Watergate Impact On America Analysis

1. Analyze the international and domestic challenges the United States faced between 1968 and 1974, and evaluate how President Richard Nixon’s administration responded to them.

Many people, myself included look up to individuals in an authoritative role such as; senators, governors, and presidents. We view them as being honest and sincere. They have to be right? They do want to run the country after all. Often our thoughts are “they would never lie to us or hide things from us”, but unfortunately that’s not always the case. One of the biggest political scandals to hit the United States of America was the Watergate scandal involving our very own President Richard Nixon. This scandal caused a lot of American’s to lose trust and hope in the presidency. The scandal received its name from the Watergate apartment and office complex that was located in Washington D.C., where a burglary took place on June 17, 1972 and five men were arrested. It then came to surface that the men’s intentions were to sabotage the opposite political party, when president Nixon was notified of this he order the Central Intelligence Agency to call the FBI to stop with any further investigation, that national security was at stake. President Nixon knew that it would come back to the White House and didn’t want to risk anything, even though he was never involved with the

The transgressions uncovered during the Watergate break-in investigation discouraged Americans by shattering their belief in Presidential infallibility. As Richard Nixon’s chief-of-staff, H.R. Haldeman, said, “…comes a very clear thing: you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment; and the – the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President can be wrong.” These words expressed the sentiment of most Americans following Watergate and the publicity surrounding the investigation and President Nixon’s subsequent resignation.

Nixon's extreme secrecy led him to be withdrawn from the rest of the country. He

Richard M. Nixon was a former vice president who barely won the election in 1968 against Hubert Humphrey for the Republican party. Once in his presidency, President Nixon pleased and displeased citizens in the United States. He was not necessarily the most liked president, but he was not the most disliked either. By 1972, it was time for the

Seven men involved in the Watergate break-in, a break-in of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters located in the Watergate complex, were indicted by a federal grand jury. President Richard Nixon was named by the grand jury as an unindicted co-conspirator. Archibald Cox, who had been appointed as special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate affair, obtained a subpoena that required President Nixon to deliver to the district court tape recordings of his meetings with various assistants. The president released certain edited versions of the tapes to the public, but refused to yield the full transcripts to the district cou

Throughout the history of The United States of America, many presidents have come and gone, some with many successes and some not so much, but no president was as quirky and hot-headed as the former President Richard Nixon. One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon tells the story of a very provoked man, considered by many across the world to be a brilliant politician, in the process of destroying himself. In this novel, Americans can better understand Nixon as the man that he was, as well as his policy in Vietnam, the beginnings of the Watergate scandal, and the effects that his decisions have had on America until this day. All the lies and secrets kept by President Nixon will forever reign on the inevitable influence that it has had on politicians to come.

Nixon went through many trials and tribulations; yet they were all due to his mistakes. Nixon had life hard with all of the stress from the government and the media hounding him and the way he handled things and ran his enormous country but his replacement had the hard times worse and for sure had the media worse. President Ford was being watched closely. The government was already the laughing stock of the world and now had zero credibility. “Gerald ford never second-guessed his decision to grant it. Acting as his conscience dictated, he did not worry about the political consequences.” (TheWaterGateFiles) People across the United States were already tired of Ford after just a few months due to his decision to pardon Nixon from any

Presidential scandals have occurred is this country dating all the way back to George Washington. However, not all scandals receive the utmost attention or are even remembered by the public. Watergate shined a bright light on the corruption and paranoia of Nixon, yet I do not believe it was the worst presidential scandal it just received the most attention from the media. There are countless numbers of scandals that measure up to the wrath of Watergate streaming from sex scandals, illegitimate children, and even election scandals. No matter the circumstance they make an impact on the presidency and the country for better or for worse and no scandal is worse than another.

After the uproar began, even the President read the book. He had some power and was able to take action. "He appointed a commission of experts to investigate the...industry" and then "pushed for passage

As highlighted by Powell (2011), the President’s response in this case was based solely on maintaining power and control (Powell, 2011, p. 3). He felt as though the clock was ticking and needed to make a move. President Walker, in turn, began what is known as a diversionary

Everyday citizens often live unaware of their government’s inner workings. The knowing of political espionage is often too heavy of a subject to be inducted in conversation. True, prima facie, modest twists and turns of information may not be considered substantial, but this inconsideration leaves much to be uncontrolled. It is easy for political leaders to become power crazed, to not realize the massive implications that come of their actions. Only after all is said and done do the people actually realize their government is an opaque mask of deception. The Watergate Scandal substantially impacted Americans’ trust in their government.

Large trucks that dramatically dumped newspapers in the street in Seth Meyers’ Newspaper Movie spoof may seem how the world discovered news, but the process to uncover the story of Watergate was slow and dangerous. The media’s involvement in the scandal prompted an investigation against President Nixon, which eventually lead to the exposure of corruption, impeachment trials, and the President’s resignation. The prerogative of the press’s investigation, however, has been frequently debated. While some believed that the media’s position in society existed to report unfiltered facts and information to the public, many people were put in harm’s way through their investigation of Watergate. In this way, the media’s role in the case was quite controversial

The court held that the president had injected himself into the controversy, and he was a limited purpose public figure. Moreover, the court held that even though there was a period of time when the controversy was not discussed publicly, the president’s public figure status did not end spontaneously with the stopping of the publicity. Rather, the public figure status continued as long as the particular controversy continued.

author only viewed the situation in terms of how the leaked information would benefit or affect