He was the second of five sons of Francis Anthony Nixon , who struggled to earn a living running a grocery store and gas station, and his wife, Hannah Milhous Nixon He attended Whittier College, where he excelled as a debater and was elected president of the student body before graduating in Three years later, he earned a law degree from Duke University, where he was head of the student bar association and graduated near the top of his class.
After Duke, he returned to Whittier, California, and began working as an attorney. The couple had two daughters, Patricia and Julie Navy and served as an operations officer in the Pacific. Following the war, Nixon launched his political career in when he defeated a five-term Democratic incumbent to represent his California district in the U.
House of Representatives. As a congressman, Nixon served on the House Un-American Activities Committee and rose to national prominence by leading a controversial investigation of Alger Hiss , a well-regarded former State Department official who was accused of spying for the Soviet Union in the late s.
Nixon was re-elected to Congress in and two years later, in , won a seat in the U. In , General Dwight Eisenhower selected the year-old first-term senator to be his vice presidential running mate. A few months after accepting the nomination, Nixon became the target of a negative campaign that raised questions about money and gifts he allegedly received from industry lobbyists. Eisenhower and Nixon won the election of and were re-elected in In , Nixon claimed the Republican presidential nomination, but lost one of the closest elections in American history to U.
Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. The turning point of the campaign came in the first-ever nationally televised presidential debate. In a televised address, Nixon proposes a five-point peace plan for Indochina. Nixon signs the Occupational Health and Safety Act of , which gives the secretary of labor the responsibility of setting workplace safety standards for jobs in the United States.
Nixon signs a clean air bill which mandates that car manufacturers reduce certain pollutants by 90 percent. This was unusual for a Republican president.
Nixon delays the construction of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal in order to stop environmental damage. Taping systems are activated in the White House. The Oval Office is outfitted with a voice-activated system and the Cabinet Room with a manual system. Nixon signs a Wage-Price Controls Bill, extending his authority to impose restraints on wages, prices, salaries, and rents for another year. Nixon shocks the nation with the news that he plans to visit China within the next year, becoming the first president to do so; this visit helped to improve relations with China by ending 25 years of rivalry between the nations.
Nixon signs an extension of the Economic Stabilization Act, allowing himself another year in which to right the economy. President and Mrs. Nixon arrive in China. A joint communique, later known as the Shanghai Communique, is released by the United States and China.
It calls for both countries agree to increase their contacts, and for the United States to withdraw gradually from Taiwan. It was the first time an American President had visited the country. The eight-day visit included official meetings, cultural visits, and sightseeing in Beijing, Hangchow, and Shanghai.
The media extensively covered the trip, televising many of the events. Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou En-Lai met with President Nixon and American officials, and the people of both nations saw the beginning of a diplomatic thaw most thought impossible only months earlier. It was a startling announcement from a politician who had built much of his political career championing anti-Communism and using the issue as a means to ascend through the higher reaches of American government.
Nixon had long harbored great antipathy for Communism and its adherents from his work on the House Committee for Un-American Activities in the s to his stands as vice president in the Eisenhower administration to his own pronouncements as President.
As President, Nixon reasoned that improving relations with China would allow him to inject more fluidity into the international environment and offset the growing power of the Soviet Union. But in order to improve relations with China, he had to resolve the Taiwan issue. Until , Nixon had been a supporter of the pro-Taiwan lobby that had blocked any move to recognize the People's Republic of China. The United States also agreed that there was one China and Taiwan was part of it and that the United States would work toward the ultimate objective of removing U.
The most lasting contribution of the Nixon visit was a rapprochement with China itself, with the United States recognizing the People's Republic of China as the sole diplomatic voice of China. European allies applauded the trip, but leaders in Japan and Taiwan viewed the diplomatic move with caution and concern.
Nixon's secret diplomacy also concerned many who felt that matters of national interest ought to be debated publicly. Still, Nixon's historic visit to China in opened the door to relations between two of the world's most powerful countries, China and the United States.
Nixon dismisses the use of busing, or the transportation of students from different areas via school bus, as a means of achieving racial integration in schools and seeks legislation that would deny court-ordered busing. On national television, Nixon states that he has ordered the mining of North Vietnamese ports and the bombing of military targets in the North Vietnam.
Nixon arrives in the Soviet Union for a summit meeting. He is the first sitting President to visit the U. Nixon orders Chief of Staff H. Haldeman to tell the F. Nixon enhances the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the sale and use of pesticides. Nixon asks for the resignation of all agency directors, federal department heads, and presidential appointees.
Phase Three of the economic plan is announced, in which wages and price controls will be ended in all but a few industries. Paris Peace Accords are signed by all parties at war in Vietnam, officially ending the conflict. The voice-activated taping system at Camp David ceases operation, as does the system attached to the desk telephone in the Camp David study.
Nixon admits responsibility for the Watergate affair on television, but continues to assert no prior knowledge of it. Nixon declares a freeze on all prices for sixty days, with the exception of raw agricultural products and rents. Phase Four of the economic program is revealed, in which the freeze is lifted on all foods except beef and health-care products. Vice President Agnew comes under scrutiny for charges stemming from campaign contributions he received while in office from persons who were later given government contracts.
Agnew vehemently denies the charges in a press conference. Gerald Ford is nominated as Vice President. After being confirmation by Congress, he is sworn in on December 6.
Richardson had hired Cox to investigate the break-in at the Watergate hotel. When Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Cox, Richardson refused and instead resigned.
Bork fired Cox. However, the firing of Cox backfired on President Nixon as public outrage about his actions led to the hiring of a new special prosecutor. The Senate Watergate Committee subpoenas more than tapes, which Nixon refuses to hand over, stating that presidential communications must remain confidential.
Nixon gives his State of the Union address, in which he refuses to resign and demands an end to the Watergate investigation. Nixon addresses the nation before disclosing more than 1, pages of his conversations regarding Watergate. Despite Vice President Ford's advice to surrender the necessary evidence to the House Judiciary Committee, Nixon refuses to hand over Watergate-related tapes. The tapes disclose Nixon's knowledge and participation in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary.
On July 24, , the Supreme Court ruled in an decision that President Richard Nixon had to turn over sixty-four tapes, which disclosed his knowledge and participation in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary.
The conversations on the tapes implicated Nixon and led to his resignation, the first time in United States history a President had resigned. The Watergate scandal began when five men were arrested for breaking into the office of the Democratic National Committee on June 17, Initially it was unclear if there was any connection between the burglary and the Nixon administration but gradually it was revealed that the White House was involved.
Butterfield testified that since the White House routinely recorded conversations. The taping was undertaken ostensibly to provide a historical record of the Nixon Administration, but it soon emerged as a means to prove President Nixon's guilt or innocence.
When the existence of the tapes was revealed, the Senate Watergate Committee requested access to them. Unable to come to an agreement with Nixon on releasing the tapes, the Senate Committee called on the President to produce the tapes. Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox also issued a subpoena for the tapes as part of his investigation. President Nixon responded by refusing to release the tapes, claiming that his conversations were private and hence protected from forced disclosure by the doctrine of executive privilege-a concept which permits officers of the executive branch to maintain a level of privacy to promote open and vigorous debate.
This confrontation set the stage for the United States v. Nixon , in which the Court ruled unanimously that President Nixon must turn over the tapes. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote the decision, in which the Court upheld the doctrine of executive privilege but said it was generally limited to areas of national security or diplomatic affairs.
The Court went on to say that that the President is not above the law and Nixon must turn over the tapes. Soon after the Court's decision, Nixon released the tapes. The tapes revealed that the President had participated in a cover-up of the burglary as early as June 23, , just days after it occurred.
The release of the tapes eroded what was left of Nixon's support. In a televised speech on the night of August 8, , President Richard Nixon announced his intention to resign at noon the next day. Although he conceded he had made some wrong judgments, he did not admit to any wrongdoing. In Latin America, the Nixon administration continued the long-standing policy of supporting autocratic dictatorships in lieu of socialist democracies.
Most notably, he authorized clandestine operations to undermine the coalition government of Chile's Marxist president, Salvador Allende, after he nationalized American-owned mining companies.
Nixon restricted Chile's access to international economic assistance, discouraged private investment, increased aid to the Chilean military and funneled covert payments to Allende opposition groups. In September , Allende was overthrown in a military coup, establishing Chilean army general Augusto Pinochet as dictator. But the foremost issue on Nixon's plate was Vietnam. When he took office, American soldiers were dying per week in Vietnam.
The Johnson administration had escalated the war to involve over , American troops and expanded operations from the defense of South Vietnam to bombing attacks in North Vietnam. Nixon faced the decision of either escalating the war further to secure South Vietnam from communism or withdrawing forces to end involvement in an increasingly unpopular war.
Nixon proposed a controversial strategy of withdrawing American troops from South Vietnam while carrying out Air Force bombings and army special-ops operations against enemy positions in Laos and Cambodia, both of which were officially neutral at the time. He established what became known as the Nixon Doctrine also called "Vietnamization" , replacing American troops with Vietnamese soldiers. From to , troop withdrawals were estimated to be , soldiers.
While Nixon's campaign promise in was to draw down the size of the U. When Nixon made a televised speech announcing the movement of U. Beyond all the strife, the war in Vietnam had caused domestic inflation to grow to nearly 6 percent by To address the problem, Nixon initially tried to restrict federal spending, but beginning in , his budget proposals contained deficits of several billion dollars, the largest in American history up to that time.
Though defense spending was cut almost in half, government spending on benefits to American citizens rose from a little over 6 percent to nearly 9 percent. To control increasing inflation and unemployment, Nixon imposed temporary wage and price controls, which achieved marginal success, but by the end of , inflation returned with a vengeance, reaching 8. With the war in Vietnam winding down, Nixon in defeated his Democratic challenger, liberal senator George McGovern, in a landslide victory, receiving almost 20 million more popular votes and winning the Electoral College vote to Nixon looked invincible in his victory.
It seems odd, in retrospect, that his re-election campaign, the Committee to Re-Elect the President also known as CREEP was so concerned about Democrats opposition that it reverted to political sabotage and covert espionage. Public opinion polls during the campaign indicated President Nixon had an overwhelming lead. The entry of independent candidate Wallace ensured some Democratic support would be taken from McGovern in the South, and for most of the American public, Senator McGovern's policies were just too extreme.
During the campaign in June , rumors began to circulate about White House involvement in a seemingly isolated burglary of the Democratic National Election Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D. Initially, Nixon downplayed the coverage of the scandal as politics as usual, but by , the investigation initiated by two cub reporters for the Washington Post , Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had mushroomed into a full-scale inquest. White House officials denied the press's reporting as biased and misleading, but the FBI eventually confirmed that Nixon aides had attempted to sabotage the Democrats during the election, and many resigned in the face of criminal prosecution.
A Senate committee under Senator Sam Ervin soon began to hold hearings. Eventually, White House counsel John Dean gave evidence that the scandal went all the way to the White House, including a Nixon order to conceal wrongdoing.
Nixon continued to declare his innocence, though, repeatedly denying previous knowledge about the campaign sabotage and claiming to have learned about the cover-up in early Nixon responded directly to the nation by staging an emotional televised press conference in November , during which he famously declared, "I'm not a crook.
Facing increased political pressure, Nixon released 1, pages of transcripts of conversations between him and White House aides but still refused to release all of the recordings. The House Judiciary Committee, controlled by Democrats, opened impeachment hearings against the president in May In July, the Supreme Court denied Nixon's claim of executive privilege and ruled that all tape recordings must be released to the special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski.
Once the recordings were released, it didn't take long for Nixon's house of cards to teeter: One of the secret recordings confirmed the allegations of the cover-up, indicating that Nixon was looped in from the beginning. In late July , the House Judiciary Committee passed the first of three articles of impeachment against Nixon, charging obstruction of justice.
Upon the threat of a likely post-impeachment conviction, Nixon resigned from the office of the presidency on August 9, He was succeeded by Gerald Ford , whom Nixon had appointed vice president in after Spiro Agnew resigned his office amid charges of bribery, extortion and tax evasion during his tenure as governor of Maryland. Nixon was pardoned by President Ford on September 8, After his resignation, Nixon retired with his wife to the seclusion of his estate in San Clemente, California, where he spent several months distraught and disoriented.
Gradually he regrouped, and by he began forming a public-relations comeback. In August , Nixon met with British commentator David Frost for a series of interviews during which Nixon sent mixed messages of contrition and pride, while never admitting any wrongdoing.
While the interviews were met with mixed reviews, they were watched by many and positively contributed to Nixon's public image. In , Nixon published RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon , an intensely personal examination of his life, public career and White House years; the book became a best-seller.
He also authored several books on international affairs and American foreign policy, modestly rehabilitating his public reputation and earning him a role as an elder foreign-policy expert. But even these groundbreaking achievements must be considered within the context of Nixon's political goals.
He privately viewed the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the China initiative as ways to blunt criticism from the political left. And while his slow withdrawal from Vietnam appeared to be a practical application of the Nixon Doctrine, his secretly recorded White House tapes reveal that he expected South Vietnam to collapse after he brought American troops home and prolonged the war to postpone that collapse until after his reelection in Ultimately, the White House tapes must shape any assessment of Nixon's impact and legacy.
They ended his presidency by furnishing proof of his involvement in the Watergate cover-up, fueled a generation's skepticism about political leaders, and today provide ample evidence of the political calculation behind the most important decisions of his presidency. They make his presidency an object lesson in the difference between image and reality, a lesson that each generation must learn anew.
Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F.
0コメント