On November 7, 1972, when the polls in the US presidential election closed, the dramatic results were revealed: Richard Nixon, the Republican presidential candidate, overwhelmingly defeated his Democratic opponent George McGovern, by a margin of 520 electors to just 17 electors – one of the gaps The greatest in the history of American politics.The victory was particularly astonishing given that a few months earlier the Watergate affair had been exposed, the one that would eventually lead to its downfall.
“Until Watergate, people did not think a president could lie,” says Garrett Graf, author of Watergate: A New History. “This is one of the hardest things to explain when it comes to describing events that took place fifty years ago: how inconceivable it was for the man sitting in the Oval Office to be able to tell the American people things that are not true. But since then things have changed.”
It all started on June 17, 1972. Frank Wills, the security guard at the Watergate building complex in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Wills removed the film, but on a night tour later discovered Slototype once more. He called the local police, who arrested five people. The American media yawned at another story of a routine break-in, but then it turned out that the people were carrying large sums of money and that one of them, James Cord, kept in his notebook the personal number of Howard Hunt, a senior White House official.
As expected, the White House successfully distanced itself from the burglars, and Nixon, who declared “I am not a crook,” came out clean. But this was temporary innocence. During strenuous journalistic work, various elements began to draw lines and connect details, which increasingly pointed to the involvement of the White House in the scandal. They revealed, for example, that some of the money in the hands of the burglars, whose purpose was to implant recording devices at the Democratic Party headquarters, was related to a campaign for Nixon’s re-election. Months after the break-in, some of the burglars pleaded guilty and were convicted of conspiracy and other charges.
Then came the moment when Alexander Butterfield, President Nixon’s aide, was asked in the Senate: “Was there a recording system in the Oval Office?”. He replied simply: “Yes.” A small word that led to a huge battle over the publication of hour-over-hour recordings of discussions in Nixon’s office. The president fired the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the affair, in what became known as the “Saturday night massacre,” following the fact that both the attorney general and the deputy prosecutor resigned because they were unwilling to fire the special prosecutor who investigated the affair. Only number three after them agreed to do so.
After a lengthy legal battle in the Supreme Court, it was ruled that Nixon must transfer the recordings. They linked him directly to the break-in, showing that the president even tried to use the CIA to prevent the FBI from investigating the incident. The support the president received in Congress disappeared, Republicans abandoned him one by one, the House Judiciary Committee approved the removal clauses against him, and the removal from the presidency seemed to be a matter of days. On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned without pleading guilty.
“I have never been a person who retires easily,” the president said in his farewell speech. “Leaving office before the end of my term runs counter to any instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interests of the United States and the American people first.”
The dismissal of Nixon probably would not have happened had it not been for two young journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, who pursued the story. They came to a local burglary poll, and eventually caused a president to be ousted. In interviews over the years, Bernstein stressed that the incident was part of a systematic pattern of illegal activities, all of which left the Oval Office.
The story behind Woodward and Bernstein’s main source, dubbed “Deep Throat” for years, is one of the most dramatic events in press and source relations. Just before his death, Mark Felt, who was the deputy head of the FBI, confessed that he was the man who gave the two tips and directions of investigation.
The three – Pelt, Woodward and Bernstein – always met in dark parking lots in Washington. The conclusion between them was that if the two journalists wanted a meeting – they would place a flower pot on the porch of Woodward’s house; And if “Deep Throat” agrees to meet, he will circle the page 20 in the newspaper that comes to Woodward, along with the time he would like to meet.
Output a certain taboo, being the first senior U.S. administration official to decide to talk to reporters and warn them of presidential wrongdoing or illicit actions, something we have seen more and more in recent years. But not everyone sees him as a hero.
“Pelt’s original plan was to replace the mythical FBI chief Jay Edgar Hoover (who died in 1972, after 48 years in office), but he did not get the job,” says Garrett Graf. “This is not a man who got up in the morning and asked himself how I could defend America, but a man who tried to get the job he wanted. He stabbed Nixon in the back to get the job. It turns out he knew about quite a few other Nixon injustices, but up to him He just did not bother to tell about them for a moment. ”
And despite this criticism, it is clear to everyone that output is what has brought about change and caused many executives in the decades that followed to speak to the media – sometimes to expose the lies from within, and sometimes, to be honest, for personal interests. Either way, the media’s ability to find out the truth was greatly strengthened.
Despite the humiliating moment when Nixon was forced to resign, even his biggest critics admit that within one term he was able to record a series of achievements to his credit. He established relations between the United States and Communist China (diplomacy opened with a ping-pong game), ended racial segregation in the south, signed a non-proliferation treaty with Soviet Russia, and stopped the Vietnam War. “Without the affair, he could have been one. The great presidents of America, “says Pat Buchanan, who served as Nixon’s adviser.
Luke Nicher, author of the book “Nixon Tapes,” says that “only 10 percent of those tapes have incriminating information – but in the end, those few percent left their mark on his leadership.” Perhaps this is the explanation for why in the 1980s Nixon received a kind of rejuvenation, even though he is still ranked as one of the worst presidents in American history (30th place from the end).
The Watergate affair and Nixon’s lies have significantly weakened the institution of the presidency. Gerald Ford, Nixon’s deputy president-elect and pardoned, did not win the election. Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate who defeated him, was also seen by many as a failure and was not elected to a second term in 1980. Only when Ronald Reagan lasted two terms, from 1980 to 1988, did he prove that the presidency is a strong institution that can survive even difficult upheavals.
But it is very possible that when it comes to politics, Watergate’s legacy ultimately lies not in the president himself and the identity of the one who presses the red button, but in the American voters themselves and in the question of what they put on the ballot on election day. “Today we do not seem to be looking for government experience or full and orderly policies among our presidential candidates,” said Tom van der Prott, a researcher at the Miller Institute at the University of California. “Instead, Americans seem to yearn for authenticity, a person they can trust and believe in.”
Indeed, as can be seen in recent years, in every presidential campaign the candidates are quite busy explaining to voters why the opponent cannot be trusted. Nixon experienced such a campaign against him in the 1960 presidential election against John F. Kennedy, when Democrats scattered posters bearing Nixon’s picture across the state with the headline: “Would you buy a used car from this man?” Hillary Clinton has come under fire for criticizing her presidential campaign against Donald Trump in 2016, which ultimately led to her losing the election.
“The Watergate incident accelerated and bounced the use of this tactic,” says Van der Prott, “but it must be remembered that ‘black or white’ questions about the character of the rival candidate do not lead to more confidence in the president, public officials or the government as a whole. “Because of a lack of trust in the other person, he can find himself very quickly without a basis for political support.”