Watergate: Analysis of a Presidential Crisis The term “Watergate” has become a common household name in correlation with people's thoughts about corruption in government. President Nixon was in office at the time of this scandal and is often thought to be the most famous face in America's conspiracy of wickedness in the government. The Watergate scandal had rocked everything our country thought we knew about the American Presidency because it had forfeited the common vision of the leader of the nation. Watergate had replaced the image of elegance and worldliness of the U.S. President with a scattered vision of corruption and extreme competitive measures that the country had never been a part of. Richard Nixon and his men had taken …show more content…

In an article by the Washington Post it says that, “During their Watergate investigation, federal agents establish that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nixon campaign contributions has been set aside to pay for an extensive undercover campaign aimed at discrediting Democratic Presidential candidates and disrupting their campaigns.”9 However all of this uncovering of events intermingled with speculation did not seem to effect America's opinion of Nixon. By one of the widest margins of defeat in Presidential history, Nixon crushed his opponent receiving more than 2/3 of the vote8. Within months of the start of his second term, chaos became synonymous with the White House. On January 30th, 1973 G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord Jr (both of whom were former “aides” to Nixon) were convicted of “conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in the Watergate incident”9. Then two of Nixon's White House employees, John Ehrlichman and H.R Haldeman, resigned in conjunction with Attorney General Richard Kleindienst10. This series of events was starting to uncover a new world of measures the citizens of America did not know was possible for the government to reach. President Nixon, at this time, still insisted that he was innocent, stating “I'm not a crook.”11 Meanwhile his colleagues and