President Nixon And The Watergate Scandal

The Watergate Scandal was a series of crimes committed by President Nixon and his staff, who were found to have spied on and harassed political opponents, accepted illegal campaign contributions, and covered up their own misdeeds. On June 17, 1972, The Washington Post published a small story. In this story the reporters stated that five men had been arrested breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. The headquarters was located in a Washington, D.C., building complex called Watergate. These burglars were carrying enough equipment to wiretap telephones and take pictures of papers. In 1972, when Republican President Richard Nixon was running for reelection, the United States was involved in the Vietnam War, and the

The new laws changed who had the power in the government and ended the imperial presidency that the executive branch had been running since Theodore Roosevelt proved that one man did not deserve that much power. The Sunshine Act, requires all government meetings to be open to the public, not behind closed doors. This law was spurred on by Nixon's work under the noses of many Americans as he refused to give up the tapes from meetings he had recorded during his administration. The Ethics in Government Act requires presidential candidates to make their previous employment and financial state public. This law is a result for Nixon's previous speculated actions. Many believed Nixon had used "slush funds" in order to run for presidency, in which they were obtained illegally. Because Nixon lied to the press about the Watergate Scandal, the congress passed this act to force presidential candidates to tell where the money is coming

In the 1974 elections, the Democrats had a 66.8% and 61.2% majority. Watergate did have a small short-term effect on the House and the Senate, but in four years it had no more effect. Two years later things were back to normal and it was a fair fight between Democrats and Republicans. The United States presidential election of 1976 followed the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It pitted incumbent President Gerald Ford, the Republican candidate, against the relatively unknown former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate. Ford was saddled with a slow economy and paid a political price for his pardon of Nixon. Carter ran as a Washington outsider and reformer and won a narrow