Read the following articles and answer the accompanying questions (1-8) with details. Do a good job!

1) How did President Nixon try to bridge the gap between big government liberalism and the emerging conservative movement? Discuss each of the following:  Civil Rights  Women’s Rights  Environmental Laws  Welfare

2) What is one argument that could be used to argue that President Nixon was the last president to reflect the liberal ascendancy of the 1900s?

3) What is one argument that could be used to argue that President Nixon was the first president to reflect the emerging conservative majority the last part of the 1900s?

Richard Nixon – PBS The American Experience (General Article: Domestic Policies)

Shortly after took office in 1969, he proposed a dramatic restructuring of American government. The bloated federal bureaucracies, Nixon believed, buried creative entrepreneurship under mountains of red tape and fostered dependency on handouts. He called instead for a "New Federalism" -- a system which directed money and power away from the federal bureaucracy and toward states and municipalities. This system, Nixon said, could respond more efficiently to the needs of the people.

The president's New Federalism was anything but new. In fact, if not in name, Nixon had been a practicing New Federalist since he entered Congress in 1946. Throughout his political career, he had opposed big government programs and fought to restore political authority to the local level. Now he would use the power of the presidency to further the cause of New Federalism.

In 1969, despite civil rights reforms like the landmark decision declaring that segregated schools were unconstitutional, the 1964 Civil Rights bill and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, many African Americans lived without the full protection of the law, equal access to public facilities, or equal economic opportunity. Nixon viewed this situation as not only unfair to African Americans, but as a waste of valuable human resources which could help the nation grow.

Among the most pressing civil rights issues was desegregation of public schools. Nixon inherited a nation in which nearly 70% of the black children in the South attended all-black schools. He had supported civil rights both as a senator and as vice president under Eisenhower, but now, mindful of the Southern vote, he petitioned the courts on behalf of school districts seeking to delay busing. Meanwhile, he offered a practical New Federalist alternative -- locally controlled desegregation.

Starting in Mississippi and moving across the South, the Nixon administration set up biracial state committees to plan and implement school desegregation. The appeal to local control succeeded. By the end of 1970, with little of the anticipated violence and little fanfare, the committees had made significant progress -- only about 18% of black children in the South attended all-black schools.

New Federalism's focus on local empowerment did not mean an abdication of federal responsibility. In fact, the de-emphasis of federal bureaucracy coincided with a concentration of power within the . The president's actions on behalf of women illustrated his willingness to use that concentrated power.

Nixon had campaigned as a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, but did little to push its passage following his election. When feminists pointed out his lack of support for women's issues, he used presidential power to push the federal government forward.

Despite the opposition of many men in his administration, Nixon increased the number of female appointments to administration positions. He created a Presidential Task Force on Women's Rights. He asked the Justice Department to bring sex discrimination suits under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. And he ordered the Labor Department to add sex discrimination provisions to the guidelines for its Office of Federal Contract Compliance.

Nixon's responsiveness to various constituencies may have been as much a reflection of his political savvy as a commitment to New Federalism. Prior to the Earth Day demonstrations of 1970, the president showed little interest in environmental issues. But in the millions who gathered in communities around the nation, he saw political power. The president sent dozens of environmental proposals to Congress, including the Clean Air Act of 1970, perhaps one of the most significant pieces of environmental legislation ever passed. He also created two new agencies, the Department of Natural Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency, to oversee environmental matters.

While Nixon increased spending on domestic initiatives during his presidency, he consistently stood by the New Federalist principle of fiscal efficiency. Nixon insisted that all environmental proposals meet the cost-benefit standards of the Office of Management and Budget. In 1972, he vetoed the Clean Water Act, which he generally supported, because Congress had boosted its cost to $18 billion. When Congress overrode his veto, he used his presidential powers to impound half of the money.

In many ways, Nixon's New Federalism paralleled Conservatives' desires for a smaller, less costly federal government. But an element of true radicalism was evident in (one) of his most controversial domestic proposals -- the Family Assistance Plan.

Nixon had experienced the sting of poverty as a child, and he never forgot it. But while he sympathized with the poor, he also shared many Americans' conviction that the welfare system had grown into an inefficient bureaucracy which fostered dependency and low self esteem among welfare recipients and contributed to the breakdown of families by providing assistance only to households which were not headed by a working male.

With the assistance of Urban Affairs Council secretary Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Nixon created the Family Assistance Plan. FAP called for the replacement of bureaucratically administered programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Food Stamps, and Medicaid, with direct cash payments to those in need. Not only single-parent families, but the working poor would qualify for aid. All recipients, save the mothers of preschool age children, would be required to work or take job training.

Nixon revealed FAP in a nationwide address on August 8, 1969. Heavy criticism followed. Welfare advocates declared the income level Nixon proposed -- $1600 per year for a family of four -- insufficient. Conservatives disliked the idea of a guaranteed annual income for people who didn't work. Labor saw the proposal as a threat to the minimum wage. Caseworkers opposed FAP fearing that many of their jobs would be eliminated. And many Americans complained that the addition of the working poor would expand welfare caseloads by millions. A disappointed Nixon pressed for the bill's passage in various forms, until the election season of 1972. He knew a bad campaign issue when he saw one, and he let FAP expire.

Nixon won reelection by a landslide in 1972. During his first term, Nixon succeeded in redirecting power away from the federal government. Some argue that his efforts benefited women and minorities, resulted in a cleaner environment and provided money and power for local initiatives. New Federalism, however, withered on the vine as Nixon fought in vain to preserve his presidency during the .

4) How did President Nixon try to reduce Cold War tensions? Discuss each of the following and evaluate his relative level of success. Make sure to use specifics  China  USSR  Vietnam

5) What is one argument that could be used to argue that President Nixon began to wind down the Cold War?

6) What is one argument that could be used to argue that President Nixon escalated the Cold War?

Richard Nixon – PBS The American Experience (General Article: Domestic Policies)

To many who had watched Richard M. Nixon build his political career as a Communist fighter, it must have seemed the ultimate irony. On July 15, 1971, Nixon announced on national television that he would become the first president ever to visit the People's Republic of China, a nation which had remained isolated from the West since the Communist revolution in 1949.

For Nixon, however, his upcoming visit represented the ultimate diplomatic triumph. Although he had publicly condemned the Chinese Communists, he had proposed a more relaxed attitude toward the People's Republic as early as 1954. In 1967, as a presidential candidate, he had written in the magazine Foreign Affairs, "We simply cannot afford to leave China outside the family of nations."

Nixon envisioned a future in which more cordial relations among the major world powers -- the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Western Europe, and Japan -- would allow for ventures profitable to all. Through international cooperation, these nations might reduce revenue-draining defense expenditures and prevent the occurrence of costly Third World conflicts such as the Vietnam War.

Perhaps because engagement with the Communist world represented such a turnabout from past U.S. policy, but also because he distrusted the diplomatic bureaucracy, Nixon tightly controlled his foreign policy. His main operative was National Security Council director -- his favorite mode of operation was secret, back-channel diplomacy. Frequently, the two men acted without the permission or the knowledge of the State Department.

Relations with China were important to the Nixon Administration Nixon began to woo China in February 1969, by sending covert signals of rapprochement through third party nations such as Pakistan and Romania. Publicly, the president took a less dramatic approach, asking Secretary of State William Rogers to announce that the U.S. favored increased cultural and scientific exchanges with the People's Republic.

Initially, the president's overtures bore little fruit, but he persisted. During the spring and summer of 1969, Soviet and Chinese troops clashed repeatedly along the border between the two nations. Kissinger believed that the Chinese feared the Soviets, and that these clashes might help push China toward the United States and may help contain the Soviet Union. Nixon and Kissinger were playing global power politics. In effect, they were balancing China against the U.S.S.R and intimidating both of them.

Nixon, however, recognized that he would have to make concessions if he wanted rapprochement with China. Early on, he took steps to tone down the anti-China rhetoric coming from the White House, loosened trade and visa restrictions between China and the U.S., and began troop reductions in both Vietnam and on bases near China.

On July 25, on a stopover in Guam, the president announced what would become known as the Nixon Doctrine, a cornerstone of his foreign policy. The United States, he said, would support democratic third world nations by providing them with financial and military aid, but not troops. In October of that year, Nixon called for a cease fire in Vietnam and a unilateral withdrawal of American troops. Hanoi refused his overture, but Nixon continued with "Vietnamization" -- supporting South Vietnam with equipment and money while gradually withdrawing American troops from the war.

By the start of 1970, Nixon's concessions had begun to thaw China's icy demeanor. The two nations began covert talks in Warsaw in January, but China canceled further discussions over the defection to the West of a Chinese diplomat and the extension of U.S. troops into Cambodia. That spring, Nixon resumed sending positive messages through Romania and Pakistan -- by the end of the year China had responded.

In March 1971, the public face of Sino-American relations took a negative turn when Chinese premier Chou en Lai visited Hanoi, of Communist North Vietnam. Just as quickly, however, relations turned toward the positive, when in April, American ping-pong players traveled to China.

The meeting of American and Chinese athletes marked the first significant cultural exchanged between the two nations since 1949. "Ping-pong diplomacy" delighted Americans, and improved Nixon's chances of selling better relations with China to the average voter. Perhaps more importantly, the warming trend in Chinese-U.S. relations helped convince the Soviets to warm up their own relationship with the United States.

From the time that the Soviets developed their own atomic bomb in 1949, they had engaged with the United States in a race for nuclear superiority. In 1963, John F. Kennedy sealed an agreement with the Russians and Great Britain to limit atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, but no other meaningful arms treaty had been signed.

As an alternative to the arms race, Nixon proposed to the Soviets that the two nations settle for a "strategic parity" in nuclear weapons. If each side possessed enough weapons to guarantee the destruction of the other, neither would dare to start war, and the peace would hold.

Since the start of Nixon's administration, however, progress in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) had been sluggish. Working largely through back channels, and largely through Kissinger, Nixon tried repeatedly to forge an agreement with the Soviets -- with little success. But as U.S.-China relations warmed, the Soviets began to fear what might happen if a strong Sino-American alliance were forged. Just a month after the excitement of ping-pong diplomacy, Nixon announced another victory -- the Soviets had agreed to work out an antiballistic missile treaty within one year.

Meanwhile, Nixon built on his success with the Chinese. On July 9, 1971, he sent Henry Kissinger on a secret visit to Peking, to meet with Premier Chou en Lai. Kissinger's goal was to arrange a China visit for his president, and he returned to Washington triumphant. On July 15, Nixon spoke to the nation, announcing that he would visit China the following year.

In the first half of 1972, Nixon became the world statesman he had always dreamed he would be. For a week in February, he met with Chou en Lai in China. The two leaders signed no specific agreements -- the opening of relations itself was a dramatic achievement. From May 22 to 26, Nixon met in summit with Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow, where the two signed ten formal agreements, including an anti- ballistic missile (ABM) treaty, an interim SALT treaty and a billion-dollar trade agreement. Nixon basked in international glory, but still one diplomatic coup eluded him -- an end to the war in Vietnam.

Publicly, Nixon had promised that he would "win the peace" in Vietnam. Privately, he assured himself that he would not be the first American president to lose a war. To do so would not only be damaging to his image, but would encourage further aggression by the Soviets and the Chinese. He held on, hoping for an exit which would allow America at least the appearance of victory.

Nixon coupled his policy of Vietnamization with hard-hitting attacks on North Vietnamese bases in Laos and Cambodia, but could not bludgeon Hanoi into an agreement. The official peace talks in Paris stalled repeatedly, and the covert dialogue between Kissinger and North Vietnam dragged on with little progress. At home, antiwar activists filled the streets. Nixon had hoped that improved relations with the Chinese and the Soviets would spur a quick exit from Vietnam. But the summits did little to push the war toward its end.

Following his reelection in 1972, Nixon temporarily abandoned diplomacy. For 12 days in December, the U.S. unleashed a ferocious bombing attack on the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. Nixon gave no explanation for the bombing -- he wanted to appear irrational, desperate, willing to do anything to get what he wanted.

The president's "madman" strategy paid off. In January 1973, the United States and North Vietnam negotiated a peace. Sadly, the terms were little better than the ones proposed by North Vietnam in 1969. More than 25,000 American lives had been lost in the interim. Nixon had gained little by delaying withdrawal.

By the start of 1973, the wheels of the Watergate scandal had begun turning faster. Nixon would never realize his plan to peacefully unite the world's superpowers. The Soviet-American détente collapsed shortly after Nixon's resignation. Sino-American relations improved slowly over the ensuing years, hampered by the Taiwan issue and by differences of opinion over human rights. Most Americans would remember Nixon's foreign policy not for its successes, but for its greatest failure -- the inability to achieve a rapid end to the war in Vietnam.

7) Explain the basic story of the Watergate scandal.

8) Do you think the system worked well and punished Nixon appropriately for his actions? Why or why not?

PBS News Hour Extra – Watergate

The Watergate scandal was one of the worst political scandals in American history. It resulted in the resignation of the president, Richard M. Nixon, under threat of impeachment and the conviction of several high-ranking members of his administration. Watergate takes its name from the break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate apartment and office complex in Washington, D.C., in June 1972, but the scandal spread, as other illegal activities were made public. This scandal continued until the summer of 1974, when Nixon resigned from office. The activities that would fall under the umbrella term "Watergate" began early in the Nixon administration. In 1969, Nixon approved wiretaps on the phones of government officials and reporters in an attempt to discern the source of news leaks about activities in Vietnam. In 1971 a special investigations unit was formed to plug news leaks. Dubbed the "plumbers," they broke into the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding looking for information to be used in the espionage trial against the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the Rand Corporation analyst who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. Also in 1971, Attorney General John N. Mitchell and , counsel to the president, met to discuss the need to obtain political intelligence for the Committee for the Re- Election of the President (CREEP). In 1972 Mitchell resigned as attorney general to accept the position as director of the committee. Shortly thereafter a plan was approved to break into the DNC headquarters to secure campaign strategy documents and other materials. The deputy director of the committee, Jeb Magruder, later testified that Mitchell had approved a plan developed by G. Gordon Liddy, the chief plumber, to break into the . Mitchell denied this. It has never become clear who ordered the operation or what the conspirators hoped to find.

On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested at the DNC headquarters, including the security coordinator for the committee, James McCord. The burglars were adjusting surveillance equipment they had installed in May when they were caught. Immediately a cover-up began. Magruder destroyed documents and gave false testimony to investigators. The White House blocked an FBI inquiry, declaring that it was a national security operation undertaken by the CIA.

Mitchell resigned from his post on July 1, 1972, citing personal reasons. From the original investigation only the five burglars, plus Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, were indicted. In January all seven were convicted, but the cover-up was beginning to unravel. In March 1973 U.S. District Court judge John Sirica received a letter from McCord charging that witnesses had committed perjury at the trial. He went on to implicate Dean and Magruder. Dean and Magruder broke under questioning and offered testimony that implicated White House and Nixon campaign officials. Dean testified that Mitchell had approved the break-in with the knowledge of White House domestic adviser and chief of staff H. R. Haldeman.

In May 1973 Senator (D-N.C.) opened a special Senate committee investigation into the affair. At the same time, Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson appointed , Jr., as special prosecutor to investigate the entire affair. Cox soon uncovered widespread evidence of political espionage, illegal wiretaps, and influence peddling. In July 1973 it was revealed that Nixon had secretly recorded conversations in the White House since 1971. Cox sued to obtain the tapes. On October 20, 1973, Nixon ordered Richardson to fire the special prosecutor. Richardson refused and resigned; his assistant, William Ruckelshaus, refused and was fired. Finally, Solicitor General Robert Bork fired Cox. This became known as the "." It led to calls for Nixon's impeachment, and the House of Representatives began an impeachment investigation.

Following Nixon's firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, in April 1974 Nixon appointed a new special prosecutor, . Upon assuming office, Jaworski subpoenaed 64 tapes needed for the trials resulting from the indictments. Nixon refused to comply with the subpoena and proposed a compromise in which he offered to provide edited transcripts in place of the actual tapes. The 1,254 pages of transcripts contained embarrassing material, including a large number of presidential deleted expletives; they were also inaccurate and incomplete. The inaccuracies were exposed when the House Judiciary Committee released its version of the tapes. U.S. District Court judge John Sirica, who had issued the original subpoena, rejected the transcripts as unacceptable and reissued an order for the original tapes. James St. Clair, the head of Nixon's Watergate defense team, appealed Sirica's ruling to the Court of Appeals. Jaworski, wishing to expedite the process, appealed directly to the Supreme Court. The Court agreed to hear the case, United States v. Nixon, on July 8, 1974. Nixon's case rested on two issues. First, the administration questioned the judiciary's jurisdiction in subpoenaing the tapes, citing separation of powers. Second, the administration cited executive privilege, the need for the protection of communication between high government officials and their advisers. The Court unanimously rejected both claims in a ruling on July 24, 1974. On the first point, the Court cited Marbury v. Madison (1803), which affirmed the power of judicial review. As for the second point, Chief Justice Warren Burger argued that neither separation of powers nor the need for confidential communication allowed for absolute presidential privilege of immunity from the judicial process.

On August 5, 1974, the transcripts were released, including one particularly damaging to Nixon, in which he discussed using the CIA to obstruct the FBI investigation of the Watergate break-in. These tapes led to the indictments of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, , , and Kenneth Parkinson for conspiring to cover up the Watergate scandal. Colson pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the Fielding break-in and the cover-up charges were dropped. Ultimately, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell were found guilty.

Facing a congressional vote on impeachment, Nixon announced his resignation on the evening of August 8, 1974, to be effective the next day at noon.

Information taken from: Korasick, John. "Watergate Scandal." In Critchlow, Donald T., and Gary B. Nash, eds. Encyclopedia of American History: Contemporary United States, 1969 to the Present, Revised Edition (Volume X). New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2010. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc.