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No title The main duty of the president of the country is to follow the legal principles while leading the nation. The actions of the president are under the permanent control of mass media that form the image of the president, transfer his messages and actions to people. When people elect president they express their trust and credibility to a political leader. President Richard Milhous Nixon remained known in the modern history as the key player of the Watergate scandal which burst out in 1972. During the campaign five burglars were arrested on June 17, 1972 in the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex. They were subsequently linked to the White House.
This became one of a series of major scandals involving the Committee to Re-Elect the President (known as CRP but referred to by outsiders as CREEP), including the White House enemies list and assorted "dirty tricks. " (Wikipedia, 2006). From the very beginning of his presidency Richard Nixon had to complete rather complicated mission for the United States. The meaningless Vietnam War required the solution. Nixon did not start it but he had to stop it. That war on one hand was supported by the extreme America filters and on the other hand Nixon had to take the unpopular actions to coup with the war. The flaws in his policy started when Nixon ordered secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia in March, 1969 (code-named Menu) to destroy what were believed to be the headquarters and large numbers of soldiers of the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam.
That bombing was illegal from the point of view of the international law and later became one of the articles of his impeachment. The presidency of Richard Nixon kept being permanently compared with that of John Kennedy who was assassinated and did not benefit Nixon. His first law violation started in 1969. No doubt President Nixon acted for the sake of his country and his actions were aimed to stop the war which was started by Kennedy with the minimal political and moral damage for America.
The Watergate scandal which burst out in 1972 undermined the confidence to the president completely. If the Cambodia bombing could be at least explained by the Nixon's intention to find an appropriate solution in the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal did not benefit any noble aims except of the short term political ones. The platform of Nixon in his election campaign was law and order. That was the core of his program. After a chain of the law violations, characterized by involving FBI into affairs contradicting the national security the confidence to Nixon Administration was undermined completely. He called together the heads of the CIA and the FBI and proposed a systematic plan to squelch his opposition by wiretapping, intercepting mail, and burglarizing homes and offices to obtain sensitive records.
This last element of Nixon's plan appalled even J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI who was notorious for his own efforts to gather information against his enemies. Nixon went ahead with the plan over Hoover's objections and created his own intelligence-gathering group, the "Plumbers, " to plug leaks of secret presidential activities and foreign policy actions. Their first major operation was to stop the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. (Stanley K. Schultz, 2006) The Vietnam War was the war which had brought a lot of problems to America. First of all, its meaningless undermined the trust of American veterans to the US foreign policy in Indochina sub-region.
Secondly, the actions of President Nixon undermined the trust to the institution of president. The public opinion is usually formed by the press. During the Vietnam War it was different. Unclear causes and aims, numerous casualties plus doubtful from the point of view of the law actions could not be accepted and understood by the society. In August, 9 1974 President Nixon resigned to avoid the impeachment. All his achievements such as Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed with the USSR, start of the Space Shuttle program and the suspension of the Vietnam War remained in the shade of the Watergate Scandal.
The presidency of Richard Nixon is associated in the history with the unprecedented Watergate scandal. Bibliography Richard Nixon, Wikipedia, 2006, available at web retrieved 18. 04. 2006 Stanley K. Schultz, America Sinking through a Watergate, available at web retrieved 18. 04. 2006
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Research essay sample on Point Of View Watergate Scandal
