How the Watergate Scandal Changed the Way we View our Presidents In 1972 a president would need to be elected for the next term, the two candidates were Richard Nixon and George McGovern. Richard Nixon who had already been on his first term won the election. Nixon tried to get ahead of his opponent in every way possible and went to extreme measures to do so. Nixon went out and got a heist crew to do a high risk, high reward robbery against the Democratic party trying to get an advantage on McGovern. This event known as the Watergate Scandal, would change America's view on presidents for decades to come. In May 1972, members of Nixon’s committee broke into the Watergate building of the Democratic Committee, they stole top-secret files and …show more content…
Watergate affected how our presidents would be treated by the other branches of the government with the way Nixon acted and lied to the whole entire country of America. A weakened president seat would give the congress and house of representatives more power over how Americans rule until presidents can regain the trust that they had prior to Watergate (U.S. News Staff). Americans also feared that the two-party system would go away because people were becoming more independent. Nixon at first said that he had no involvement in the break-in of the Watergate building, which was a complete lie and would later get him into even more trouble. Nixon fired a special prosecutor who wanted to look into the tapes that he refused to hand over (President Richard Nixon and the Watergate Scandal). Eventually, when Nixon went to trial the judge asked him to hand over the tapes there were parts missing, which showed the country that he was covering up something. These tapes would show that Nixon had acknowledgement of the break-in a week before it even happened. The judge ended up convicting Nixon with three felonies, federal crime, abusing presidential powers, and keeping evidence. Furthermore, Nixon was forced to resign from the presidential seat and handing over the seat to Gerald Ford, who is the only president to not be elected as president
This action violated the rights of the people who worked for the democratic party making Nixon look bad as a president. He wanted to not be involucrated on this scandal and wanted a solution so under growing pressure to hand over the tapes, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire special watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. He wanted to get out of the problem but it just prove that it was true about the
The Break-Ins And Some Of The Early Cover-Up Attempts May of 1972, the first break in at DNC’s (Democratic National Committee) Watergate headquarters occurs, as members of President Nixon’s C.R.E.E.P.(Committee to Re-Elect the President) break in stealing copies of top-secret documents and wire-tapping their phones and neither caught nor detected by guards or any other personal on duty. However, the burglars later realized that the bugs they placed in the phones were faulty so they sent a group of 5 men back that same year, on the seventeenth of June, to fix or replace them. But just as smoothly as the first break-in was the second break-in was just as much of a failure. The group was quickly spotted by one of the guards on duty that night
How should history view Rutherford B. Hayes: hero or villain? Explain. Rutherford Hayes the 19th President of the United States didn’t win the popular vote but, “was elected president after a partisan Electoral commission awarded him all of the electoral votes in dispute.” Hayes appears to have a good personality and to have good intentions for the country. It Also seems that he has a very good reputation for honesty.
The 29th president of the United States, Warren Harding, is known for very few things including having one of the worst presidencies in history and being part of arguably the biggest financial scandal in the U.S. The Teapot Dome scandal is the leasing of three oil reserves, that were property of the Department of the Navy, to Sinclair and Doheny. Albert Fall was the one who made the deal with Sinclair and Doheny because he was having financial issues and they were going to give him no-interest loans and gifts. Warren Harding ended up becoming a pawn for Sinclair and Doheny to make these transfers happen. Harding was a huge piece in the scandal and had a large impact whether he was a knowledgeable player in the purchases and coverup or not.
Richard Nixon, our 37th president of the United States, is best remembered for his involvement in the Watergate scandal in the 1970’s. The Watergate scandal is mainly known for the break in at the Watergate building which is where the Democratic National Committee is located at in Washington, D.C. The break in consisted the undertaking of wiretapping of phones and the act of stealing confidential documents. After time had passed by, the FBI started growing suspicious about Nixon’s role in the scandal especially when he tried covering up the issue by providing hush money for the people who were involved in the break in. He also tried stopping the FBI from doing their job by not allowing to investigate the break in and as well as firing any disobedient
Nixon had an abundance of evidence against him and had many people, who were willing to testify, that wanted to make the public aware as to what unjust crimes he had committed. He had no chance of not being impeached, so he saw this as an opportunity to resign. Warren G. Harding and other members of his cabinet took bribes from private investors and began to lease government oil to them, which is illegal. He then went to great measures to cover it up. Unlike Nixon, these actions did not catch up to him until after he died.
Nixon was president for four years before Watergate occurred. The scandal did not happen until his second term in office. Before Watergate, Nixon received conflict for his decision to stay in Vietnam.[E: Relevant Facts] Many citizens believed it was not our business being there but Nixon still deemed it our duty to stay. Nixon never saw conflict in the service, which is highly ironic because he caused so much in the
On the domestic aspect, citizens were beginning a new chapter in which they did not trust the government. Stemming back to Lyndon B Johnson and the Credibility Gap of the Vietnam War, the most recent, most devastating attitude change surrounded the Watergate Scandal and the aftermath. During Nixon’s presidency, he was attempting to bug the Democratic Party headquarters located in the Watergate Hotel. While his henchmen were placing the bugs, they were caught, thus causing a huge controversy amongst Americans. Although Nixon attempted to cover up his ties to the break in, it eventually came out that he ordered it to be done.
Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States from 1981-1989. He was consistently popular throughout his presidency. Before his presidency, Reagan was the 33rd Governor of California. President Reagan is most known for being president during the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. He also became famous for his economic policy called “Reaganomics” and for being a Hollywood movie star who became president.
The Watergate scandal was one of the most infamous political controversies in American history during the early 1970s. It uncovered a web of lies created by former president Richard Nixon. The Watergate Scandal affected the trust of US citizens to the government by spreading false information, obstruction of justice, and deceiving politicians to cover up his tracks. President Nixon has instilled a distrust between the people and the government that will leave its mark for years. During the 1968 election, President Nixon had won by a landslide vote against the democrats.
Gerald Ford was a significant president. He was the 38th president of the United States and was elected on August 9th, 1974, when Richard Nixon resigned from presidency. Gerald Ford was a significant person throughout his life. Ford had a noteworthy life before he had become president. After the Watergate scandal, Ford did many great things during his presidency that made him significant.
Watergate Scandal and his commonly used tactic to expose his opponents on things that might not be necessarily true helped open eyes of not only Americans but voters internationally, about what happens behind the scenes in the government. Voters don’t believe the candidates of elections as easy as they did and will likely double guess their integrity, which is a good thing to not be so gullible. Richard Nixon did several things that changed society in the United States, and North America Nixon made many policies like Vietnamization, Limited Nuclear power, and made many formal diplomatic relationships with powerful countries like the Soviet Union (Russia) and People's Republic of China (China) that is helpful even in 2018. He lowered rates of segregation and made women working in his administration rate higher. He was the first president to resign from office in all of history.
The second President that got impeached followed after the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson is President Bill Clinton, on December 19, 1998. Due to the bitter partisanship that dominated Washington, D.C. during his two terms, and to his personal flaws, he became the most investigated President in history. (The impeachment of Bill Clinton). And there were many events that happened in the course of the time to get to the impeachment. There are many events that had lead to the start of the whole impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.
Richard M. Nixon was elected the 37th president of the United States. He was previous to his election, a member of the U.S Representatives and was a U.S Senator for California. As he came into office he strived to better our current economy and cultural divides that were at main concern during this present time. Many overlooked the things Nixon did for the United States through his presidency as he expanded foreign relations, set a foundation for environmental regulations and amazingly improved women's rights. Overall, Nixon had did some amazing things for this country but his overall efforts affected the United States in a awful way.
He had amassed a collection of government fills, tape records, and intelligence on the common people in the Watergate building. After it was broken into, files were stolen and released to the public. It was the first real time that the general public learned just how paranoid Nixon was, but also how much he wanted to keep the power he already had. As these precious documents surfaced, one could see in full light that Nixon exhibited all the symptoms of Paranoid Personality Disorder. He was always distrustful of people, he recorded every encounter he had, so that one could twist his words against him.