I grew up in a Republican family. My Father was a staunch republican — party all the way. My Mother was a bit more independent. She leaned Republican but was willing to keep an open mind. My first memory of political controversy was Nixon’s resignation speech. I was a teenager and more interested in makeup, music, and boys than politics. I watched the speech with my family: father, mother, two older sisters and my oldest sister’s husband. All but my father cheered. My father became very angry and stormed out of the house telling the crowd, “I hope you are all happy with yourselves!”
In the 1970s, I had other things on my mind than the Presidential scandal. But as I’ve grown older, I remember the night of Pres. Nixon’s resignation speech and have researched history to understand the nuances of that evening. It was history that I lived through but did not understand as it was unfolding. The 1970’s challenged pre-set conceptions. College campuses saw protests against the war in Vietnam. Women and people of color fought for equality as a conservative populism began to rise. This new “silent majority” raised the voice of those tired of the protestors and hippies living at the taxpayer expense. The candidate of the silent majority swept the 1968 election — Richard Nixon.
During Nixon’s first term in office the New Right emerged in the growing suburban Sun Belt. They celebrated a free market and resented what they saw as the decline of traditional social values and roles. Issues of the day included taxes, environmental regulations, highway speed limits, and school desegregation. Yet even with the New Right putting the brakes on change, change happened. Women’s Rights made headway with the Congressional approval of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. The Gay Liberation movement saw the first elected openly gay man win the position of Mayor of San Francisco. The Antiwar Movement increased after the US invasion of Cambodia in 1970 leading to the Kent State Shooting.
Unlike today, people got their news from Newspapers — printed on paper and delivered to their front doors in the morning. Or they watched the evening news. The personal computer industry didn’t begin until 1977 with Apple Computers and the Tandy Radio Shack’s TRS-80s. People didn’t have smart phones. They kept change for pay phones. The disco craze hit the airwaves with Abba and the Bee Gees. Rock bands such as Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, and Fleetwood Mac filled stadiums. The Beatles broke up in 1970s to be replaced by Great Britain’s newest rage — punk — loud energetic, outrageous music such as Sex Pistols and the Ramones. In sports, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in a $100,000 winner-take-all tennis match. King became the first superstar female athlete in the United States.
From 1968 to 1972, Richard Nixon served his first Presidential term. The campaigns for President began in 1971. McGovern announced his candidacy for the Democratic party in January of 1971. Nixon won the election held on Nov 7, 1972 with 60.7% of the popular vote and 520 electoral votes. During his campaign, Nixon emphasized a strong economy and his success in foreign affairs. The public didn’t know that behind the scenes, Nixon and his associates kept close track of the Democratic party. They bugged the telephones of staffers at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters, a complex known as Watergate in Washington, DC.
We probably wouldn’t know anything about this except that five on the team were caught when they went back to the headquarters to replace bugs that had stopped working. The head of the team was James McCord, a security coordinator on Nixon’s reelection committee. During the investigation, Howard Hunt, a White House aide, and Gordon Liddy, finance counsel for the Committee for Re-election of the President, were linked to the break in.
Enter Woodard and Bernstein, young Washington Post crime reporters who begin investigating the burglary and end up putting their careers on the line to report about the White House link. Their efforts were aided by an informant, Deep Throat, who we learn later was the associate director of the FBI Mark Felt. In August 1972, before the election, Nixon announces that the White House had no involvement in the Watergate break in. The Post continues to print stories about Watergate uncovering John Mitchell, the Attorney General, had control of the funds to finance the intelligence gathering. Mitchell threatens the reporters and the publisher.
Watergate wasn’t the first scandal attached to Nixon, nor was Mitchell’s threats a first for the Post’s publisher, In June 1971, the New York Times and the Washington Post began publishing the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers were leaked to the press by Daniel Ellsbert, a Military Analyst. The papers documented top secret information about the Viet Nam war. The stories brought to light the US involvement with Viet Nam from 1945 to 1971 and revealed lies told to the American public by elected officials. When the story was published, Nixon obtained a court injunction to stop the papers from printing the story on the grounds that printing the story would limit the President’s ability to guard national security. The Times adhered to the New York injunction, but Katherine Graham, the Washington Post’s publisher, continued printing the story. Seems the judge in Washington refused to issue an injunction. Both Newspapers were brought to trail by the Supreme Court who determined that under Freedom of the Press, the Government did not have a strong enough case to censor publication of the Pentagon Papers.
Therefore, from January of 1972 until January of 1973, the Washington Post continued to publish about Watergate. Nixon had plausible deniability during the election and the trial began after Nixon was elected President. During the trial, Liddy, McCord, Hunt, and four others plead guilty of conspiracy. The judge, John Sirica, promises long prison sentences unless they spill the beans about the operation. In March of 1973, the White House counsel, John Dean, discusses a payment of $1M in hush money. A month later, Dean began cooperating with the Watergate prosecutors.
April of 1973, officials in the White House began jumpingship, including Patrick Gray (FBI directory) John Ehrlichman and HR Haldeman (White House aides), Richard Kleindienst (Attorney General). Through it all, Nixon continued to proclaim his innocence. However, Senator Sam Ervin (North Carolina, Democrat) didn’t believe it and in May 1973 opened the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, led by special prosecutor Archibald Cox. During the Select Committee hearings, the former presidential appointments secretary, Alexander Butterfield, provides information about Nixon’s taping of conversations and telephone calls. The committee asks for the tapes, but Nixon refuses.
Things really heat up in October 1973. The Vice President, Spiro Agnew resigns and two days later, Nixon nominates Gerald Ford, who is eventually sworn in December 1973. Also during these events, Nixon tries to negotiate with the committee about the tapes. He suggests that Senator John Stennis could summarize the tapes, but the committee refuses the offer. In retaliation, Nixon issues orders for Archibald Cox to be fired. Elliot Richardson (Attorney General) and William Ruckelshaus (Deputy Attorney General) resign because they refuse to fire Cox. Cox is fired anyway by Robert Bork (Solicitor General).
The change of personnel didn’t stop the investigation. Leon Jaworski takes the role of special prosecutor. Nixon continues to proclaim his innocence declaring “I’m not a crook.” In March of 1974 Nixon was named as anunindicted co-conspirator and the House Judiciary Committee began impeachment proceedings against Nixon in May of 1974. Eventually in July of 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that Nixon had to hand over the original tape recordings to Jawoski. With the original tapes in hand, the committee found the smoking gun tape, a recording between Nixon and Haldeman six days before the break in where Nixon approves the plan.
With an impeachment looming in the future Nixon chose to resign instead of an impeachment trial. Below, with the magic of the internet, I can relive that family moment when we watched Nixon resign. With my new found knowledge and understanding this speech had special significance.
There are a number of themes in Nixon’s resignation speech that ring true for today. He mentions one theme in particular – Put America First. He is resigning because America comes first, not his desire to be acquitted of crimes. Being President means that he must do things for America, not his personal interests.
Second, the roles of President and Congress are to work together for the common good. America needs a full time President and a full time Congress that work together. The impeachment hearings would take away from the jobs they were elected to do. Also, he had lost the support of Congress due to Watergate and therefore felt he would no longer be able to fulfill the duties of President.
Third, Nixon called for the focus of the future to be on the issues abroad and national economics. He spoke at length on achieving peace and international relations with China, Russia, and the Middle East. He also talked about disarmament, especially the nuclear weapons.
Finally, he called for the healing of wounds in the Nation. He called for both those who supported him and those who had not to put the bitterness behind and rediscover shared ideas. He said he made some judgements that were wrong, but at the time he was doing what he thought was the best for the Nation. Now, it was time to put the past behind us and start healing.
Watching the speech today, I don’t see a criminal. I don’t see a crooked politician. I see a man who was in one of the hardest jobs a person could have, President of the United States. Find me one past President who did not make a bad decision — you can’t. Why? Because they are all human. They have great responsibility and with that responsibility, they need to carry out the role with the good of America — the nation, not just the people, in mind. Not every decision will benefit everybody equally. The adults in the room will understand this. Regardless of what you might think of the man, in my opinion, he shows a level of dignity and civility in a emotionally charged situation.
This is just my opinion, but President Nixon managed the Watergate situation with decorum. Was he guilty of conspiracy? Probably. But we don’t know what would have been revealed during a trial that might have been mitigating circumstances. However, he chose not to go that route. In his resignation, he said it was for the good of the Nation. Far be it from me to call him a liar. I’ll take him at his word on that point. Basically, being an adult in the room, he knew when to say enough is enough and to provide the Nation with a message of a brighter future. I admire a person who knows when to walk away gracefully.
I’m also seeing many parallels between the 1970s and today. America needs a President who can focus on the business at hand. In Nixon’s time it was Viet Nam. Today we have Ukraine and Israel. In the 1970s, the US was dealing with “stagflation”, a combination of slow economic growth with rapidly raising prices and a federal deficit bloated due to military spending during Viet Nam. Today, the inflation from Covid is dropping but prices are still high for essentials. Americans hear the news of an improving economy but still not feeling it in their pocketbooks. In the 1970s, social movements were changing the face of identity politics. Today, we are facing the same issues as the LBGTQ movement brings to light the discrimination and we debate issues of gender identity. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled on Roe vs. Wade legalizing abortions obtained during the first three months of pregnancy. Today, Row vs. Wade has been overturned and the States are once again voting on the legality of a woman’s right to medical care for a pregnancy with complications. In the 1970’s, the impact of the naturalization Act of 1965 opened ths nation to more than 18 million immigrants. People were fleeing from Cuba, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia. Today, the southern border is inundated with refugees from South American countries.
We have two candidates for President today, along with a few third party guys. We also have a political environment filled with more hate, avrice, and division than I ever remember. If one message Nixon said during his resignation rings true for today — it is time to put aside our bitterness and find shared ideas. It is time to put the good of the Nation first.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2022/timeline-watergate-scandal-revelations
Prudence 