Democrat George McGovern with over 60 percent of the popular vote, losing only in Massachusetts and D.C.