1918-
Evangelist

Political Ties.

Billy Graham expanded his influence in the course of the 1970s after the embarrassment of his close association with the failed presidency of Richard Nixon. Graham had a long friendship with Nixon. In contrast to his hesitation in 1960, Graham endorsed Nixon in the 1968 and 1972 presidential races. Nixon even half offered the vice-presidential nomination to the evangelist in 1968, an offer easily declined in jest.

Graham and Nixon.

Graham's esteem for the new president was obvious in his frequent presence at White House prayer breakfasts and other quasi-religious events. In May 1970 Graham invited the president to join his crusade in Knoxville, Tennessee, where the president spoke to a huge audience at the University of Tennessee football stadium, the first university campus Nixon had visited since the student turmoil which followed the Kent State shootings earlier that month. In spite of the sympathetic crowd in...