*Includes pictures.
*Includes Nixon's most notorious quotes.
*Includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading.
*Includes a table of contents.
Best known as the 37th President of the United States, and the only president in American history to resign his office, Richard Nixon’s lengthy political career would put him, during various times, at the center of regional, national and international politics for several decades. It was to be a career filled with unexpected twists and turns, high-profile defeats and unlikely resurrections, in which he made exhaustive efforts to reinvent himself in the public eye. From humble beginnings filled with disparate influences, Nixon’s extraordinary intellect, strategic brilliance and imposing style of confrontation saw him through a stellar academic career at Duke Law School to seats in both the House and Senate, the vice-presidency and finally, the presidency, where he was and is considered by many to be among the strongest foreign policy presidents in the history of the United States.
By 1972, Nixon appeared to be well on his way to reelection, and sure enough, he enjoyed one of the biggest landslides against George McGovern that year. However, despite the fact that Nixon’s reelection seemed a cinch, the seeds of his destruction were being sown in the months leading up to the election. Increasingly and mistakenly viewed as a single scandal within the United States government, what is commonly referred to as the Watergate scandal serves as an overarching term for a series of scandals beginning in 1971 and extending through 1974, although more than any other, it refers to the specific break-in at the Watergate Hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C. The crisis, originating in a secretive battle between the two major political parties, the Nixon White House’s paranoia, and the ensuing conflict concerning the release of confidential information to the public, induced senior government officials into committing crimes (most notoriously petty burglary) and coverups for the purposes of character assassination and inter-political espionage. Ultimately, Watergate resulted in the first and only resignation of a sitting American president, but only after Nixon had tried at seemingly every turn to hinder investigations and coverup crimes committed by senior officials in his own administration. Watergate has since become so synonymous with scandal that “gate” is typically added to the end of words associated with scandals even today.
For the last 40 years, President Nixon has been mostly reviled, and understandably, he’s ranked among the country’s worst presidents, but this view of the President and the Watergate scandal was not and still is not necessarily unanimous. A growing number of Republicans, led by conservatives such as former Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan, describe the bringing down of the president as a quasi-coup generated by the press and liberal social forces from within the anti-war movement, which gravitated to the release of information on Vietnam, an increasingly unpopular war, and tapping the widespread campus unrest throughout the country. Paul Johnson, in his book, Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the Year 2000, referred to the whole affair as nothing more than “this Watergate witch hunt.”
Richard Nixon and Watergate examines the life and legacy of America’s most controversial president, and provides a comprehensive analysis of the country’s most famous political scandal. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Nixon and Watergate like never before, in no time at all.
