Johnny Cash performs at the White House at the invitation of President Richard M. Nixon. Cash is aware he is being used as a sop to white southerners in the upcoming election. The White House’s request that Cash play Guy Drake’s “Welfare Cadillac,” Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee” and Cash’s own “A Boy Named Sue.” Cash agreed to play his own, but dodged the first two saying that he hadn’t had time to work on arrangements with the band. The requested songs had become “lightning rods for antihippie and antiblack sentiment.