Watergate Scandal

Richard Nixon’s time in the White House was, without a doubt, one of the most unusual presidencies in American history. Nixon quickly took a different approach from the men that came before him; although he entered office at a trying time for the American people, he insisted that the public needed the hard facts, not inspirational speeches. However, after winning the election Nixon gave in to his advisors’ desires for an uplifting message, and promised the public that his administration would be committed to “bringing the American people together”. While Nixon rarely repeated this message, and probably never meant it, Nixon did manage to unite the American people, just not in the way his advisors intended. The covert methods and agencies that Nixon created to ensure his own prosperity and his enemies’ demise, collectively known as the Watergate scandal, would ultimately serve to bring about the president’s resignation and shock the American political system to its core. The scandal was able to bring the American public together in a way that few events had before, and unite them in their mistrust for the political system and calls for either Nixon’s impeachment or resignation. While Nixon himself was not able to survive the public’s disdain,; it did not, as one might assume, completely destroy his party’s future in politics. In fact, the Watergate scandal only managed to strengthen the Republican party, as in the years to come Americans would seek less government involvement and call for more conservative politics that would ultimately serve to strengthen the Republican party on a national level.

Nixon had long felt like the unwelcome outcast within Washington society. He despised the fact that prep schoolers and Ivy League g...

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...a chance to run their lives and their businesses on their own, without government interference. The Republican party had long sought a more limited form of government and the Watergate scandal only strengthened their commit to achieve this objective. Furthermore, the scandal may have led to a few anti-Republican years immediately after Nixon’s resignation, but in the long run it only served to convince many of the American people that more was not necessarily better. In the end, Watergate boosted the Republican party and the conservative politics they emphasized because Americans needed a safe bet and had become all too aware that a quality government was better than corrupt government with a large quantity of social programs.

Works Cited

Schulman, Bruce J. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. New York: De Capo Press, 2002.