The loss is there, an old wound never fully healed. My disappointment was certainly personal, made deeper by the awareness that many thousands of young Americans, and far more Vietnamese and other Asian citizens, were going to and did lose their lives with the Nixon administration’s continuation of the war.

And I was upset that my supporters would carry the burden of the loss, too — something that has weighed on me all these years. I wanted to win for them, just as I wanted to win for the soldiers I planned to bring home quickly, and for an economy I hoped to redirect toward peace and domestic investments.