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Review/Analysis of Watergate: The Presidential Scandal that Shook America
Olson begins his tale of Watergate by noting that Richard M. Nixon intended to shape national policies according to his political agenda and his personal likes and dislikes (5). The main theme here is that Nixon did not serve the interests of the American people but rather his own interests. The Watergate scandal revealed the reality of this situation to the nation, and the nation pushed backincluding members of his own political partyso that he ended up resigning from office. That is the theme that Olson focuses on in his book Watergate: The Presidential Scandal that Shook America. However, politics being complicated, and the US government having a vast treasure trove of secrets, can one really rest easy in adopting such a simple view of the Watergate episode? Perhaps there was more going on than Nixons own personal interests. Perhaps Nixon was as much a victim of Watergate as the DNC offices that his plumbers were allegedly targeting.
One must consider, after all, that two Kennedys had been assassinated, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. The 1960s were a horrible period in America. People literally thought the nation had turned into a banana republic. In fact, that was Eisenhowers reaction when hearing that Ruby shot Oswald on live TV (Talbot). Nixon may not have had anything to do with any of those assassinationsbut one thing is clear: the scandal of Watergate surely pales in comparison to every single one of those murders. Yet the outreach and scorned heaped upon Nixon is more than is heaped upon almost any other presidentexcept perhaps Donald Trump. But readers could easily draw parallels between Olsons characterization of Nixon and the popular presss characterization of Trump in the White House. Both presidents have been painted as being personally motivated to lie, cheat, conceal, and deceive.
Olson does a good job of making the...…out of Afghanistan, but he seems intent on starting WW3 with Russia, does he not? The point is that Nixon should not be viewed or portrayed or condemned as totally abominable or corrupt. There is a lot more going on with Watergate than most chronicles like Olsons will attempt to explainand that can be said as fact simply by looking at some of the plumbers involved in the break-in and their connections with intelligence going all the way back to the 1960s. Hunt, for instance, like had much to tell about a certain assassination, as Talbot reminds his readers.
Overall, the book is a very good read, interesting, sharply focused, and well-written. But the perspective of the author focuses perhaps a bit too much on Nixon as a conniving crook. Undoubtedly Nixon had secretsbut undoubtedly many others in Washington did as well. Olsons exclusive focus on Nixons attempt to cover things up and hide tapes from Congress does not allow for a deep penetration…
Works Cited
Olson, Keith. Watergate: The Presidential Scandal that Shook America. University Press of Kansas, 2003.
Talbot, David. Brothers. Free Press, 2007.
..certain common elements of religious orientation that the great majority of Americans share....and [these still] provide a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life, including the political sphere The inauguration of a President is an important ceremonial event in this religion. It reaffirms, among other things, the religious legitimation of the highest political authority." (Bellah, p.3-4) Relevant examples in this regard can include the speeches that Nixon held in
What happened with Watergate was exactly this type of unfortunate substitute of the democratic process with the will of another institution. The subject of the paper is very important for U.S. history exactly because of the implications of what was previously described. It is not a singular case of an American President attempting to substitute himself to the general democratic framework or usual democratic channels. Andrew Jackson had attempted to decrease
Watergate Affair The term "Watergate" is generally used to explain an intricate maze of political scandals that popped up between 1972 and 1974. The word refers to the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. In particular. In fact, the Watergate is a series of scandals that involve the government of President Richard M. Nixon and more distinctively includes the robbing of the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C. that was the national
Watergate scandal was a political scandal that took place in the United States in the 1970s due to a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters situated at Watergate office complex in Washington D.C. The Nixon administration attempted covering up its involvement in 1972.the whole affair began when five men were caught breaking in and entering into the Democratic National Committee headquarters within the Watergate complex. This took place in
R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. In his speech, President Nixon said of the Watergate break-in that he was "appalled... and... shocked to learn that employees of the Re-Election Committee were apparently among those guilty." He then claimed that "there had been an effort to conceal the facts both from the public, from you, and from me." In his speech he said though he had been told
467). While Woodward and Bernstein got the credit for first bringing the story to light, as media reports increased, later research showed that much of what newspapers, radio and television reported to the public had already been discovered by investigative agencies such as the FBI (Feldstein,-PAGE), which suggests that perhaps the famous informer who met periodically with Woodward might have been someone from inside the FBI. Eventually, money paid to