Tricky Dick Day
It was on this day in 1974 that Richard Milhous Nixon went on national television to announce that he was resigning the office of the president. He was the first American president in history forced to resign. During Nixon’s second election, a group of men wearing rubber gloves were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Office Building. Nixon wasn’t the first U.S. president to tap phones or to use the FBI to spy on his political opponents, but Nixon was the first president to be investigated for such activities, and he tried to use his power to stop the investigation. The Washington Post as well as congressional investigators kept digging. At first, it appeared that no one could prove that Nixon knew about any of the misconduct, but then a former White House official named Alexander Butterfield mentioned that Nixon had secretly taped all of his White House conversations. The tapes were disastrous, since they showed that Nixon deliberately tried to cover up the Watergate scandal from the beginning.
…I have never been a quitter…
Congress drafted articles of impeachment, and Senate republicans informed Nixon that if he were impeached, he would be convicted. So, on this day in 1974, Nixon went on television and announced his resignation. He said, “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first.” More than thirty of the men who were closest to him went to jail for their roles in Watergate.
His policies as president had been surprisingly liberal. He began arms control agreements with the Soviet Union and eased relations with China. He established the Environmental Protection Agency, expanded Social Security and state welfare programs, and he tried to create a national health insurance system. Historians believe that if Nixon had just been more confident in his ability to beat George McGovern in the election of 1972, the Watergate scandal would never have occurred.
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That was a strange period of time in the U.S. I was a freshman in high school and was a daily topic of conversation.
I was a college student at the time. I was washing dishes weekends in a seafood restaurant on Long Island. I was looking to push Tricky off the ledge myself. I argued with everyone else in the restaurant, all older than me (except for the owners’ kid daughter who had a crush on my buddy who was a busboy); they thought it was a sin was was being done to “Our President”. They said it that way, the way some people say “Our Lord” or “Our Lady of Husbands with Nails in Their Eyes”.
“There was music in the cafes at night
And revolution in the air.”
And then I woke up one morning recently, over 52.
It was an odd time for us non-Americans too. Watching the most powerful country go through this political “regime change” for apparent high crimes. Then we see the same wheels in motion against Clinton for nothing of consequence and nothing of consequence for George the Lesser for consequencial things ignored. Strange days indeed.