Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Nixon and the Happenstances that Brought Him to Nix Essay
On the fateful night of eighth of August in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon announced his resignation from his office due to the pertinent issue that he was facing. According to his resignation speech, he has to leave his office because the Congress has lost its faith on him, and because of that he cannot pursue the completion of his term of office. In his resignation speech, Nixon explicitly stated that he will vacate the White House at exactly twelve o’clock noon the next day, and that his office will be officially entrusted with Vice President Gerald R. Ford. On that fateful night, Nixon uttered the following words â€Å"that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America,†[1] which is considered by his critics as partly true and partly as an escape goat for an imminent impeachment against him. (1)             In American history, Nixon is the first president who surrenders his authority and stature. What are the circumstances that led an esteemed president to his fall down? It was common belief that a president would only be forced to leave his office for two significant reasons: first, if he is a lousy president, regardless if he is innately a good person, his lousiness will bring forth the end of his term, and second, if he is an exceptional president but catapulted an extraordinary scandal that no one can forgive, his days on the White House will definitely be numbered. (2) And in the case of Nixon, he committed the latter.            In this paper, I will outline how a seemingly invincible president was crushed down. I will also give nitty-gritty details of Watergate scandal, which is the root of Nixon’s fall down from his office. But let me first provide a brief exposition of Nixon’s autobiographical account of his presidency. The Anthology of Humble Beginnings            Nixon started his political journey when he became a part of United States of House of Representatives in 1946. But it was only in 1948 that his name was propelled with respect and adoration in the public eye due to his discovery of Alger Hiss’ conspiracy with Soviet Union. In 1950, he won the senatorial race outwitting Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, in which he has a well publicized rivalry. During this senatorial race, Nixon was named as Tricky Dick because he labeled the congresswoman as the Pink Lady. (1)            In 1952, Nixon achieved new heights in his political career because he was elected as the 36th vice president of our country. But before he assumed this position, he faced a scandal about malversation of public funds, which led the Democrats and the Republicans in requesting President Eisenhower to eliminate him of their party. Nixon being a good speaker convinced Eisenhower and the public that his conscience is clean and that he is indeed credible for the position after reciting his Checkers speech in the television. (1)            In Nixon’s journey there were some fiascos along his way. In 1960, he joined the presidential race against President John F. Kennedy, which led to his first disappointment in his political career. He experienced another disappointment after losing his candidacy in the race for Governor of California. (1)            But in every storm there will always be rainbow. When Nixon successfully established a strong political party in the guise of what he called â€Å"silent majority†, his political comeback is already certain. In 1969, he became the 37th president of the United States of America upsetting Hubert H. Humphrey with less one percent of the poll. His triumph is due to his promise of ending the Vietnam War, in which he fruitfully put into a realization. With his creation of Nixon Doctrine, he delivered peace not only with Vietnam but with China and Soviet Union as well. (3)            But everything must come down to its end. And this is exactly what happens to Nixon’s political journey when the Watergate scandal started to come out. This time there was nothing he can do to save his diminishing credibility. The Anatomy of Watergate Scandal            Watergate is nothing but a plain lavish establishment erected in Washington D.C. that doesn’t spell any scandal. But in 1972, it changed our perception of the hotel because it embodies Nixon’s myriad of under the table activities. The beginning of these Watergate activities can be traced back in 1969 when he and Henry Kissinger attempted to stop the leaking of his administration’s shenanigans by wire tapping the phones of several journalists and those officials against who were against him. These Watergate wrongdoings also include the housebreak of Dr. Lewis Fielding in an effort to acquire his psychiatric records, which transpired in 1971; the FBI probing on CBS’ Daniel Horr in 1971; and the investigation of G. Gordon Liddy’s discussion of Jack Anderson assassination also in 1971.(3)            But it was in the seventeenth of June 1972 at around two in the morning that all of these activities where discovered, when five of his men were caught burglarizing the Democratic Party’s headquarters located at Watergate hotel. According to documents, Frank Mills, a guard in Watergate hotel, was doing his inspection of the place when he found a piece of tape preventing a door from latching. He removed the tape, only to found out later that the door was re-taped. Out of curiosity, Mills phoned the police about the matter. At around 2:30 in the morning, five men were caught installing wire tapping paraphernalia and taking pictures of some document causing them to be arrested.(2)            These men were later identified as Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Sturgis, and James W. McCord Jr., and proven to have a connection with Nixon. During the arraignment of these burglars, Washington Post’s Bob Woodard overheard some pertinent information from McCord, which led for his own investigation, and later on he discovered that McCord was part of Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP) security force. As the scandal went on, the link between the Watergate event and the White House was finally established when E. Howard Hunt’s phone number was found in Barker’s notebook. (2)            According to investigations, Hunt and Liddy served as watchers outside the hotel, wherein both of them were guarding outside the vicinity and communication with the burglars inside Watergate hotel, and later on, it was realized that both were members of â€Å"The Plumbers†. John Ehrlichman was the brainchild of The Plumbers, which is designed to ensure that impossibility of any leakage in Nixon’s office and to destroy the Democrats. (2)            Nixon’s forces tried damage control through cover-ups, alibis and denials. Jeb Magruder, L. Patrick Gray of FBI along with others obliterated all significant documents and denied all allegations regarding the scandal. In a desperate attempt to control the situation, Nixon asked White House Chief of Staff Robert Haldeman to do his own probing on the case arguing that it might interfere with the CIA operation, but this investigation was planned so that can get hold of the CIA. (2)            Woodard along with Carl Bernstein continued there research on the scandal until they found a formidable source inside the White House, whom they labeled Deep Throat. According to their reports, Deep Throat only confirmed all the information that they have gathered with regards to Watergate scandal. In 2005, W. Mark Felt validated that he was behind Deep Throat secret identity. (4)            In the progression of the scandal, Nixon was re-elected from presidency, and two months after his re-election, the five burglars pleaded guilty while McCord and Liddy were convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping in Judge John Sirica’s trial. Things get out of control as time went by. His underlings started to backstab each other, some of them blackmailed him, and worst of all they left Nixon in the verge of his insurmountable predicament. (4)            But the biggest mistake he committed happened when he fired Archibald Cox along with some of his subordinate. This incident on the twentieth of October 1973 was known as the Saturday Night Massacre provoked the first serious attempts to Nixon’s impeachment. The first impeachment trial was heard on the ninth of May. But his last straw was pulled out when the smoking gun tape was listened on the fifth of August 1974. The tape disclosed Nixon’s approval to hush money for Hunt who blackmailed him for releasing his part on the Watergate scandal. It also exposed that Nixon asked CIA to speak with the FBI for dropping the investigation on Pigs of the Bay. (1)            The realization of imminent impeachment led Nixon to file his resignation. But he made sure that his exit will be redeeming. In a national television, he announced his resignation with words of a dignified man by stating â€Å"By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.†At the end of his speech, he never admitted any act of wrongdoing. The next day, at exactly twelve noon, he left White House and Vice President Ford filled the left position. And on the eight of September, one month after the televised address, President Ford freed Nixon from all of his political crimes. (2)  BIBILIOGRAPHY: 1.) Elish, Dan The Watergate Scandal Scholastic Library Pub, 2004. 2.) Fox, Steve. â€Å"Revisiting Watergate.†Washington Post 2005. 3.) Shepard, Alicia C. Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate Wiley, 2006. 4.) Woodward, Bob. â€Å"Deep Throat Revealed.†Washington Post 2005. [1] Taken from Nixon’s Resignation Address
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