Watergate+Affair

=The Watergate Affair= toc They called him a cheat, a liar, a scandal, a thief, and many other names. But was he all these things? Did he actually cheat to win the election of 1972. They never proved he did. Who was he? Who was this scandal, this dirty, lying thief?

Richard Nixon[[image:nixon.jpg align="right" caption="Richard Nixon"]]
Richard Milhous Nixon was born on January 9, 1913 in Yorba Linda, California, where he lived in poverty. He had a hard childhood, including almost dying twice, once from an accident, and once from pneumonia, and two of his four brothers died as children. His parents were quakers, and his dad not a very smart business man, which is the reason they were poor. But besides these life obstacles, Richard grew up strong and smart. His family moved to Whittier, California, where Richard attended Whittier college. He was president of his freshman class, president of the student body as a senior, and graduated second in his class in 1934. He then received a scholarship to Duke University Law School. Although he was very smart, he couldn't get a job in a big time law firm, so he moved back to Whittier to practice law. He then married Thelma Ryan, and they had two daughters, Patricia and Julie.

During World War II, Nixon served in the Navy, and in 1945, he was asked to run for Congress by a Republican group in Whittier, and succeeded in acquiring this position. He later became a leading anti-communism crusader. He caught attention around the country, particularly of General Dwight Eisenhower, who chose him as the Vice President in his successful 1952 presidential campaign. Nixon then won the Republican nomination of 1960. It was a very hard fought campaign, but in the end, John F. Kennedy prevailed. Then in 1968 he again won his party's nomination, this time running against Hubert Humphrey, and this time he prevailed at campaign's end. He took office as the thirty-seventh president of the United States on January 20, 1969.

The 1972 Election
In the election of 1972, President Nixon was again renominated, and his opponent was Senator George McGovern. McGovern was actually the second choice for nomination for the Democratic party, after the first candidate was reported by the media as being "unstable". So, by now everyone knew that Nixon was going to win. McGovern was not a good campaigner, and to make it worse, was forced to look for another Vice Presidential candidate after the the first was discovered as having shock therapy.

During the 1972 election, five out of place men were found and arrested in the Watergate Hotel, where the Democratic National Committee was, stealing and intercepting information about the McGovern campaign. At first nothing much was thought of it, but then some people started to investigate. It was found that one of the burglars, James McCord, was on the payroll of Nixon's reelection committee. Then they linked this burglary to the Nixon campaign funds. A $25,000 check for Nixon's reelection campaign had been deposited in the account of burglar Maurice Stans. One source of this story was the high ranking FBI official Mark Felt, who was known only as Deep Throat until his identity was revealed in 2005. But so far they hadn't proven Nixon guilty, and so he dominated the 1972 election, winning every state except for Massachusetts.

This burglary became a country-wide scandal by the summer of 1973, and the biggest break in the investigation was in July, 1973. Investigators discovered a taping system that recorded all of Nixon's phone calls and conversations in the Oval Office. Nixon refused to release the tapes, but eventually the White House agreed to disclose "written summaries of the taped conversations to the Senate and the special prosecutor." After quite a few resignations in the Nixon administration, "Nixon declared at a press conference: 'I am not a crook'." Not many people were convinced by this statement though.

Quit or be Fired
Nixon couldn't deal with the pressure of the media and all of America. There were now threats of impeachment, because of this act of dishonesty and deceit. So on August 8, 1974 Nixon spoke to the media for ironically the 37th time in that room (because he was the 37th president), and became the first and so far only president to resign as leader of these fifty great, and powerful states.

It is a wonder of why Nixon cheated to win this election. As stated earlier, Nixon had a huge chance of winning the election already. But he stole information, or at least we think he did. It has never been proved, and they are still investigating it today. There has even been a movie about it. It is one of the greatest mysteries in American history.