CW - The 1970s: The Presidencies (Lesson)

The 1970s: The Presidencies

Richard M. Nixon (R-CA)

The post-Vietnam era was marked by numerous social and political conflicts between liberals and conservatives over the extent of the power of the presidency and the federal government.

The Watergate Scandal started in the summer of 1972 when five men were discovered breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D. C.

Investigative reporting by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein formed connections between the men who broke in and President Nixon’s re-election committee and the White House.

Woodward and Bernstein exposed the fact that Nixon had secretly taped his conversations in the Oval Office at the White House. Investigators demanded that the tapes be turned over to the authorities.

President Nixon posited that ‘executive privilege’ allowed him to retain the tapes. The Supreme Court ordered the president to turn over the tapes in a ruling in the case, United States v. Nixon in 1974.

The House Judiciary Committee voted for articles of impeachment against President Nixon in 1974 too.

The next step would have been to present the articles to the House of Representatives to vote on whether or not to impeach Nixon. Had the House impeached Nixon, the Senate would have held a trial of the sitting president. If found guilty of the charges, Nixon would have been removed from office.

However, before the issue of impeachment could be presented to the entire House of Representatives, President Nixon resigned in August 1974.

One consequence (both short and long term) of the Watergate debacle is that the percentage of people voting in elections has declined and opinion polls have evidenced an erosion of trust in the government.

 

Gerald R. Ford (R-MI)

After the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, Vice President Gerald R. Ford was sworn into office as president on August 9, 1974. One of his first moves was controversial—he pardoned Richard Nixon.

President Ford’s nominee for the vice presidency was former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Over time Ford filled his cabinet positions.

Ford established his policies in the first year of his term in spite of the heavily Democratic Congress. His first priority was to stifle inflation, but recession became the country’s biggest domestic problem. Despite his measures to stimulate the economy, Ford vetoes a series of non-military bills that would have increased the heavy budget deficit.

President Ford vetoed 39 bills from Congress in 14 months.

One of his main priorities was to help small businesses operate more effectively by reducing taxes and relaxing the regulations imposed by government agencies.

In foreign affairs, President Ford’s priorities were to maintain the United States’ power and image in the international community after the Vietnam War withdrawal and to avoid war in the Middle East. This avoidance of war led the Ford administration to provide aid to Israel and Egypt in an effort to persuade both nations to accept a truce.

Détente with the Soviet Union continued, and Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev set new limits on nuclear weapons.

President Ford won the Republican nomination for the presidency in the 1976 election, but he lost to a former peanut farmer (also a former Navy midshipman, former governor of the State of Georgia, and United States Naval Academy graduate) from Plains, Georgia---James Earl Carter, Jr. (Jimmy).

 

James Earl Carter, Jr. (D-GA)

Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976 amid a lagging economy, high inflation, and unemployment. At home, Carter had a number of accomplishments during his presidency—he dealt with the energy crisis by implementing a national energy policy and deregulating petroleum prices to stimulate production. He also deregulated the trucking and airline industries.

He expanded the national park system including the protection of 103 million acres of land in Alaska.

Additionally, he created the Department of Education, strengthened the Social Security system, and appointed unprecedented numbers of African Americans, women, and Latinos to government jobs.

With regard to foreign affairs, Carter championed human rights, a stance that was not well-received by the Soviet Union. In the Middle East, Carter helped establish peace between Israel and Egypt with the Camp David Accords (so named for the presidential retreat near Washington, D. C. where the agreement was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1978.)

President Carter also brokered the Panama Canal treaties, established the SALT II nuclear limitations treaty with the Soviet Union, and built on the work of his predecessors with the establishment of full diplomatic relations with China.

However, there were setbacks too. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused the suspension of the SALT II pact. The last year of Carter’s presidency was dominated by the news of the kidnapping and captivity of U.S. Embassy employees in Iran.

The Iran hostage crisis and the economic challenges led to Carter’s defeat in the 1980 presidential election.

 

 

[CC BY 4.0] UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED | IMAGES: LICENSED AND USED ACCORDING TO TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION