There was a big cultural shift in the early seventies. The libs had coerced nixon into a slew of enviro legislation we still deal with, no one ‘liked’ vietnam, tv was getting edgier, and women could smoke Virginia Slims and get lung cancer just like men did.
I’m not all that sure Nixon was coerced. He even went so far as to embrace Keynesian public spending openly, never mind moving the dollar away from the gold standard. He could have vetoed so much of what he did pass, including very strange things such as the creation of Amtrak (instead of deregulating private railroads) and so many others.