Political leaders of the United States were, at one time, thought of as crucial members of our society. Ideally, their main goal was to represent and satisfy the needs of the American people. Unfortunately, over the last fifty years, our trust in our administrative representatives has drastically declined. Beginning with the great conspiracy theory that President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 was actually planned by political leaders, America had, for the first time in history, begun to question its faith in its very own government. Consequently, the American people became extremely hesitant when it came to electing officials into office. Despite his loss to JFK in the 1960 presidential election, in 1968, Richard M. Nixon was elected as the thirty-seventh president of the United States. He was praised by many for his comeback after previously losing an election and seemed to be an admirable man. While in office, Nixon made many achievements and followed through with all of his promises made during his campaign. For the first time in what seemed like forever, the American people had finally elected a leader who seemed unquestionably trustworthy – or so they thought. Unfortunately, shortly after Nixon was elected to his second term of presidency in 1972, the Watergate Scandal changed America forever by creating a sense of mistrust toward the government for the American people because of The Nixon Administration’s actions.
It all began on Sunday, June 18, 1972 when Frank Wills, security guard at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., found a piece of tape that was preventing a door from locking. After removing the piece of tape from the door, he later found that it had been re-taped. This seemed suspicious, so ...
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"The Watergate Story: Nixon Resigns." Washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post, n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2013. wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/part3.html>. "The Watergate Story: The Government Acts." Washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post, n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2013. wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/part2.html>. "The Watergate Story: The Post Investigates." Washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post, n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2013. wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/part1.html>. Zimmer, Troy A. "The Impact of Watergate on the Public's Trust in People and the Mass Media." Social Science Quarterly 59.4 (1979): 1-10. Galileo. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.
There are controversial moments occurring in the world every day, as seen across news stations and internet pages everywhere. The U.S has been home to a plethora of controversial moments such as the Coalgate, Chinagate, Deflategate, and Monicagate scandals. These scandals share the common suffix “gate” from the original “Watergate” Scandal, which is considered to be one of the largest political scandals in American history. This scandal is possibly one of the most significant series of events to occur in the entire world to this day for several reasons. Primarily, this scandal filled every American citizen that followed it with doubt, fear, and complete mistrust for the government system due to the casual attempt to abuse a position of power multiple times from then President Richard Nixon. What exactly went down during this long-winded
The documentary entitled, Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History, documents the political decisions and environment within the Nixon Administration from 1969-1974. The documentary specifically details and describes the environment and culture in which the Watergate scandal could occur and the events and abuses of power that lead to its occurrence. Setting the tone and the political climate of the Nixon Administration was the Vietnam War; making him a wartime President, a war that he inherited from his predecessor. The Vietnam War faced a lot of opposition from the general public, with massive protests and political demonstrations by the younger generations and overall general public. Nixon’s presidency was surrounded by this climate amidst the
A year before the election of 1972, President Nixon was becoming nervous about what the Deomocrats were planning on for the election. Nixon wanted to be re-elected but he did not think he could become re-elected without some sort of help. Nixon decided to send a group of spies to investigate what was going on at the Democrat Headquarters to see if they had any plans on how they were going to bring down Nixon. Supposedly hired by Nixon, a group of five men went to the Watergate hotel and stole some documents. Unsatisfied with what they found, they returned three weeks later intending to fix wiretaps that were not working and photograph documents. However while they were inside the building these fiv...
It is clear that while political scandal, primarily the 1974 Watergate scandal, played a large role in the rapidly declining confidence in government between 1968 and 1980, it is not the sole or even the dominant factor. The Watergate scandal only impacted on the Nixon era, and subsequently lead to measures that should have prevented further distrust in the government. Instead, the role played by the four presidents who held office in those years was the main reason behind the decline in confidence. The role of the presidents and their White House administrations encompassed political scandals, and also clearly influenced other factors such as the role
The main focus of this book was to do research on The book “The Secret Man, The Story of Watergates Deep Throat,” written by Bob Woodward with a reporter’s assessment by Carl Bernstein, which is about a group of burglars who broke into the Watergate hotel in Washington DC on May of 1972. While breaking in the burglars left listening devices like voice recorders and attempted to wiretap phones so they could steal secret information and documents from the Democratic Party. Not only was this no ordinary robbery but the burglars were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign. When Richard Nixon heard what happened, he tried to cover-up for his burglars by lying about what he knew and when he found out about what they did.
“Watergate: The Scandal That Brought Down Richard Nixon.” Watergate.info. N.p., 1995. Web. 24 Feb. 2014. .
Finney, Daniel P, “Watergate Scandal Changed the Political Landscape Forever,” USA Today, June 16, 2012. Web 17 April 2014.
The question of why Nixon committed The Watergate Scandal, is still being asked today. The reason that questions are still being asked today is because we do still do not have a concrete answer, until today. This essay looks at The Watergate Scandal from a new perspective. An outlook that looks at the situation from a Physiological point of view. This perspective uses empathy to allow someone to put themselves in Nixon’s shoes, and understand what events in his life have contributed to the development of his behavior. After all, Nixon’s behavior and trait are what drove him to committing The Watergate
Long before the Watergate break-in, the Nixon administration had been very careful, almost paranoid, about their public image, and did everything they could to avoid unfavorable publicity. In fact, paranoia was a characteristic of Nixon furthered by the public’s criticism of his policies regarding the Vietnam War. That atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion was fueled by the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, defense department documents concerning the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War, which were leaked to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971. (Bernstein and Woodward 165) Shortly after the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Nixon established a White House special investigations unit to trace and stop any further leaks to the press. This special investigations unit was nicknamed the “Plumbers” and was headed by two of the Presid...
Richard Nixon's first term as president will always be connected with the Watergate scandal, the biggest political scandal in United States history. Various illegal activities were conducted including burglary, wire tapping, violations of campaign financing laws, sabotage, and attempted use of government agencies to harm political opponents to help Richard Nixon win reelection in the 1972 presidential elections. There were about 40 people charged with crimes related to the scandal. Most of them were convicted by juries or pleaded guilty. Watergate involved more high-level government officials than any previous scandal. It has been etched in the minds of millions and is still being recalled today when faced with the present day scandal of President Clinton. In All The President's Men, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, former Washington Post reporters, recount, illustrate, and analyze the Watergate scandal time and their work in reporting and revealing these events for the newspaper.
“President Nixon exhibited no interest, much less zeal, in ensuring full public disclosure of all the facts behind this shabby interference with the rights of his political opposition” (“The Watergate Tragedy” 4). The increase of media reports on the Watergate scandal caused the Nixon administration to try and use different methods to slow down the reporters like resist meeting with journalists and not giving comments to reporters. The news reporters were relentless in their search for answers in the scandal and kept on pressing different sources for any information they could get their hands on. News reports eventually showed that the president used the CIA to hinder the FBI’s investigations into where the funding for the break-ins came
The Watergate Crisis concludes that the profoundly memorable and intensely appalling atrocity, Watergate, “tested our system and ourselves.” Genovese does not merely tell of the events of Watergate, he goes on to dissect the effects of the incident. In the preface, the author tidily summarizes the influence of this crisis by stating that “time has not altered the sting of Watergate. It remains a profoundly sad and unnecessary scar on the political landscape.” This book delves into how presidential corruption is the worst possible offense because it results in the deep-seated distrust of the government.
The years leading up to the 1972 election were filled with new political tactics. Going into the election year, President Nixon seemed like he could never lose the second term election after successfully negotiating with Vietnam, Beijing, and Russia to improve international relations (Emery 4). Raising international toughness made Nixon seem like the most worthy person to stay president. Fred Emery analyses in his novel Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon, the president was also setting up the first summit meeting in history with Soviet Union Presidents (3). There seemed to be nothing capable of holding the seemingly responsible man back. However, this assurance came with massive consequences. The absolute certainty that Nixon would be reelected fueled the lies and abuse of power by the Nixon government (Emery 195). As the outlook of landslide winnings took over the White House, the moral reasoning, “the end justifies the means” became more prevalent. Nixon was obsessed with winning and being successful. Under his command his staff did whatever possible to ...
“On June 17, 1972, five men, including CIA agent James McCord were arrested in the burglary of the Democratic party headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C.” “The Post Investigates.” Later that year, the Federal Grand Jury indicted these five men for their involvement in the Watergate burglary. Less than two months later, Richard Nixon was reelected President in an unprecedented landslide over George McGovern, the Democratic candidate. At the end of January the following year, James McCord and Gordon Liddy were convicted of illegally wiretapping the Democrats Watergate apartments, (“The Watergate Decade”).
During the first initial weeks of the scandal, the media seemed disinterested and didn’t want to report anything to early in fear of the Nixon administration. It took the work of two young reporters constantly investigating and getting anonymous help to spark a firestorm of investigations into the scandal itself and increase public interest into the newly discovered Watergate scandal. The names of those two young reporters were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and their approach to investigative journalism is what helped bring the story more into the public eye. Information about the Watergate scandal kept pouring out in the form of countless newspaper articles, editorials, and other news related organization after Woodward and Bernstein’s stories got more exposure. “Relying heavily upon anonymous sources, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led deeply into the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and the White House”(“Watergate Scandal” 19). The press...