Essay On The Watergate

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The United States’ government has played a large and very influential part in the countries’ growth and development. Public opinion of American politics has swayed in many ways since 1789, and was completely reshaped in 1972 when the Watergate Scandal made one of the most powerful political impacts in our country's history (Guernsey). The media had also changed how Americans perceive the government, controlling how much people know, and influencing their opinions. The Watergate Scandal of the 1970’s negatively affected the way American citizens viewed the United States’ government prior to, during, and after the catastrophe. Communication and transportation were very limited in the early years of the government up until the mid-1900s, thus denying constant and consistent news coverage. With such little knowledge, the American people were not aware of everything occurring in the government. This lack of information caused misinformation and default agreement with leadership to be common among the average citizens. During the Kennedy and Eisenhower presidencie's, after the United States were on the come-up from the Great Depression and from winning a world war, there was an actual period of trust of the government. According to polls between 1958 and 1964 three-quarters of Americans believed they could trust the government in Washington to do what was right. In 1974, 36 percent of Americans said that they still trusted the government (Schneider). Even up through the 1940’s and 50’s, privacy was considered and the internal side of politics was not covered by reporters. Now, it is a well-known fact that during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency he had poliomyelitisnb. He tried to disguise it as much as physically possible, and di... ... middle of paper ... ...r since, nothing has been done to restore the trust that was lost during Nixon's presidency. With this newfound distrust, the media became extremely vigilant about reporting on anything that occurred in politics that would be of any interest to anyone and has played a deciding factor in the success and the failure of different political figures. An example of this would be President Bill Clinton's affair. Such extensive coverage of this public embarrassment was blown out of proportion relative to the size of other scandals of the past century that absorbed less media attention. Watergate turned an erosion of public confidence into a collapse (Schneider). Public opinion of government has been severely influenced by media and scandalous events since its creation, and "At the beginning of the sixties, people believed the government could be used to help people. By the

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