Nixon
Nixon was one of those presidents
that tried to actually get things done while he was in office. He had a lot of
good ideas but he also made a lot of mistakes. I believe if the man hadn’t
resigned the American people would have forced him out of office.
Nixon’s
foreign policy was actually really good. His ideas of détente, relaxing the
tensions with Russia and China. Nixon did a great thing by increasing relations
with Russia and getting the soviets to lessen their weapons stash. He also
managed to get things moving with China so well that he was one of the first
Americans allowed into the borders of the People’s Republic of China in since
1949. His ping pong democracy was working. This was a huge accomplishment for
Nixon and the American people.
Nixon was even doing good with Vietnamization.
His plan was to end the United States involvement in the Vietnamese war and
train South Vietnam’s forces to fight for themselves. This was a good idea for
a couple of reasons. First it would get Nixon on the good side of the young
people in the country who had been protesting the Vietnam war since its
beginning. It would also, in theory, strengthen the forces of South Vietnam and
help them protect themselves. However we know that this failed and the free
South fell to the communist North. In one of Nixon’s attempts to cut off
weapons supplies to Vietnam he bombed Cambodia. The bombing was hidden from the
American people and many innocents were killed. Nixon took a large hit to his
reputation for this mistake.
Even
though Nixon’s relations with The communist countries were good he seemed to
manage to anger most of the Middle Eastern countries. Nixon tried to help out
Israel and angered the Arab nations. Plus he tried to back India and managed to
anger Pakistan. All of this support we gave got America nothing but Middle
Eastern countries getting angry at us and forming OPEC. OPEC led to an oil
embargo, which led to a gas shortage in the United States. Nixon was now in
charge of a country of people who were angry at him for high gas prices.
However he did manage to create the EPA.
Nixon’s
biggest downfall, however, was Watergate. Nixon had five men wiretap the
Democratic Party offices. A security guard noticed a door that had been taped
open. The five burglars were caught. Originally the connection wasn’t formed to
connect Nixon to the break ins. More digging was done and it was found that
Nixon taped all of the conversations in the oval office. The court system ruled
that Nixon needed to turn over the tapes. It was by some coincidence that
eighteen minutes were found to be missing. Nixon was forced to resign the
presidency, he is the only American president to resign. Nixon probably would
have had legal action held against him if it were not for President Ford pardoning
him. Nixon never really admitted to the cover up or apologized to the American
people until the interviews with David Frost. Frost got Nixon to admit to his
involvement in the scandal and apologize for the mistakes he had made.
