Chapter 4
Richard Nixon: Cold War Warrior
In This Chapter
Tracking Nixon from childhood to the presidential debates
Grabbing the presidential brass ring
Reviewing President Nixon’s successes and failures
Securing and forfeiting a second term
When Richard Milhous Nixon was elected president in 1968, he inherited a nation that was divided over the issue of the Vietnam War. By the time he left office in 1974, he left the nation stunned and disillusioned. Under Nixon, the United States entered a new era that set the stage for the rise of new conservatism. Nixon’s desire was to reverse the trend of growing federal power and begin the shift of power, money, and regulation back to the states. Though he was unable to fulfill this agenda in his years as president, he did lay the foundations for the shift to the right, particularly through his appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign his role as president and ended his political career, yet his five and a half years as president allowed him to significantly shape American history. For Nixon, politics were more than a gentleman’s game — political life was a war in which only victory counted in the long run. However, paranoid and powerful, he went far beyond the boundaries of ethics and law, ultimately bringing about his own downfall.
Because his presidency ended so poorly, Nixon is a difficult president to assess. He was a man of extremes. Some credit him with a skillful ending of the Vietnam War, while others criticize him for prolonging the conflict. His skills at foreign diplomacy were superb, and his achievements were great, particularly those with China and the Soviet Union. Yet his achievements are all tarnished by his complicity in the Watergate scandal. His abuses of presidential authority served to undermine himself and the high office, yet they also led to new safeguards designed to stop future abuse. Without a doubt, Nixon was one of the most controversial presidents in U.S. history. Figure 4-1 gives you a face to put with the name.
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Figure 4-1: President Richard M. Nixon. |
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Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Getting Started: Nixon’s Early Life
On January 9, 1913, Richard Milhous Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. The second of five sons, Nixon had a relatively simple childhood. The Nixons were simple Quakers who worked the area citrus groves. At the age of nine, Nixon’s family moved to Whittier, California, where his father operated a gas station and store. As an early sign of his future occupation, Nixon competed in debate on the national level while in high school.
Nixon attended Whittier College, majoring in history and graduating second in his class. He earned a scholarship to study law at Duke. After graduating from law school in 1937, he practiced law for a small firm in Whittier where he met his future wife, Thelma Pat Catherine Ryan (see the “Mrs. Nixon: St. Patrick’s babe of the morning” sidebar for more on the first lady). They married in 1940 and later had two daughters, Julie and Tricia.
When World War II broke out in December 1941, Nixon was drawn to Washington, D.C., where he worked in the Office of Price Administration. There he learned to dislike bureaucratic red tape. Nixon enlisted in the U.S. Navy in the summer of 1942 and served in the south Pacific with the Naval Air Transport. Discharged in 1946 at the rank of lieutenant commander, Nixon returned to California, where he embarked on his political career path.
Redbaiting his way to the top
Upon Nixon’s return from naval duties, local Republican Party leaders in California recruited him to run against long-time Democrat Jerry Voorhis in the 12th Congressional District. Nixon leaped at the opportunity, exclaiming his willingness to serve the party vigorously on a platform of “practical liberalism,” which promised a more efficient, less intrusive form of government, which he believed was the answer to the New Deal liberalism of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrats.
Looking for an issue to exploit in the election, Nixon researched Voorhis’ past to find that he was a Socialist during the 1920s and ’30s and had supported major unions and the idea of government-owned businesses. Taking advantage of developing cold war fears (see Chapter 2 for an introduction to the cold war), Nixon immediately branded Voorhis as a Communist. Though Voorhis had the advantage of being the incumbent in his fifth term, Nixon played on the fact that the American public was tired of governmental regulations associated with the New Deal and with restrictions on consumption to help with the war effort. In 1946 many Republicans campaigned successfully on the slogan “Had Enough?”
During the campaign, Voorhis made the mistake of engaging Nixon in a series of debates, a foolish move because Voorhis was already well known, and Nixon wasn’t. In addition to raising the issue of Voorhis’ Socialist past, Nixon showed that the incumbent congressman had introduced only one bill that had passed in Congress over the previous four years. These two issues undermined Voorhis, leading Nixon to win his first election at the age of 33. Nixon’s accusations that Voorhis was a Communist were at least partially responsible for the victory.
Mrs. Nixon: St. Patrick’s babe of the morning
Thelma Catherine Ryan was born in Ely, Nevada, on March 16, 1912. Because she was born on the day before St. Patrick’s Day, her father called her his “St. Patrick’s babe of the morning.” The name Pat stuck with her throughout her life. Pat’s road wasn’t an easy one. Her family was poor. At the age of 13, she lost her mother, and her father passed away only five years later. Following her father’s death, Pat finished high school and enrolled in Fullerton Junior College, earning her way as a janitor. After a brief stint in New York, she returned to the West Coast in 1934, finishing her bachelor’s degree at the University of Southern California. Pat took her first job as a high-school teacher in Whittier, California, where at a play tryout, she met a young attorney named Richard Nixon who was also performing in the amateur theatrical group she’d joined. He told her on their first date that he was going to marry her, which he did on June 21, 1940.
After her husband was elected president in 1968, the first lady championed volunteerism and pushed programs such as the Right to Read program and attempts to create new recreational areas in poorer neighborhoods. Though she suffered through the Watergate affair, Pat remained poised and dignified. She died at home of cancer in Park Ridge, New Jersey, on June 22, 1993, just a few months before her husband. They’re both buried in Yorba Linda, California.
Hunting down the Communists on HUAC
After he landed a seat in the House, Nixon increased his visibility, serving on the Herter Committee, which helped implement the Marshall Plan for aid to Europe (the Marshall Plan was a financial assistance program to aid and stabilize European nations to lessen the chance of them shifting toward Communism), and on the House Education and Labor Committee. Because he’d established himself as a staunch anti-Communist, Nixon secured a position on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), investigating Communist connections within the American film industry.
Pursuing Alger Hiss
Nixon’s reputation as a dedicated anti-Communist got a huge boost from his dogged pursuit of the Alger Hiss case. Alger Hiss, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, had served the Truman administration in the State Department. When a former Soviet agent accused Hiss of passing secrets to the Soviets, he sued for libel. His accuser, Whittaker Chambers, produced microfilms of the documents he claimed Hiss had passed to him. Though the statute of limitations had expired for trying Hiss on espionage charges, he was convicted of perjury in the case. The Alger Hiss case was damaging to the Truman administration and to Democrats in general, and at the same time, it brought Nixon important national exposure, helping him move from the House to the Senate.
Reaching for the Senate: Taking on the Pink Lady
In 1950 Nixon set his sights higher, running for Senate against Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas. Nixon employed his well-honed redbaiting tactic, accusing Douglas of being a Communist (or at least a Communist sympathizer) and comparing her voting record in the Senate to the only openly pro-Communist member of Congress. Nixon called Douglas the “Pink Lady” and printed anti-Douglas fliers on pink paper. With the growing cold war fears of the era, Nixon’s pink paintbrush worked again — he won the seat by over 650,000 votes.
Winning the vice presidency
In 1952, Republicans believed they had a strong chance to retake the White House for the first time in over 20 years. Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey’s 1948 challenge of President Truman resulted in a very narrow defeat; thus, with their hopes raised from the strong showing, the Republicans were organizing early for the 1952 elections. Having gained a great deal of exposure for his part in the Alger Hiss case, Nixon was a rising star in the Republican Party. After much debate, Dwight Eisenhower, who had beaten out Robert Taft for the Republican nomination, called on Richard Nixon to serve as his running mate. Eisenhower, the former general who served as the allied commander in Europe during World War II and as head of NATO after the war, had a strong reputation in the East, and Nixon’s popularity in the West would help balance the ticket.
Doggone clever: The Checkers speech
Almost immediately after being selected as Eisenhower’s running mate, Nixon found himself in a tremendous controversy. On September 18, 1952, the New York Post published an article under the headline “Secret Nixon Fund.” The inside header of the story proclaimed, “Secret Rich Men’s Fund Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary.” The truth behind the press? Nixon had let rich California businessmen, eager to promote Republicans, contribute to a fund that he used for travel expenses, postage, and phone bills during his time as a congressman and senator. Though technically legal, the fund was shady, particularly because the Eisenhower campaign had been accusing the Truman administration and Democrats of financial corruption.
Amid rumors that Eisenhower would ask Nixon for his resignation, Nixon decided to take the issue to the people and await their reaction. The Republican National Committee put up $75,000 for a 30-minute television spot on September 23. Nixon’s speech that night saved his political career. In 30 minutes, he disclosed his entire financial picture. He explained the fund and gave a detailed picture of how it worked, emphasizing that his family wasn’t rich — they were just like other ordinary Americans.
During his brief TV spot, Nixon praised Eisenhower’s leadership and called upon the audience to decide whether he should resign. Nixon insisted that he’d done no wrong, yet the most powerful portion of the speech didn’t concern his financial information; rather, what moved Americans nationwide was his explanation about a dog his family had received as a present.
Nixon’s speech (now known as the Checkers speech) worked, and the overwhelming response was positive. His talk about his finances was frank, and his idea to let the American people decide whether he’d done anything wrong helped his case. He seemed honest and sincere, and the part about his children and the dog hit close to home for many Americans. Nixon kept the dog, Eisenhower kept Nixon, and they went on to an easy victory in 1952.
The anti-Communist heat is on: Goodwill ambassadors
As a two-term vice president, Nixon, along with his wife, Pat, became Eisenhower’s goodwill ambassadors to the world. In 1953 the Nixons did an extensive tour, Asia, meeting with major leaders and establishing a rapport with them that would later serve Nixon well as president.
The Nixons’ journey to South America in 1958, however, was a different story — there, they met fierce protests of their presence in Lima, Peru, and in Caracas, Venezuela. Venezuelans had overthrown a military dictator named Perez Jimenez the year before amidst cries that he had sold out Venezuelan interests to American businesses. Jimenez and his entourage had been allowed to escape to the U.S., which strengthened the cries of corruption of both Jimenez and the U.S. Amidst such a charged atmosphere, pro-Communist forces found it easy to enflame anti-U.S. sentiment. In Caracas, they were spat upon by an angry mob at the airport, and later, their limousine was pelted with rocks, shattering windows and injuring several staff members and Venezuelan officials. The incident reaffirmed Nixon’s anti-Communist stance. His calm composure at the press conference after the attack heightened his reputation at home as a man willing to stand up to extremists.
Nixon had one more moment in the spotlight as vice president in 1959, during an official visit to the Soviet Union. There, while visiting the American Exposition and standing in the kitchen of an American model home at the exhibition, Nixon and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev got into a fierce debate over the merits of capitalism and Communism. Commonly referred to as the “kitchen debate,” neither side won. Yet Nixon again gained admiration at home for standing up to the Communist leader.
Losing the presidential race
In the 1960 presidential election, Nixon believed that his opportunity to realize his lifelong ambition had finally arrived. As the Republican frontrunner, Nixon was nominated in the first ballot at the convention. Things looked good for Nixon. In the presidential race his Democratic opponent, John F. Kennedy, had much less experience than he did, particularly in foreign affairs.
The polls showed that both candidates were very close, yet the handsome and youthful Kennedy held an advantage because Nixon had to defend Eisenhower’s policies and was thus open to attack on more issues. Another decisive factor was the series of four televised debates between the two candidates. These presidential debates were the first ever to hit the home screen, so no one could’ve predicted the results. Kennedy moved ahead in the polls and beat Nixon by the narrowest of margins (for more information on the debates and the election results, see Chapter 2). He spent the next year writing a book entitled Six Crises, based on six events in his own life. The book allowed him to sort through his loss and move on.
By the time Six Crises was finished, Nixon had already decided to run for governor of California in 1962. Though he pushed hard to beat Democrat Pat Brown, he lost the election by 297,000 votes out of 6 million. Nixon’s tried-and-true recipe for defeating opponents by branding them as soft on Communism failed this time, because voters didn’t see the larger picture of Communism as a significant issue for a state governor.
Taking Another Shot: The 1968 Race
After his defeat in the 1962 governor’s race, Nixon moved to New York to resume his practice of law. He continued to serve the Republican Party behind the scenes, campaigning for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and many local Republicans. By late 1967, Nixon was again a likely presidential candidate. His Republican opponent was Ronald Reagan, who had also built his fame in California politics.
For his second presidential bid, Nixon again used Communism as an important theme, but this time he began to use a slightly different tone. The Tet Offensive of 1968 (see Chapter 8) had taken him by surprise as much as it had President Lyndon B. Johnson, because it revealed that the strategy of continued escalation in the Vietnam War hadn’t produced victory. This reality called into question Nixon’s long-held belief on taking a firm stand with the Communists, which forced him to rethink his strategy about the war.
A year of change and turmoil
On March 16, 1968, buoyed by signs that Johnson was vulnerable, Robert Kennedy, the brother of JFK and a New York senator, announced his candidacy for president. When Johnson withdrew from the presidential race on March 31, Nixon was shocked. With Nixon certain of his own nomination and Johnson out of the race, the only question was who he would face as the Democratic nominee. Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey were the most likely candidates. Nixon realized that with Johnson gone, he needed to shift his platform because new leadership became a nonissue and his former focus on the president’s problems was no longer relevant.
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.: Only four days after Johnson announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection, James Earl Ray, a small-time criminal, shot and killed Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis on April 4. Nixon wondered whether he should attend the funeral because spontaneous riots had broken out following the assassination, and he’d been campaigning on a platform of law and order. He finally decided to make the trip. He flew to Atlanta to pay his respects to the King family. (See Chapter 6 for a brief biography of King.)
The assassination of Bobby Kennedy: On June 4, as Nixon watched the California Democratic Primary, it became clear to him that he’d be facing Robert Kennedy and not Eugene McCarthy, as California had been a critical test of McCarthy’s support. But before the evening was over, Kennedy was assassinated, and Nixon again had to change much of his strategy. He’d feared the Kennedy mystique and felt that Kennedy would be a hard opponent to beat. With Kennedy out of the way, Nixon would face Hubert Humphrey. Not only was Humphrey far less charismatic than Kennedy, but he was also vulnerable because he was Johnson’s vice president and thus was seen as a part of the quagmire of Vietnam. (For more information on the effect the Vietnam War had on the election of 1968, see Chapter 10.)
The Chicago Riots: In August, the Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago. Following the April riots over King’s assassination, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley warned that he wouldn’t tolerate lawlessness and disruption. Nevertheless, riots broke out, and police used tear gas, horses, and batons to dominate the protesters. Press cameras filmed the action. The Democrats nominated Hubert Humphrey, who was heavily associated with Johnson’s Vietnam War strategy, yet the whole scene in Chicago was eerily reminiscent of the Vietnam fiasco — the Democratic Party and its policies were in disarray. (See Chapter 9 for more on the Chicago Riots.)
The silent majority speaks
By contrast to the Democratic convention, the Republican National Convention in Miami went smoothly. The delegates nominated Nixon over New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and California governor Ronald Reagan. Nixon chose Spiro Agnew, governor of Maryland, as his running mate. In the November presidential elections, Nixon and Agnew captured a narrow victory by about 500,000 popular votes, although the Electoral College was more strongly weighted toward Nixon at 301 to 191. As a clear sign of the backlash against the civil rights advances, George Wallace, campaigning as an independent, won in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.
Taking the Presidential Reins
When Nixon took office in January 1969, his most important mission was taking care of the Vietnam quagmire. But he also had other foreign policy issues to take care of, so he gathered advisors to help him achieve his goals. The major players in the Nixon administration were Attorney General John Mitchell, who was a rich municipal bonds dealer in Nixon’s old firm; H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, who handled domestic policies; Henry Kissinger, who dominated foreign policy as national security advisor (even though William P. Rogers was secretary of state); and Melvin Laird as secretary of defense. Nixon’s inner circle was all white, all male, and all Republican. Unfortunately, Nixon wasn’t equally interested (or successful) in domestic matters, and most of his proposals were stalemated in Congress.
Pursuing peace with honor
Nixon’s most passionate interests had always been in foreign policy. Though he named William Rogers as secretary of state, the real architect of his policy was National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger (see Figure 4-2). Nixon believed that the war in Vietnam had driven Johnson from office and thus realized that in order to secure reelection to a second term, he had to succeed where Johnson had failed.
Throughout his election campaign, Nixon had promised “peace with honor.” He saw success couched in the larger context of worldwide diplomacy, which included establishing rapport with the Soviets and the Chinese. Though Nixon finally succeeded in extricating the U.S. from Vietnam in 1973, another 20,000 young American men, as well as millions of Vietnamese peasants, lost their lives before he did so.
Nixon’s primary plan was to shift the burden of the war away from U.S. combat troops and onto the South Vietnamese troops. Calling it “Vietnamization,” Nixon wanted to quell the antiwar upheaval at home by steadily reducing the U.S. presence in Vietnam. This slow release, in turn, bought time for Nixon’s diplomatic push to undermine Soviet and Chinese support for the North Vietnamese to have a significant effect (for greater detail, see Chapter 10). His foreign policy met with the following successes:
He reduced troop presence from a peak of 540,000 in 1969 to 50,000 in early 1973.
In 1969 he established a draft lottery system that eliminated many of the draft system’s earlier racial and economic inequities (see Chapter 9).
By 1973 he did away with the draft entirely, establishing the all-volunteer army that the U.S. still uses today.
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Figure 4-2: Henry Kissinger (left), the brains behind Nixon’s foreign policy. |
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©Topham/The Image Works
The clock is ticking
In addition to shifting the war burden onto South Vietnamese troops, Nixon pushed for a negotiated settlement in Vietnam by using the “carrot and stick.” This entailed the use of rewards and punishments to secure an agreement acceptable to the U.S. Although he was willing to negotiate, Nixon also demonstrated that he was ready, willing, and able to punish the North Vietnamese with a vigorous bombing campaign (for more on this campaign, called Operation Linebacker, see Chapter 10). At the same time, Nixon was aware that the clock was ticking. If the antiwar movement perceived that withdrawal was too slow or was half-hearted or insincere, protests would rise up again. However, if he withdrew too fast, it would encourage the North Vietnamese to press in their attacks.
Further, the military itself began to have severe problems as soldiers openly expressed their desires to not be casualties in a lost cause. Between 1969 and 1971 there were 730 reported instances of fragging, where a soldier would toss a grenade into his commanding officer’s foxhole or bunker as a means to stop him from being so willing to engage the enemy. Drug abuse also rose significantly, with four times more troops hospitalized for it than for combat wounds in 1971 alone.
At home, news of the My Lai Massacre and the Cambodian incursion also made the antiwar crowd flare once again (see Chapter 10). The protests over these problems led to more demonstrations including the ones at Kent State University in Ohio and Jackson State University, both of which resulted in the deaths of students (see Chapter 9). These events only served to inflame the unrest even more. In response, the silent majority began attacking students for their protests, such as when students clashed openly with construction workers in New York. For Nixon, all these pressures continued to remind him that the clock was running on the Vietnam War.
The truth is out there
The political situation at home became more critical in June 1971 when the New York Times began publishing excerpts of what has come to be known as the Pentagon Papers. At first, the Nixon administration successfully stopped publication for 15 days, until the Supreme Court gave the newspaper the right to resume. The Pentagon Papers revealed a secret Defense Department study of early U.S. involvement in the war. Leaked to the press by former Defense Department official Daniel Ellsberg, the study confirmed what many critics of the war had already suspected.
The publication showed that the American public hadn’t been told the whole truth regarding the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1964, the alleged North Vietnamese attack on U.S. naval vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, which the Johnson administration had used as a pretext for escalating U.S. participation in the war (see Chapter 8 for all the details). Further, the report showed that contingency plans for America’s entry into the war were already in place when Johnson went before the nation promising that he wouldn’t send combat troops to Vietnam. Though the Pentagon Papers dealt only with events up to 1968 (and therefore condemned Kennedy and Johnson more than Nixon), Nixon fought their publication on the grounds that their release was a threat to national security, but his attempts failed. His stance on the papers and his secret expansion of the war into Laos and Cambodia (see Chapter 10 for details) only served to make many Americans feel that he was no more trustworthy than Johnson had been.
Achieving success with foreign policy
Establishing relations with China: One of Nixon’s greatest successes as president came from his creation of diplomatic relations with China. Since Communist China was established in 1949, the U.S. had refused to recognize the new Communist nation, instead insisting that nationalist government in Taiwan was the rightful Chinese government.
Nixon’s historic trip to mainland China in 1972 ended 20 years of Chinese isolation from the U.S., with both sides agreeing to scientific and cultural exchanges. They also discussed resuming trade and the possibility of reconciling the two Chinas. The U.S. and China established unofficial embassies, which lasted until 1979 when formal recognition and proper embassies were established. Today China is one of the strongest trading partners of the U.S., a feat for which credit is owed to the diplomatic brilliance of Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
Easing tensions with the Soviets: In 1972 Nixon announced that he’d visit the Soviet Union. Since 1969, Nixon had negotiators working on an agreement with the Soviets, aimed at limiting each country’s arsenal of nuclear missiles. This work came to fruition three years later, when Nixon met with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev and established détente (an easing of tensions) between the two superpowers, both of them signing the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I). The treaty didn’t end the arms race, but it helped stabilize it, producing dialogue aimed at future cooperative agreements. At this meeting, the two nations also made trade agreements, including the U.S. deal to sell one-quarter of its national wheat crop to the Soviets.
Working toward Middle East peace: Although efforts for diplomacy in the Middle East were less spectacular than the achievements in China and the Soviet Union, the U.S. did make advances toward Middle East peace. Though Kissinger’s efforts were appreciated in the Arab capitals, he wasn’t able to broker a major peace accord. He did, however, lay the groundwork for the peace accords created later under the Carter administration.
Focusing on the domestic front
Nixon’s domestic successes were much more modest than his foreign policy achievements, largely because he faced a Congress where both the House and the Senate remained under Democratic control. One bright spot occurred on July 16, 1969, with the launch of Apollo 11, when the U.S. fulfilled John F. Kennedy’s dream to place an American on the moon before the end of the decade. Figure 4-3 shows Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.
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Figure 4-3: The Man on the Moon. |
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Courtesy of NASA
Attempting to push back civil rights
Though Nixon said that the U.S. should steer a middle path between segregation forever and integration now, in actuality he worked hard behind the scenes to block the renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and vetoed the Voting Rights Act renewal that Congress passed despite his objection. (Congress overrode his veto; see Chapter 3 for more on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.) Nixon also worked to delay the forced integration of schools in Mississippi.
The U.S. Supreme Court opposed Nixon’s attempts to delay desegregation by ordering Mississippi schools to do so immediately. The Nixon White House was clearly antiblack in its outlook and strove to roll back civil rights advances of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Sixty-five lawyers within the Justice Department signed a letter of protest against the Nixon administration’s stance on civil rights issues.
When desegregation orders began to be implemented in the North, many families rose up to complain that their neighborhood schools were being undermined. Nixon asked Congress to put a halt to forced bussing programs. The House went along with this scheme, but a filibuster (an action in which senators literally talk a bill to death to avoid it coming to a vote before the bill expires) in the Senate blocked Nixon’s attempts to get his antibussing bill through. However, the High Court (which was already becoming more conservative through Nixon’s appointments) weakened some civil rights legislation through cases such as Bakke v. The Board of Regents of California, which restricted the use of racial quotas in admissions systems.
Facing opposing legislation by the Democratic Congress
Though Nixon sought to roll back many of the gains achieved under Johnson’s Great Society programs, he faced a Democratic Congress that opposed much of his agenda. Even during the Nixon administration, the Democrats passed several important new laws:
Voting rights for 18-year-olds in national elections
Increased funding for food stamps
Social Security benefits indexed to the inflation rate
Clean Air Act and water pollution bills
Campaign finance reform with the Federal Election Campaign Act
Battling economic malaise
Economists dubbed the strange problem as stagflation. To address this new problem, Nixon tried old remedies. First, he tried to reduce the federal deficit by raising taxes and cutting the budget. When Democrats in Congress refused to cooperate, Nixon called on the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates in hopes of reducing the money supply. However, this elevation caused the stock market to collapse, creating the Nixon recession of 1969.
Creating the Environmental Protection Agency
In the late 1960s, many Americans began to take an interest in the environment. After the Democrats in Congress passed legislation regarding water and air pollution, Nixon issued an executive order to create the Environmental Protection Agency, which consolidated existing agencies and created federal guidelines for air pollution, water pollution, and toxic wastes.
Running for Reelection
By 1972, Nixon’s foreign policy victories made him the clear frontrunner in the election. His only real fear was from Independent George Wallace, the governor of Alabama. As a third-party candidate, George Wallace didn’t have a chance to beat Nixon, yet he could’ve played the spoiler by shifting conservative votes away from the Republican candidate. This potential problem disappeared on May 15, 1972, when Wallace was shot and left paralyzed below the waist, forcing him to withdraw from the race.
The Democrats nominated South Dakota senator George McGovern, who was swept into the position by the expansion of minority and women voters. Though McGovern was the antiwar candidate, this attribute mattered little because the Vietnam War was rapidly winding down. At the polls Nixon was reelected, capturing 520 electoral votes to McGovern’s 17. Less than two years later he was forced to resign from office due to the Watergate scandal (see the corresponding sidebar).
The infamous Watergate scandal
During the 1972 election, the Watergate scandal erupted. The White House “plumbers,” a team that Nixon had put together to stop the leaks in the White House (see “The truth is out there” section in this chapter), had become the key players in CREEP, the Committee to Re-Elect the President. These men zealously pursued their goal of reelecting Nixon by disrupting the Democrats in any way they could. Their most outrageous act was breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in order to search for any information on the Democrats that could give the Republicans the edge in the election. Through their own ineptitude, a group assigned to actually pull off the caper was caught in the act. Subsequent investigations led authorities to CREEP, and eventually, all leads led back to the White House.
Though no evidence suggests that Nixon ordered the break-in or even knew about it beforehand, he clearly worked hard to cover up the crimes. Though Nixon used every trick he could think of to thwart the investigation, including using the CIA to undermine the FBI investigation and refusing to hand over key evidence to prosecutors, his own recordings made in the Oval Office helped prove him guilty of the coverup. In July 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and defiance of Congress. Realizing that impeachment and conviction was imminent, Nixon resigned as president on August 9, becoming the only U.S. president to resign from office. Vice President Gerald Ford took Nixon’s position as president and promptly pardoned him of all crimes, even though he stated before he took office that there would be no pardon. Ford’s excuse was that pardoning the former president was for the good of the nation.