Most people only know what the media told them, and the media was as controlled by Democrats then as today. Most of what the MSM said about Nixon was wrong.

Let me add to the events others described, that the racist and Liberal Democrats of the time started the Viet Nam War on an invented pretext and decided to fight a high casualty war of attrition with the Conscription military of their design.

This was very unpopular among the hoi poli who were drafted w/o the exemptions of the wealthier.

Liberal Nixon, who spent his career fighting racism, ending segragation in military, schools, housing, created the first Affirmative Action, created EPA, was fighting pollution ( he is reason we have clean air, clean water, safe cars safe roads safe workplaces and the landscape not filled with trash/litter), trying to calm down the Cold War, and help working people, among other things, was elected. Nixon was a (moderate) Quaker pacifist, who cut the NVN supply lines, defeated the Viet Cong guerrillas, destroyed the NVN regular army when it attacked. NVN held out hoping the Democrats would win in 1972 and run from Viet Nam. When Nixon was reelected NVN gave up and signed a Peace Treaty, and we withdrew from Viet Nam.

Later after Nixon was forced to resign, NVN, fully resupplied by Russia, invaded South Viet Nam, which had all its supplies it bought in USA cut off (held in port for investigation) by a vengeful Democrat Congress (SVN cooperated with Nixon). SVN with little or no ammunition, little gasoline, few working radios, no medical supplies, no spare parts for worn out helicopters, worn out trucks, worn out planes with no fuel, and no naval air support that we promised in the Peace Treaty (Democrat Congress prevented it) eventually fell to NVN.

Search Nixon: Halfway to Mt. Rushmore

The defining events of 1968 were the Tet Offensive, the assasinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the police riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The events illustrated that the country was turning towards liberal Dems, but that the conservative GOP would not go away easily.