From sea to shining sea

I was interested to read on the plaque below these bells at San Juan Capistrano that they were rung by the president of the United States, 'Mr Richard M. Nixon' and his wife, "Mrs Richard M. Nixon' in 1969. What struck me was the use of the 'mr' and 'mrs' prefixes. They are certainly less grandiose than what I was expecting, and I wonder if that has something to do with the times in which this plaque was struck. Apart from the glaring contradiction of Vietnam, were those times at least in some sense less imperial?
I enjoy being in this most southwestern corner of America. There is a prevalence of Spanish, as we seem to be wearing through to the deep-set footmarks of Portola, Fr Serra and others. As we booked accommodation in New York next month and were talking about things going on in faraway rocky Maine, I wondered how imperial and united this country really is these days. I remember thinking, when I watched some mayors debating on TV a couple of weeks ago (from memory there were the mayors of Atlanta, Washington, Cleveland, New York...), that each city may find its own solutions to the country's infrastructure shortfalls, and that maybe the country will devolve into city states. I am aware that in places Lakota may be as prevalent as Spanish, or Chinese or Vietnamese (though are there still Acaghchemem speakers - pronounced A-harcha-mum - around here?). There is far more variety and mass packed into this continental space (a factor certainly in squeezing up excellence.)
Outside the walls of the former mission was a plaque explaining that the mission was returned to the Catholic Church from the Forster family by proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln on 18 March 1865. Another thing struck me about this. Lincoln never made it this far west. But in the dying days of the Civil War, back east so, so far from here, such was the extent of his continental reach.

Two footnotes:
1. I found on Wiki-pedia that the Acagchemem language was recorded by Anastacia Majel and John P. Harrington in 1933 and that the tapes resurfaced in 1995. The language is being re-learnt by a number of members of the tribe whose number of enrolments now stands at 2,800.
2. During his presidency, Nixon maintained a 'White House' not far from here, at San Clemente. It's out on a headland which was pointed out to me the other day.