He reached for a place in history by opening a dialogue with China, ending a quarter-century of vitriolic estrangement between two of the world's major powers. He embarked upon a dazzling round of summitry that will culminate in odysseys to Peking and Moscow. He doggedly pursued his own slow timetable withdrawing the nation's combat troops from their longest and most humiliating war, largely damping domestic discord unparalleled in the U.S. in more than a century. He clamped Government controls on the economy, causing the most drastic federal interference with private enterprise since the Korean War. He devalued the dollar, after unilaterally ordering changes in monetary policy that sent shock waves through the world's markets, and are leading to a badly needed fundamental reform of the international monetary machinery. [an error occurred while processing this directive]

In doing all that—and doing it with a flair for secrecy and surprise that has marked his leadership as both refreshingly flexible and disconcertingly unpredictable—Richard Milhous Nixon, more than any other man or woman, dominated the world's news in 1971. He was undeniably the Man of the Year.

Sharp Break. Each of the U.S. President's momentous moves was only a start—and each could fail. In fact, rarely have there been so many large ventures in mid-passage so late in any presidential term. Still uninspiring in rhetoric and often stiff in style, for the first time during his presidency he emerged as a tough, determined world leader. Finally seizing firm control of his office, he was willing to break sharply with tradition in his privately expressed desire "to make a difference" in his time. Should all his ventures succeed, history will indeed record not only that he made a difference but that 1971 was a year of stupendous achievement. Even now, with matters only well begun, few modern Presidents can boast of having done so much in a single twelve-month span—perhaps Lyndon Johnson with his great flood of legislation in 1965, certainly Harry Truman with the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and Franklin Roosevelt in the New Deal heyday of 1933.

There were, of course, others with prime roles on the world stage. Britain's Prime Minister Edward Heath, with whom Nixon met in Bermuda last week, scored a decisive and deserved victory in persuading the House of Commons to approve Britain's entry onto Europe's Common Market in 1973. He thus ended an often bitter ten-year struggle, bringing a step closer Jean Monnet's grand vision of a united Europe. West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt won a Nobel Peace Prize for his continued efforts to reach a reconciliation between his nation and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, an Ostpolitik whose initiation helped make him TIME's Man of the Year in 1970.

Only Chou. In the nervous Middle East, Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir and Egypt's President Anwar Sadat clung to a precarious cease-fire and flirted warily with proposals to ease tensions, while talking as pugnaciously as ever. Whatever the merits of their long-range goals, Pakistan's President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan (now deposed) and India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi brought more suffering to the subcontinent, he by turning his troops loose in a murderous rampage against rebellious Bengalis in East Pakistan, she by reacting with full- scale warfare to carve out the new state of Bangladesh.

In the U.S. a hitherto obscure former Pentagon analyst, Daniel Ellsberg, became famous overnight; he illuminated the nation's Viet Nam policy process and precipitated a classic clash between press and Government by releasing most of a 47- volume secret Pentagon study of the war. The Nixon Administration's Justice Department, under the President's closest personal advisor, Attorney General John Mitchell, acted swiftly in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent newspaper publication of the papers, then moved to prosecute Ellsberg. It was Mitchell, too, who decided to bring conspiracy charges against Roman Catholic Priest Phillip Berrigan and several others for, among other things, an alleged plot to kidnap Presidential Advisor Henry Kissinger as a means of dramatizing opposition to the war.

If anyone could challenge Nixon's ranking as the year's dominant figure, it was China's wily Chou En-lai. He not only strengthened his own hand in a Peking power struggle, but succeeded in his policy of pushing China on to the world's diplomatic stage. Despite forlorn efforts by the U.S. to keep Taiwan in the United Nations as China was finally admitted, Chang Kai-shek's government was expelled. It was Chou, as well as the remote Chairman Mao Tse-tung, who responded to Nixon's overtures and opened the Forbidden City to Henry Kissinger, who had some claim of his own to be considered diplomacy's Man of the Year. But only a U.S. President could take the first steps toward rapproachment, and perhaps only a Republican President named Richard Nixon could have brought it off with so little conservative outcry.

It was a year in which the nation's perception of its President shifted sharply. In the early months, still fresh was the memory of his strident 1970 campaign, which exploited fear and tried to connect Democrats with rising crime and unrest. This approach was rejected by the voters and gave Nixon's most likely 1972 opponent, Senator Edmund Muskie, a priceless chance to appear cooler and wiser in an Election Eve broadcast.

Overstated Views. Apparently stung, Nixon took a loftier route in 1971, although there were some lapses. To protect his political right flank, he recklessly intervened in the case of Lieut. William Calley, Jr., who was convincingly convicted of mass murder at My Lai; Nixon had to be reminded by an eloquent Army prosecutor, Captain Aubrey Daniel III, of the higher legal and moral issues at stake. He again attempted to make the Supreme Court into a haven for conservative mediocrity; before getting two solid nominees approved, he considered a list of people so undistinguished that the American Bar Association found some of them "not qualified."

He hurt himself in earlier years by overstating his old views and now overstated his new ones, like a man who has learned a new lesson and repeats it too vehemently. Exaggeration continued to be one of the less attractive traits of Nixon's rhetoric in 1971. Thus he claimed, without the slightest qualification, that "Vietnamization has occurred." He offered the sweeping opinion that "I seriously doubt if we will ever have another war." When he devalued the dollar, he declared it "the most significant monetary agreement in the history of the world."

Nixon remains a tempting target for satiric attack, such as Novelist Philip Roth's scatological book Our Gang, about the insane career of President Trick E. Dixon, and the Emile de Antonio movie Millhouse, in which Nixon newsreels old and new are played in counterpoint. Yet this type of thing has been done to Nixon for so long that a certain fatigue set in; unless he provides a great deal of fresh ammunition, Nixon-hating will become a bore. If he still has a problem inspiring complete trust, it is no longer a simple matter of the old Tricky Dick image. He is still suspected of timing his major moves for political advantage, but perhaps not much more so than most other Presidents.

Even as the President threw his own energies into world affairs, the problems at home continued to cry out for attention and a further reallocation of national resources. The so-called Nixon Doctrine proclaimed at Guam aimed at reducing other nations' dependence on the U.S. for maintaining peace abroad, and his exaggerated protectionist trade posture immediately after the freeze contributed for a time to the introspective mood. The Senate's initial rejection of the Administration's foreign aid authorization bill symbolized the national detachment, though stopgap funding was finally voted. The President continued to brood about this apparent trend toward isolationism, He was worried that the mood might become permanent in the national revulsion over the Viet Nam conflict.

Overall, concludes TIME Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey, "it was a singular journey through the twelve months of 1971. His style is one of sheer doggedness. He outlasts the street people, the park preachers, the student revolutionaries, the Senate critics. He just stays in there, ducking, weaving, changing when the pressure gets too bad. Yet there was something about his Presidency that nudged the country along and raised hopes, set the stage for a change in mood in international affairs and headed the economy off in a new direction."

The President's extraordinary year encompassed four major areas of activity:

I: The War

Even on Viet Nam the President's performance in 1971 was a surprise—because of what he did not do. Repeatedly, the advance billing of his announcements on troop withdrawals fed speculation that he was about to pull U.S. soldiers out at a dramatic rate or specify a date for the total end of U.S. involvement. Yet each statement revealed only a slowly accelerating withdrawal timetable. From its high point at the time of the Cambodia invasion and the killing of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent State in the spring of 1970, the antiwar movement had faded. But with the U.S.-supported invasion of Laos in February and March of 1971, it briefly threatened to regain its fervor.

Even the White House conceded that the sight of South Vietnamese soldiers clinging to the skids of helicopters in flight from Laos had turned its claims of a military success unto a "public relations disaster." Whether the Laos incursion was worth it may remain one of the many unanswered questions about the war; the Administration still insists that it helped take the pressure off Saigon and reduce the level of fighting within South Viet Nam. In April some 200,000 protesters massed peacefully in Washington. At the same time, one of the war's most moving demonstrations took place. Quietly, some on crutches and wearing tattered uniforms, 700 U.S. veterans of the war stepped up to a wire fence in front of the Capitol Building and threw their painfully earned Purple Hearts, Silver Stars and other decorations into a glistening rubbish pile of ribbons and medals. "To President Nixon. I send you greetings." said one youthful vet as he tossed his ribbons into the air.

Momentum Lost. But when a second wave of some 50,000 demonstrators vowed to "stop the Government." Washington police, federal troops and the Justice Department got tough. Carrying out mass arrests, most of them illegal, they pushed some 12,000 protesters into buses and locked them up. Most were soon released for lack of evidence or improper arrest procedures, but the Government still functioned and the movement's momentum was lost, perhaps permanently.

By year's end, American deaths had fallen to fewer than ten a week. While no end to the death of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians was in sight, Nixon had withdrawn nearly 400,000 U.S. troops, leaving a force of his longer-lasting Phase II machinery three months later.

First the freeze, then the flexible guidelines, produced considerable confusion. In the first month of Phase II, some 377,000 calls flooded Internal Revenue Service offices, which had been hastily pressed into service to answer questions from the public.

Connally, meanwhile, rushed into meetings with foreign finance ministers, dropped any pretense of charm, and freely used the 10% surcharge as a club to demand monetary concessions from the astonished officials. Worried about the global and domestic repercussions, Kissinger and Burns eventually asked Nixon to soften Connally's approach. Japan and Canada in particular were incensed at the trade penalties, since they rely so heavily upon U.S. markets. But the U.S. at year's end struck a good bargain. The deal was taking shape: a shift in the balance of world currencies in exchange for devaluation of the dollar and the dropping of the import surcharge.

In sum, Nixon acted belatedly but well on the domestic economy. Labor has won some big concessions from the Wage Board and removed some of the psychological tautness from the guidelines, thus diminishing the original sense of urgency created by the Administration. Nevertheless, many experts are optimistic about the ultimate effectiveness of the program, and TIME's Board of Economists is predicting solid economic recovery for 1972. The question remains whether the recovery will come quickly and widely enough to keep the economy from hurting Nixon in the election.

On the foreign economic front, Nixon and Connally played a daring and sometimes crude game of economic brinkmanship that at times seemed to threaten the entire fabric of U.S. relations with its friends and trading partners. While no one could foretell the long-range psychological effects and the resentments that might linger, by year's end Nixon and Connally had plainly cleared the way for the grinding task of renegotiating the Western world's trade and monetary system.

IV: The U.S.

Except for his action in the economy, Nixon has failed to convey any feeling of urgency in his attacks on domestic programs. The "New American Revolution" that he sketched last January in his State of the Union speech never resembled John Mitchell's overblown description: "The most important document since they wrote the Constitution." But it did include some highly commendable ideas. None has yet been acted upon.

His "six great goals," except for his action on the economy, are all stalled. Welfare reform, revenue sharing, reorganization of the Executive Branch, improved health care and eliminating environmental pollution have been introduced in various forms but remain in limbo, only partially approved or ignored. Congress did vote $1.6 billion over three years for a concerted research drive against cancer and the Senate passed a far tougher water pollution bill than he sought.

Quiet Price. Nixon's weak domestic record suffered further from the jolting defeat by Congress of his proposal to develop a supersonic jet transport aircraft. The event seemed to say that Americans are not only concerned about the environment, but no longer automatically buy the notion that the U.S. must always be first in everything.

Although a President is relatively powerless to reduce crime, Nixon had campaigned hard on a pledge to do so, and gave the impression that merely replacing Attorney General Ramsay Clark with a man like John Mitchell would work wonders. It did not; crime is still rising. While blacks have not been rioting, Nixon has done little to make them feel in the mainstream of the nation's life. Three times in the past year the watchdog U.S. Civil Rights Commission attacked his enforcement of civil rights legislation, once describing it as "less than adequate." Nixon repeatedly made plain his opposition to busing to achieve school integration, even as the courts often continued to encourage it. The President perhaps has a majority of Americans behind him in that view, but the fact remains that in many cities no other tool seems to exist to break up all-black schools. But the Nixon Administration takes quiet pride in its work in finishing the demolition of the dual school systems of the South, and also in encouraging craft unions, via the Philadelphia Plan, to admit and train minority members.

The Civil Rights Commission's chairman, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, said that "the Federal Government is not yet in a position to claim that it is enforcing the letter, let alone the spirit, of civil rights laws." Blacks see Nixon, claimed Clifford Alexander Jr., former chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, as "actively against her goals." The National Urban League's Harold Sims charged that under Nixon "the nation is still in he grip of a not silent but selfish majority."

Part of the problem with the New American Revolution is that many of Nixon's proposals are structural or procedural reorganizations—hardly the stuff of revolution. Besides, most social programs are harder to bring off than moves on the international chessboard. To succeed at home, a President must be able to move the nation as well as Congress. As for the nation, it remains in doubt whether he can indeed move it and (as he himself said he wanted to do) rekindle the Spirit of '76. As for Congress, Nixon does not relish the sweaty rituals of persuasion and blandishment that are necessary to marshal support on the Hill—especially when facing a Democratic majority. Indeed, one of the continuing surprises of Nixon's presidency is that Nixon, regarded as a master politician, is not very good at dealing with the politicians in Congress, even those of his own party.

Looking to 1972. As he heads into an election year, Nixon has the vast advantage of incumbent and of his own spectacular actions of 1971. His strategy will probably be to appear the cool and seasoned diplomat, the man grappling with lofty issues.

If the economy rebounds, the democrats will be stuck largely with attacking Nixon's failure to solve social problems and deploring his personality. But a campaign based primarily on the President's personality will be difficult for any Democrat to carry off, and may backfire by building sympathy for a man who is clearly dedicated, clearly serious and hard- working, and who has surmounted formidable personal and political handicaps.

In 1971 President Nixon helped cool national passions. He made his bid for a historic niche on the issues of war and peace and in the business of keeping his nation economically solvent. Perhaps his major accomplishment was simply helping the U.S. to catch up. On the war, on China, on welfare reform, on devaluation, he moved the country to abandon positions long outdated and toward steps long overdue. In so doing, he also destroyed some once sacrosanct myths and shibboleths. The result in the U.S. was a greater sense of reality and of scaled-down expectations; given the temper of the times he inherited, that was mostly to the good. The ultimate judgement of his presidency will depend on how he manages to live within the new reality he himself tried to define—and on whether history accepts his definition.

Yet the standards he has set for his tenure is high. As NIxon mused one recent evening: "Nobody is going to remember an Administration which manages things 10% better." At the moment his adrenaline is flowing: his ambitions are large. Asked recently by an aide which of the earlier Presidents, exclusive of Washington, Jefferson and Madison, he most admired, Nixon ticked them off: Jackson, because he set the economy right; Lincoln, because he held the nation together; Cleveland, because he reasserted the strength of the presidency trough his use of the veto; Teddy Roosevelt, because he busted the trusts; Wilson, because he fought for a noble dream; Franklin Roosevelt, because he changed the nation's social fabric. "They all made a difference in their time," said Richard Nixon, who is determined to do the same, and in some areas already has.

COVERS GALLERY: Click here to see the cover image from 1971

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