Essay About The Watergate Scandal

To what extent did the Watergate scandal help give Nixon better leverage in the 1972 election, and how would the election outcome have changed without it?

The Watergate scandal was a major event that took place throughout the 1970s, mainly in the early 70s. The Watergate scandal played a big role in giving Nixon easier leverage to win the 1972 election, and, as a result, caused a lot of controversy during this time. While it may not have been necessary for Nixon to cheat to win the election, his doing so helped give him such high leverage that it would have been very hard to lose. Overall, the Watergate scandal was a major turning point on not only the 1972 election but an impact on Nixon's reputation in general. While it mainly affected the 1972 election, the scandal happened before and wasn’t found out until after Nixon was re-elected for a second term. It was truly the events leading up to the election in 1971 that caused his eventual resignation after impeachment was filed. The malicious acts that went on in the Watergate scandal, performed by Nixon and others in his party, gave him much higher leverage in the 1972 election - one that he likely didn’t need to cheat to win. There were many actions taken in the Watergate scandal, and after it as well, but first, it's best to know what the Watergate scandal truly was.

The Watergate scandal had been going on for quite some time before it was discovered on June 17th, 1972, when the first group of people involved was arrested for it. The term “Watergate Scandal” got its name due to the location of which the scandal had first begun, in the Watergate hotel in Washington D.C. Nixon and his party were using overly aggressive tactics, which ended up resulting in illegal tampering to give himself a better chance in the election and providing more knowledge to him. It got him what he wanted, as Nixon was re-elected for his second term. However, he was caught in the process, and as a result, he was the first ever president to resign from office after being elected. It wasn’t only one illegal action performed by Nixon’s committee too. They committed multiple crimes, all giving Nixon what was very large leverage in the election as a result. They stole top-secret documents to have new information, bugged and disrupted the Democratic national committee’s phones, and broke into their office. Along with this, they also installed multiple microphones into the office, so they could record everything that was said. This was a form of wiretapping, and it is also illegal. Nixon’s corporation could have potentially gotten away with it, if not for security guards noticing suspicious things happening in the office involving tape on the door. This resulted in them calling the police, who caught the wiretappers in the process of raiding the Democratic office. At the time, there was no direct proof that any of these incidents had anything to do with Nixon. As this reached the media before the election took place, Nixon had to make a statement to avoid losing the election due to the rumors. In this public statement, Nixon swore that all the people involved in the wiretapping were not related to him. This later was proven to be a big lie, but at the time the people trusted him and still voted him in the election. As a result of Nixon not being truthful, he committed an obstruction of justice. In order to cover this up, Nixon offered money to others to “keep quiet” or “hush” about the event. These people that Nixon offered the money to were mainly the people that he had wiretap in the first place, as he did not want any of them leaking that he was in fact behind all of it. This sparked new investigations from both the FBI and the CIA as it was becoming clear that something was going on that wasn’t being talked about. Many people that were believed to be a part of the Watergate scandal were investigated, revealing that Nixon did in fact have tapes of evidence from this foul play. However, it took Nixon a long time to even give an edited down version of these tapes, to make him still look somewhat innocent. Even though he did eventually release the full and unedited tapes, it was not until after impeachment was filed and Nixon had resigned. It was reported that Nixon was informed that if he resigned, he likely would not face any jail time. However, if he didn’t resign, there was a good chance that he could’ve seen jail time and higher fines. As a result, a few weeks later Richard Nixon resigned from office, making him the first ever American president to do so. The impact that the wiretapping had on the election was very significant, and if he did not resign, Nixon would have certainly still been the first US president to be impeached from office for what he and his corporation had done. Multiple members involved in the Watergate scandal did receive jail time, however, this was considered to be a lot less than many people had wanted/expected they would’ve received. Even though Nixon had been unofficially caught before election day, he still won by a landslide. This likely means that Nixon did not even have to perform illegal tampering to win the election, as he already had majority US support anyway from his first term. He was simply just being insecure. However, there were more details on how exactly this could’ve and likely would’ve happened.

As seen in the question that is to be answered, the Watergate scandal certainly did give Nixon a leverage in the election as that has already been identified. The true question is how much leverage did the scandal give Nixon, and would he still have won the election if he didn’t perform foul play. While of course it isn’t possible to truly tell if Nixon would’ve won, a further analysis on the election outcome can provide an accurate prediction on whether Nixon still would’ve been elected as president. While the election was overall tampered with, Nixon still won by a landslide of 520 to 17 electoral votes. This is even after he was called out publicly and reassured that he was not involved in the Watergate scandal, even though he was behind all of it. This shows that the Watergate scandal did still give Nixon great leverage, yet he may not have needed it regardless. Even without fraud, by such a landslide that Nixon won by, it's safe to assume that he still would’ve been elected president anyway. He got too much in his own head, and thought he needed to cheat to win when in reality, he did not. If the vote was closer, even if Nixon still had say 300 electoral votes, then it could be argued that he could've and maybe would've lost the election if not for the scandal.