richard nixon essay

Entering the executive office in 1969, Richard Milhaus Nixon would have to “pick up the slack” of his predecessor Lyndon Johnson who had left office while the Vietnam War was still waging on.  Expected to be the “peaceful-president”, Nixon was visualized by many Americans as being the one who would put an end to the war in Southeast Asia and bring American troops home.  With Henry A. Kissinger as his most trusted foreign policy adviser, Nixon redefined the American role in the world, suggesting limits to U.S. resources and commitments. Therefore, Nixon and Kissinger set out to end the war “honorably”, whereby this meant that total withdrawal from Vietnam could not, in Nixon’s eyes, be an immediate option.  Nixon felt that this would be a total abandonment of the South Vietnamese who had “counted” on American aid in defending the South.  Yet certain questions arise that in what affect would immediate withdrawal really have on the south?  Also Nixon and Kissinger had their eyes on Moscow and China.  According to Herring, they felt that they must extricate the United States from the war in a manner that would uphold US credibility with friends and foes alike.  Nixon would try a number of different strategies during his term in attempting to end the war  “honorably”. Today one can see that Richard Nixon only prolonged what could have been ended earlier.Nixon’s first policy was sending the message to Hanoi that he meant business.  With his “madman” campaign of escalated strategic bombings near the border of Cambodia, he hoped to get  the North Vietnamese to believe that he was capable of doing anything to achieve victory.  What Nixon did was what Johnson had been skeptical of doing, expand the war into Cambodia.  The bombings were to be kept secret from the American public.  Here we can see the beginning of Nixon’s downfall as being a president of immense secrecy and.
In the early hours of June 17, 1972, police officers arrested five men suspected of breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC’s Watergate office building. This building would lend its name to the subsequent political scandal that led, just over two years later, to Richard Nixon’s resignation on August 8, 1974. To date, Nixon is the only president of the United States to have resigned from office. He did so as a direct consequence of his involvement in the attempted cover-up of the links between the arrested men, the White House, and the Committee to Re-Elect the President (officially named CRP, it became aptly known as CREEP) during the 1972 presidential elections. In the process, more than forty members of Nixon’s administration, including some of his top advisors and a former US attorney general, were investigated and nineteen of them were indicted. The Watergate imbroglio was marked by the tremendously polarizing figure of Nixon himself; the high drama of widely watched congressional hearings; tales of abuses of power allegedly involving various branches of the nation’s secret services; reports of colorful language emanating from the oval office; and the much publicized exploits of heroic journalists determined to track down the real story. It mesmerized Americans at the time, and ever since it has remained a fixture in the nation’s collective psyche. Even today, four decades after the events, it still symbolizes all that is, and might be, wrong with the workings of the federal government, elected officials and, ultimately, with the political system itself. Yet, we cannot understand Watergate and its consequences in isolation from the historical context in which they unfolded. These included powerful political and cultural forces such as the movements against the Vietnam War and in favor of civil rights for the.
About U.S. Presidents [cite this] ↑Richard Nixon Home Page Facts at a Glance Term: 37th President of the United States (1969 – 1974) Born: January 9, 1913, Yorba Linda, California Political Party: Republican Died: April 22, 1994 more facts » From the Image Gallery. President Richard Nixon, at podium, delivered his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on January 22, 1971. The President tried to evoke a spirit of optimism saying it was time for Americans to work to overcome the “long, dark night of the American spirit,” and let their “spirits soar again.” more images » More about Richard Nixon Life in Brief About the Administration Schoolchildren absorb at least one fact about Richard Milhous Nixon: He was the first and (so far) the only President of the United States to resign the office. Before the spectacular fall, there was an equally spectacular rise. In a half-dozen years, he went from obscurity to a heartbeat from the presidency, winning a congressional race (1946), national prominence in the Alger Hiss spy case (1948), a Senate seat (1950), and the vice presidency (1952). John F. Kennedy interrupted Nixon's assent in 1960, winning the presidency by the narrowest margin of the twentieth century. After losing a 1962 race for governor of California and holding his last press conference, Nixon patiently laid the groundwork for a comeback. In 1964, he campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater at a time when other prominent Republicans were keeping their distance from the leader of the budding conservative movement. The Republican Party lost in a landslide that year but Nixon won the gratitude of conservatives, the growing power within the party. The GOP's huge losses in 1964 were offset in 1966 when two years of the Vietnam War and urban riots led to huge Republican gains in congressional elections. In 1968, Nixon won a.