TV footage of President Richard Nixon announcing his resignation.
Tom Middlemiss/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
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Tom Middlemiss/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
It’s no longer a surprise, but it’s still a shock.
On a Thursday night in August 50 years ago, Americans turned on the evening news and heard that the president of the United States would resign the following day.
Nothing like this has ever happened before; but for those paying attention, it is increasingly difficult to imagine any other outcome.
Richard Nixon’s resignation was the culmination of two years of intense controversy that began with the break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex in June 1972.
Although initially considered a minor event, the theft was linked to Nixon’s re-election campaign and the White House became involved in the subsequent cover-up. There were two years of ongoing investigations and indictments, mounting evidence, and a steady erosion of Nixon’s support within his own party and among the general public.
A Harris poll released the week of his resignation found that two-thirds of Americans thought it was time for Nixon to be impeached and tried.
But This man can read his farewell statement live in front of cameras from the Oval Office On August 8, was Nixon winning 49 states to win a second presidential term just 21 months earlier?
“I have never been a quitter,” the familiar voice said. “It abhors every instinct in my body to leave office before my term is up. But as president, I must put the interests of America first.”
As he boarded the White House helicopter after resigning as president, Richard Nixon smiled and raised his hand in victory.
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Bettmann/Bettmann Archives
He told the nation that he had concluded that he “could not have the support of Congress” to make the decisions he had to make as leader of the Free World.
The next morning, Nixon said goodbye to his staff at the White House and boarded a helicopter for the first leg of the long journey back to Southern California. His vice president, Gerald Ford, was sworn in by the chief justice of the Supreme Court within an hour.
The support base is shrinking
Nixon had been fighting for his life for two years but was forced to watch as Congress no longer supported his stay in office. Articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice and abuse of power were being passed in the House. They had the support of large majorities, including many Republicans.
In July, half a dozen Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee joined all of its Democrats in voting for at least one article. The Supreme Court then ordered Nixon to turn over subpoenaed recordings of his Oval Office conversations that Congress and prosecutors in the case had sought. The recordings destroyed Nixon’s account of what he knew about Watergate and when he knew it. Several Republicans who voted against impeachment on the House Judiciary Committee told reporters that they would vote differently on the floor.
At the same time, in the Senate, it became increasingly clear that a two-thirds majority was needed to convict the president and remove him from office.
That clear message was conveyed to Nixon in early August by a number of senior Republicans led by the honorable Senator. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the 1964 Republican presidential candidate. Goldwater reportedly told the president that he would vote to convict and remove him.
What had been the veneer of confidence and pomp of the White House finally crumbled, and Nixon saw what he had to do. On the night of August 8, he told the nation that he
would resign the following day and his vice president, Gerald Ford of Michigan, would be sworn in as his replacement.
The process has involved multiple investigations, Senate hearings, House hearings, and countless court appearances for those caught up in the larger drama. It has been an exhausting process for all involved, as Ford acknowledged when he declared, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”
Remarkably, all three branches of the federal government participated—including bold figures in the executive branch who saw their duty to the law and the Constitution rather than to the head of the executive branch that put them in office.
In Congress and the courts, legal proceedings against the president were also promoted or facilitated by individuals with solid Republican credentials, some of whom had been appointed by Nixon or elected with his endorsement. In short, the system worked, not only as designed, but as idealized since the founding of the republic.
Third Class Robbery, First Class Detective Story
Ultimately, Nixon was overthrown when his abuse of government power to maintain and protect his political position was exposed.
The Watergate complex (center) of offices, apartments and hotels is shown with evidence labels from the trial of the so-called Watergate Seven), Washington DC, 1972. The trial — which began in January 1973 — concerned the June 17, 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, located in the complex, and ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
United States District Court for the District of Columbia/PhotoQuest/Getty Images)/Photo Archive
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United States District Court for the District of Columbia/PhotoQuest/Getty Images)/Photo Archive
Ronald L. Ziegler, Nixon’s press secretary, initially scoffed at what he called “third-rate theft”—and it was certainly a bungled affair. But serious legal exposure began as the president and his closest advisers attempted to buy the thieves’ silence and limit the damage. The cover-up proved far worse than the crime. The story gained traction in the final months of 1972 because some elements of law enforcement, including the FBI, assisted in an investigation by Washington Post.
All of this was later popularized by a movie. All the President’s Men starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Parcel reporter, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernsteinretell the story in the form of a journalistic detective story.
In 1972, initial efforts to clarify that story of Parcel and other news organizations were overshadowed by the upcoming election and Nixon’s landslide victory. But during this same period, prosecutors and judges were asking difficult questions that the Nixon campaign and White House staff had little to answer.
One judge in particular, John Sirica, surprised many given his past history as a Republican operative. Sirica was unwilling to let the original burglars or others get away without testifying, putting pressure on the White House at a crucial time. And he later made important rulings on evidence that proved crucial to cracking the case.
In early 1973, former White House counsel John Dean refused to take responsibility for the Nixon cover-up. and became a key witness at the first public inquiry into the Watergate scandal.
That was the case with the Senate hearings that began that May and continued into the fall—broadcast live every day by all three national television networks. They were so in-depth and relentless, in large part because their co-chairs, Democrat Sam Ervin of North Carolina and Republican Howard Baker of Tennessee, were intent on getting to the bottom of it all. It was Baker who asked the core question: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”
A nation both fascinated and exhausted
Months of televised Senate hearings changed the mood of the country. They also exposed existence of tapes This would prove crucial to the case, the recordings that Nixon had secretly ordered of conversations in his Oval Office.
These men were subpoenaed by special counsel Archibald Cox, and when Cox refused to back down, Nixon fired him and appointed Texan Leon Jaworski. Though expected to be more docile, Jaworski proved to be a pitbull in his own right. He eventually prosecuted, tried, and convicted several key members of Nixon’s inner circle, including his first attorney general, John Mitchell. He also called Nixon himself an “unindicted co-conspirator.”
Months of congressional litigation and controversy kept Watergate in the news throughout 1973 and the first half of 1974. The nation was exhausted and fearful of what the next phase might bring. That feeling may have been key to Ford’s decision in September 1974 to unconditionally pardon Nixon for all Watergate-related crimes.
For many Americans, the amnesty left the entire issue unresolved. For others, the dominant emotion was relief that “Watergate” was finally over.
It is also an occasion to celebrate the fact that even a president re-elected in a landslide can be held accountable. Equally important, it is an affirmation that political appointees can have a sense of duty.
In the half-century since, we have seen three impeachment trials in the Senate: one for Bill Clinton in 1999 and two for Donald Trump in 2020 and 2021. In each case, each article of impeachment approved along party lines in the House fell short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction under the Constitution. A few votes were cast along party lines in each case, but there was never any real suspense.
Given the prevalence of partisanship in our age, it is hard to imagine a return to the political dynamics of a half-century ago that led two-thirds of the country and Nixon himself to conclude that he had to go.
