1969 - 1974 The Nixon Era
1973 Falling wages, rising prices
After the Arab oil embargo began in 1973, the country fell into a recession, and ordinary Americans paid the price. Millions were out of work, inflation was soaring and the unemployment rate was on the rise.
Time’s article “The Recession: Gloomy Holidays – and Worse Ahead” from December 9, 1974, described the state of the nation:
Not for many years has a Christmas season begun with so many tidings of spreading discomfort and lack of joy about the U.S. economy. Already racked by a devastating double-digit inflation, the nation is now also plunging deeper into a recession that seems sure to be the longest and could be the most severe since World War II. Consumers who a few weeks ago worried mostly about rising prices now fear for their jobs and incomes as well. For many Americans, the Yuletide will be a time of less elaborate meals, infrequent parties, fewer and cheaper presents.
The Antiwar Movement
Even though very few people continued to support the war in Indochina, President Nixon feared that a retreat would make the United States look weak. As a result, instead of ending the war, Nixon and his aides devised ways to make it more palatable, such as limiting the draft and shifting the burden of combat onto South Vietnamese soldiers.
This policy seemed to work at the beginning of Nixon’s term in office. When the United States invaded Cambodia in 1970, however, hundreds of thousands of protestors clogged city streets and shut down college campuses. On May 4, National Guardsmen shot four student demonstrators at an antiwar rally at Kent State University in Ohio in what came to be known as the Kent State Shooting. Ten days later, police officers killed two black student protestors at Mississippi’s Jackson State University. Members of Congress tried to limit the president’s power by revoking the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing the use of military force in Southeast Asia, but Nixon simply ignored them. Even after the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, which called the government’s justifications for war into question, the bloody and inconclusive conflict continued. American troops did not leave the region until 1973.
The Watergate Scandal
As his term in office wore on, President Nixon grew increasingly paranoid and defensive. Though he won reelection by a landslide in 1972, he resented any challenge to his authority and approved of attempts to discredit those who opposed him. In June 1972, police found five burglars from Nixon’s own Committee to Re-Elect the President in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate office building.
- The Watergate scandal began early in the morning of June 17, 1972, when several burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate complex of buildings in Washington, D.C. This was no ordinary robbery: The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents. Nixon took aggressive steps to cover up the crimes, but when Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein revealed his role in the conspiracy, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. The Watergate scandal changed American politics forever, leading many Americans to question their leaders and think more critically about the presidency.
The Watergate Break-In
The origins of the Watergate break-in lay in the hostile political climate of the time. By 1972, when Republican President Richard M. Nixon was running for reelection, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War, and the country was deeply divided.
A forceful presidential campaign therefore seemed essential to the president and some of his key advisers. Their aggressive tactics included what turned out to be illegal espionage. In May 1972, as evidence would later show, members of Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (known derisively as CREEP) broke into the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate headquarters, stole copies of top-secret documents and bugged the office’s phones.
Soon, they found that Nixon himself was involved in the crime: He had demanded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation stop investigating the break-in and told his aides to cover up the scandal.
In April 1974, a Congressional committee approved three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, misuse of federal agencies and defying the authority of Congress. Before Congress could impeach him, however, President Nixon announced that he would resign. Gerald Ford took over his office, and–to the distaste of many Americans–pardoned Nixon right away.