History UsefulNotes / RichardNixon

During his time as vice-president, Nixon avoided falling into VicePresidentWho, due to a combination of him turning out to know how to use the position to effectively assert influence, and Eisenhower personally entrusting him with a somewhat ununsual amount of responsibility in regards to both domestic and foreign policy; in fact, he was in hindsight the perhaps most influential US vice-president until UsefulNotes/DickCheney came along. Nixon would dutifully attend both Cabinet and National Security Council meetings and chaired them when Eisenhower was absent. However, when the Democrats took both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections of 1954, it caused a great crisis of faith in Nixon, who considered resigning once his term as vice-president was up. However, on September 24, 1955, President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack. The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution had not yet been proposed, so Nixon was instead asked by the cabinet to act an unoffical interim president for six weeks, while Eisenhower recovered from his health scare. The event convinced Nixon to join Eisenhower's re-election campaign in 1956.

During his time as vice-president, Nixon was very influential man; perhaps the most influential vice-president until UsefulNotes/DickCheney. Nixon attended Cabinet and National Security Council meetings and chaired them when Eisenhower was absent. However, when the Democrats took both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections of 1954, it caused a great crisis of faith in Nixon, who considered resigning once his term as vice-president was up. However, on September 24, 1955, President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack, and while he recovered from his health scare, Nixon was asked to fill in for him for six weeks in an official capacity. The event convinced Nixon to join Eisenhower's re-election campaign in 1956.

The investigation took a dramatic turn in the summer of 1973 as the [[HauledBeforeASenateSubcommittee Senate Watergate Committee]] held televised public hearings into the scandal, with numerous Nixon aides (notably [[HeelFaceTurn John Dean]], his former counsel) detailed presidential involvement in the cover-up. The committee learned from a seemingly minor witness, Alexander Butterfield, that there was a system in the White House that recorded Nixon's conversations.[[note]]While previous presidents had recorded some of their conversations, Nixon used a self-operating system that recorded ''every'' conversation in the White House, including ones that implicated him[[/note]] Pressure mounted on Nixon to turn the tapes over to Congress and Archibald Cox, but he refused on the grounds on executive privilege, offering to hand over redacted transcripts instead (and later offering to have them verified by longtime Senator John Stennis, who was both a Nixon supporter and partially deaf), which he said was necessary to prevent the exposure of sensitive info regarding national security. When Cox subpoenaed the White House for the tapes, Nixon moved to have him fired in what became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre", which also resulted in the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, for refusing to fire Cox. Around the same time, Vice President UsefulNotes/SpiroAgnew [[FromBadToWorse resigned]] on unrelated charges of bribery and tax evasion, further eroding Nixon's credibility; Agnew was soon replaced by UsefulNotes/GeraldFord, the House Minority Leader. Ironically, Ford's appointment made Nixon's impeachment more likely, as Congress viewed him more favorably than the controversial Agnew.[[note]]Agnew, who was mostly known for colorfully insulting Nixon's political opponents, was called by many (including Nixon himself) as the President's "impeachment insurance", assuming Democrats would rather have the corrupt but competent Nixon as President than the corrupt ''and'' incompetent Agnew.[[/note]]

Cox's firing brought America to the edge of a constitutional crisis and became a PR disaster for Nixon. The tug-of-war for the tapes reached the Supreme Court in July 1974, who ordered they be released to investigators. The tapes gave Nixon the old one-two punch: first, by being the SmokingGun which revealed that he was behind the obstruction surrounding Watergate; second, by revealing his private tendency of being a SirSwearsALot who insulted towards his opponents, media figures and a variety of minority groups - most infamously African-Americans and Jews. With Nixon's involvement now confirmed, the House began impeachment proceedings with the Judiciary Committee voting in July to introduce three articles of impeachment, making him the second of only two presidents to have an impeachment resolution brought against him (the only other president was UsefulNotes/JohnTyler). Knowing he was doomed, Nixon resigned the office on the morning of August 9, 1974, famously departing the White House via helicopter. Shortly thereafter, successor Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon of any and all crimes he committed during his own administration, a move that garners controversy to this day. In October 1974, after resigning from office, Nixon fell ill with phlebitis; after consulting his doctors, who told him that if he didn't undergo surgery, he could die from the illness, Nixon reluctantly went under the knife and chose surgery, which extended his lifespan.

This would all set the stage for Nixon's actual first run for the White House, which came in 1960, making him the first incumbent vice-president to run for the top job in a century. This resulted in a surprise loss to UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, and while many blamed Nixon's defeat on a combination of bad luck and strategic errors -- particularly his poor performance in the first presidential debate (Nixon had suffered a bout of flu prior to the debate, and was still running a low fever during it, making him look rather pale and sweaty, which made him come across as nervous and uncomfortable -- Kennedy, on the other hand, had just returned home from a vacation, and as such had a healthy light tan and appeared energized and confident) [[note]]though the perception that he had performed poorly was made by people who ''watched'' the debate, which was the first to be televised; people who ''heard'' the debate on the radio actually felt he won[[/note]], and an AwesomeButImpractical attempt to campaign equally in all 50 states -- Nixon himself believed that the Kennedy family, along with Democratic running-mate UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson and Chicago mayor Richard Daley, had all conspired to commit electoral fraud. While he certainly wasn't the only person to believe this,[[note]](In fact, many historians concur in retrospect that Daley almost certainly '''did''' engage in unethical, if not outright illegal actions in order to help Kennedy out, though it's debated as to whether or not this made the difference between Kennedy's winning or losing the state given that Kennedy was a Catholic, and thus would almost certainly have done well in Chicago anyway due to its high Catholic population. Regardless, evidence for Johnson rigging the result in Texas is far sketchier, and without that state, Nixon would have lost the election regardless of what happened in Illinois. For what it's worth, while Nixon thought Johnson had cheated, he also believed he'd have lost Texas regardless, due to a Republican congressman organizing a protest which ended up turning violent and resulted in Johnson's wife being assaulted)[[/note]] in retrospect it's often pointed to as his StartOfDarkness, with many close to him later saying it just made him more determined to win the White House than ever. Nixon was further humiliated in 1962, when he ran for Governor of California and lost in a landslide to popular incumbent Pat Brown (father of future California governor UsefulNotes/JerryBrown). He capped off his defeat with a bitter, angry rant [[NeverMyFault blaming the press for his defeat]], termed his "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon%27s_November_1962_press_conference Last Press Conference]]" (a term he ''actually used'' during said event) as everyone assumed that Nixon had torpedoed his own career.

His reputation damaged by these defeats, Nixon held off on immediately running again in 1964 on the grounds that he could tell that running against Johnson (who replaced Kennedy after his assassination) would be futile. He spent the next several years rebuilding his reputation as a statesman and campaigning for Republican candidates in off-year elections, allowing him to present himself as a pragmatist who could act as a conciliator between the party's conservative and moderate wings, which had bitterly divided during UsefulNotes/BarryGoldwater's 1964 campaign. Nixon easily won the Republican nomination in 1968, and crushed Democratic nominee UsefulNotes/HubertHumphrey in the general election; Humphrey, as Johnson's Vice President, suffered from public backlash towards the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar, a divided opposition vote with segregationist candidate George Wallace, and his nomination being seen as a ConsolationAward after the assassination of UsefulNotes/RobertFKennedy. Nixon is the most recent President to be elected after having previously been defeated, the last before him being UsefulNotes/GroverCleveland in 1892.

While Nixon ''governed'' as a moderate, New Deal-era conservative, his ''rhetoric'' was a different matter entirely. Historians often look to Nixon as a progenitor of the "conservative revolution" that kicked off under UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan in TheEighties, largely by spurring a realignment of American politics in response to the changes of TheSixties. He [[TropeNamers popularized]] the term "SilentMajority" to describe the great mass of Americans who, even if they may have disagreed with the war in Vietnam, weren't out in the streets protesting, and certainly weren't into all the drugs, sex, and other junk coming out of the [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippie movement]]. His personal grudge against the press, whom he blamed for his past political failures, helped mainstream accusations of "media bias" which remain commonplace in American politics. Needless to say, Nixon became the eternal enemy of the era's counterculture, perhaps best personified by Creator/HunterSThompson, who declared Nixon his ArchEnemy, along with more mainstream liberals already suspicious of him. His "Southern strategy" is often credited with cleaving away two major Democratic constituencies, white Southerners and white working-class Northerners, by appealing to their right-wing social views.

Given all of his achievements, Nixon enjoyed high approval ratings throughout his first term to the point that his re-election in 1972 appeared a given. His major foreign policy breakthroughs during the election year prevented the Democrats from launching any meaningful campaign against him and he easily steamrolled opponent UsefulNotes/GeorgeMcGovern in one of the biggest landslide victories in history. Nixon won every state except for Massachusetts, which lead to "Don't Blame Me, I'm From Massachusetts" bumper stickers becoming popular as Nixon's support cratered. Another notable event of this election was when [[InnocuouslyImportantEpisode five men were arrested in June 1972 after being caught breaking into the Watergate hotel to bug the Democratic National Committee's offices]].

The Watergate break-in itself was the doing of Nixon's privately-run "intelligence" agency known as the "Plumbers." After Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers detailing government lies about Vietnam[[note]]which were effectively declassified to the American public after Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel read them into the Senate record, rendering Nixon's attempts to suppress them moot[[/note]], Nixon became obsessed with stopping leaks and felt the FBI wasn't responsive to his orders. The Plumbers[[note]]Officially known as the "Special Investigations Unit," nicknamed after one of their members told his mother that his job at the White House was to "stop leaks" and she assumed he was a literal plumber[[/note]] (among them ex-FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy and former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt) almost immediately descended into illegal behavior. Among their activities: a break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to find damaging information, intimidating witnesses in an anti-trust action against ITT (a major donor to Nixon's campaign), spying on and planting damaging stories about UsefulNotes/TedKennedy and other Democrats in the media, and beating up antiwar demonstrators. Which isn't to mention Liddy's proposals to firebomb the liberal Brookings Institution and assassinate journalist Jack Anderson, which were (thankfully) [[EvenEvilHasStandards vetoed by his superiors]].

Although Nixon's cover-up was initially successful, information slowly became public through a long series of explosive reports in ''The Washington Post'' as reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein corresponded with a source high-up in the federal government known as "Deep Throat", revealed decades later to be deputy FBI director Mark Felt.[[note]]Felt largely served as a source because [[ItsPersonal he resented Nixon]] passing him over for promotion after J. Edgar Hoover's death. Nixon knew, or at least guessed, that Felt was the leaker as he and Bob Haldeman are heard discussing Felt's identity on a White House tape[[/note]] Nixon was forced to appoint a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who began aggressively investigating the scandal. As the investigations grew closer to the White House, Nixon tried to do whatever he could to stymie or even shut them down completely, firing Haldeman, Ehrlichman and other aides who became implicated in the scandal while paying hush money to Hunt, Liddy and the other burglars to prevent them from talking. Responding to Watergate bogged Nixon's attention from other issues and he became increasingly ineffective as President.

The investigation took a dramatic turn in the summer of 1973 as the [[HauledBeforeASenateSubcommittee Senate Watergate Committee]] held televised public hearings into the scandal, with numerous Nixon aides (notably [[HeelFaceTurn John Dean]], his former counsel) detailed presidential involvement in the cover-up. The committee learned from a seemingly minor witness, Alexander Butterfield, that there was a system in the White House that recorded Nixon's conversations.[[note]]While previous presidents had recorded some of their conversations, Nixon used a self-operating system that recorded ''every'' conversation in the White House, including ones that implicated him[[/note]] Pressure mounted on Nixon to turn the tapes over to Congress and Archibald Cox, but he refused on the grounds on executive privilege, offering to hand over redacted transcripts instead (and later offering to have them verified by longtime Senator John Stennis, who was both a Nixon supporter and partially deaf), which he said was necessary to prevent the exposure of sensitive information regarding national security. When Cox subpoenaed the White House for the tapes, Nixon moved to have him fired in what became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre", which also resulted in the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, for refusing to fire Cox. Around the same time, Vice President UsefulNotes/SpiroAgnew [[FromBadToWorse resigned]] on unrelated charges of bribery and tax evasion, further eroding Nixon's credibility; Agnew was soon replaced by UsefulNotes/GeraldFord, the House Minority Leader. Ironically, Ford's appointment made Nixon's impeachment more likely, as Congress viewed him more favorably than the controversial Agnew.[[note]]Agnew, who was mostly known for colorfully insulting Nixon's political opponents, was called by many (including Nixon himself) as the President's "impeachment insurance", assuming Democrats would rather have the corrupt but competent Nixon as President than the corrupt ''and'' incompetent Agnew.[[/note]]

Cox's firing brought America to the edge of a constitutional crisis and became a PR disaster for Nixon. The tug-of-war for the tapes reached the Supreme Court in July 1974, who ordered they be released to investigators. The tapes gave Nixon the old one-two punch: first, by being the SmokingGun which revealed that he was behind the obstruction surrounding Watergate; second, by revealing his private tendency of being a SirSwearsALot who let loose streams of invectives towards his opponents, media figures and a variety of minority groups - most infamously African-Americans and Jews. With Nixon's involvement now confirmed, the House began impeachment proceedings with the Judiciary Committee voting in July to introduce three articles of impeachment, making him the second of only two presidents to have an impeachment resolution brought against him (the only other president was UsefulNotes/JohnTyler). Knowing he was doomed, Nixon resigned the office on the morning of August 9, 1974, famously departing the White House via helicopter. Shortly thereafter, successor Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon of any and all crimes he committed during his own administration, a move that garners controversy to this day. In October 1974, after resigning from office, Nixon fell ill with phlebitis; after consulting his doctors, who told him that if he didn't undergo surgery, he could die from the illness, Nixon reluctantly went under the knife and chose surgery, which extended his lifespan.

A major facet of Nixon's legacy is his endurance as the face of political corruption in America, as the Watergate scandal and his numerous abuses of power it revealed continue to [[OvershadowedByControversy outweigh any and all of his administration's positive achievements in the public consciousness]]. Successor UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's pardon of him generated widespread outrage and while Nixon again achieved good things as an elder statesman in TheEighties, such as his role in arranging the historic [[UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev Gorbachev]]-[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan]] talks (accompanied by this [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dwprnp62YFs/Uo5Q93C__FI/AAAAAAAAd8Y/ym3Rhc0JhAI/s1600/IMG_6759.JPG famous cover of a 1986 issue of Newsweek]] declaring "He's Back"), he never managed to shake off the legacy of Watergate. He has continued to serve as the prototype for a corrupt President in popular culture with the term "Nixonian" being been coined to describe behavior and abuses of power by politicians that are reminiscent of his. Likewise, virtually every major scandal in the Anglosphere (political or otherwise) will eventually be referred to with the suffix "-gate" as part of the snowclone {{Scandalgate}}, in reference to the Watergate scandal. Whenever a President is caught up in a scandal, comparisons to Nixon are almost mandatory. This was particularly the case when he served as the linchpin of the national debate over the impeachment of his friend UsefulNotes/BillClinton in 1998: Allies argued that his misdeeds were petty when compared to Nixon's while opponents argued that Clinton was undermining the rule of law in a manner just as severe as Nixon's. The many scandals that shadowed UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump and led to his two impeachments have yet again brought Nixon to the forefront once again with many stating that Trump makes Nixon look tame.

A major facet of Nixon's legacy is his endurance as the face of political corruption in America, as the Watergate scandal and his numerous abuses of power it revealed continue to [[OvershadowedByControversy outweigh any and all of his administration's positive achievements in the public consciousness]]. Successor UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's pardon of him generated widespread outrage and while Nixon again achieved good things as an elder statesman in TheEighties, such as his role in arranging the historic [[UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev Gorbachev]]-[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan]] talks (accompanied by this [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dwprnp62YFs/Uo5Q93C__FI/AAAAAAAAd8Y/ym3Rhc0JhAI/s1600/IMG_6759.JPG famous cover of a 1986 issue of Newsweek]] declaring "He's Back"), he never managed to shake off the legacy of Watergate. He has continued to serve as the prototype for a corrupt President in popular culture with the term "Nixonian" being been coined to describe behavior and abuses of power by politicians that are reminiscent of his. Likewise, virtually every major scandal in the Anglosphere (political or otherwise) will eventually be referred to with the suffix "-gate" as part of the snowclone {{Scandalgate}}, in reference to the Watergate scandal. Whenever a President is caught up in a scandal, comparisons to Nixon are almost mandatory. This was particularly the case when Nixon served as the linchpin of the national debate over the impeachment of his friend UsefulNotes/BillClinton in 1998: Allies argued that his misdeeds were petty when compared to Nixon's while opponents argued that Clinton was undermining the rule of law in a manner just as severe as Nixon's. The numerous scandals that shadowed UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump and contributed to his two impeachments have yet again brought Nixon to the forefront of American political discussion with some historians concluding that the former's actions make Nixon look tame.

* In ''VideoGame/TheNewOrderLastDaysOfEurope'', an AlternateHistoryNaziVictory mod for ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIronIV'', Richard Nixon is the starting President of the United States of America, prevailing over Strom Thurmond of the [[FictionalPoliticalParty National Progressive Party]] in a LandslideElection in 1960. Despite coming to power 8 years earlier than his real life counterpart, Nixon still becomes involved in a major political scandal about illegal activities against the opposing party and still resigns in the face of impeachment, passing his duties to Vice President UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy.

Playing to patriotism, religious conservatism, and backlash against the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement, Nixon framed the Democrats of the era as the party of [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal "acid, amnesty, and abortion"]] -- a party defined by the worst excesses of the counterculture that was happy to welcome [[DraftDodging draft-dodgers]] back in with open arms (the "amnesty" part) and force shocking new social mores on the rest of the country (the [[DrugsAreBad "acid"]] and [[GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion "abortion"]]), versus a Republican Party that stood for [[GoodOldWays the flag, faith, and family values]]. Nixon dreamed of a massive realignment of the political system, creating [[TakeAThirdOption a new party consisting of the conservative elements of both parties]] (he had as little use for "liberal Republicans" like UsefulNotes/NelsonRockefeller as he did Democrats), though in practice this never happened. He parlayed his longtime suspicion of the "Eastern Establishment" into a [[SlobsVersusSnobs populist anti-elitism]], emphasizing that he wasn't part of the upper crust that went to UsefulNotes/IvyLeague schools[[note]]He was offered a tuition grant to go to Harvard but turned it down, instead going to Whittier College near his house so he could care for his sick father[[/note]], but was rather a WorkingClassHero raised on a ranch.

Nixon's rise to the vice-presidency under [[UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower Dwight Eisenhower]] in 1953 was mostly a purely pragmatic decision. When his campaign was under way in 1952, Eisenhower had no strong feelings about what kind of vice-president he wanted, and the Republican party eventually selected Nixon for the post based on his relatively young age of 39, his anti-communism views, and his strong base in California. Nixon, however, ran into trouble during the campaign, when it was revealed that he maintained a political fund supported by his backers, which reimbursed him for political expenses. While such a fund was not strictly speaking illegal, it still exposed Nixon to allegations of possible conflicts of interest and corruption, and resulted in calls for him to resign from the campaign. Nixon, however, once again revealing his talent for propaganda and spin, decided to address the issue himself, through a public speech to the nation, which was broadcasted on radio and television, and as such was heard by about 60 million Americans. In the speech, Nixon overtly played to the audience's emotions, claiming that the fund was no secret, but that it was all above board and subject to oversight, and that he was nothing but an honest American patriot and a family man who lived within modest means. The clincher of the speech, however, was his insistence that the only really questionable gift he had received through the fund was "a little cocker spaniel dog ... sent all the way from Texas", and since his young daughter, Tricia, had taken a likening to it and even named it "Checkers", he refused to give it back. The "Checkers speech", as it would be nicknamed, prompted a huge public outpouring of support for Nixon, and Eisenhower ultimately decided to retain him on the ticket.

This would all set the stage for Nixon's actual first run for the White House, which came in 1960, making him the first incumbent vice-president to run for the top job in a century. This resulted in a surprise loss to UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, and while many blamed Nixon's defeat on a combination of bad luck and strategic errors -- particularly his poor performance in the first presidential debate (Nixon had suffered a bout of flu prior to the debate, and was still running a low fever during it, making him look rather pale and sweaty, which made him come across as nervous and uncomfortable -- Kennedy, on the other hand, had just returned home from a vacation, and as such had a healthy light tan and appeared energized and confident) [[note]]though the perception that he had performed poorly was made by people who ''watched'' the debate, which was the first to be televised; people who ''heard'' the debate on the radio actually felt he won[[/note]], and an AwesomeButImpractical attempt to campaign equally in all 50 states -- Nixon himself believed that the Kennedy family, along with Democratic running-mate UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson and Chicago mayor Richard Daley, had all conspired to commit electoral fraud. While he certainly wasn't the only person to believe this,[[note]](In fact, many historians concur in retrospect that Daley almost certainly '''did''' engage in unethical, if not outright illegal actions in order to help Kennedy out, though it's debated as to whether or not this made the difference between Kennedy's winning or losing the state given that Kennedy was a Catholic, and thus would have done well in Chicago anyway due to its high Catholic population. Regardless, evidence for Johnson rigging the result in Texas is far sketchier, and without that state, Nixon would have lost the election regardless of what happened in Illinois. For what it's worth, while Nixon thought Johnson had cheated, he also believed he'd have lost Texas regardless, due to a Republican congressman organizing a protest which ended up turning violent and resulted in Johnson's wife being assaulted)[[/note]] in retrospect it's often pointed to as his StartOfDarkness, with many close to him later saying it just made him more determined to win the White House than ever. Nixon was further humiliated in 1962, when he ran for Governor of California and lost in a landslide to popular incumbent Pat Brown (father of future California governor UsefulNotes/JerryBrown). He capped off his defeat with a bitter, angry rant [[NeverMyFault blaming the press for his defeat]], termed his "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon%27s_November_1962_press_conference Last Press Conference]]" (a term he ''actually used'' during said event) as everyone assumed that Nixon had torpedoed his own career.

In foreign policy, Nixon worked with his National Security Adviser, UsefulNotes/HenryKissinger, to wind down UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, greatly reducing conscription (and abolishing it completely in 1973, making military service entirely voluntary) while turning over the defense of South Vietnam to their own forces in a process termed "Vietnamization". Although many of Nixon's tactics, such as increased bombing of North Vietnam and his 1970 invasion of Cambodia, were (and remain) extremely controversial, he was able to conclude American involvement in the war by the end of his first term.[[note]]It remains a point of considerable debate whether the Communist conquest of South Vietnam in 1975 would have happened had Nixon not been driven from office, though by that point Congress had severely limited the President's ability to with the War Powers Act anyway[[/note]] Most notable was Nixon's historic 1972 visit to China where he established US relations with Chairman UsefulNotes/MaoZedong's Communist regime for the first time. It earned widespread media coverage and coined the phrase "only Nixon could go to China", to describe how a politician with an unassailable reputation on a certain cause can take action that would seem contrary to it without drawing criticism -- such as how Nixon could be trusted to visit and establish relations with Communist China given his unquestionable anti-Communist credentials[[note]]That might apply to American politics, but the firmly liberal Prime Minister of Canada, UsefulNotes/PierreTrudeau, defied his neighboring country's foreign policy and beat Nixon to it years earlier[[/note]]. The China visit had the side effect of reducing tensions with the Soviet Union, as Soviet Premier UsefulNotes/LeonidBrezhnev was so shaken by the idea of the Chinese moving closer to America that it moved him to invite Nixon to Moscow to work out their differences. Together they agreed to two landmark arms control treaties, SALT I and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The two leaders emerged from their meeting to announce the treaties and a new shared foreign policy goal of peaceful coexistence between the two nations, an objective that became known as "détente". He is also remembered as the American President under which the CIA plotted to support the overthrow of the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, by the Chilean military under general [[UsefulNotes/AugustoPinochet Pinochet]], in the larger context of "Operation Condor", a political repression campaign organized by right-wing authoritarian regimes in South America and the United States aimed at stopping [[RedScare "the spread" of socialism and communism]] in South American countries.

Through these means (which collectively became known as the "White House horrors"), Nixon and his campaign then worked to sabotage the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates to ensure that they nominated [=McGovern=], the candidate Nixon thought he could most easily defeat in the general election.[[note]]While Nixon's reelection is sometimes considered a ForegoneConclusion, his other potential opponents - notably Edmund Muskie of Maine - led Nixon in many early polls, and the event that completely destroyed any remote chance that [=McGovern=] had of winning the election -- namely throwing his initial running mate Thomas Eagleton off the ticket because of his past mental health issues after initially saying he stood by his choice -- didn't happen until nearly two months after the Watergate break-in[[/note]] While Nixon likely didn't order the Watergate break-in personally, his White House staff - including chief of staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and domestic adviser John Ehrlichman, known as the "Berlin Wall" for their closeness to the President - provided the Plumbers with a long leash to engage in ''any'' activities, legal or otherwise, which might help the President's reelection chances. Nixon was at least broadly aware of the Plumbers' activities[[note]]Ehrlichman, for instance, informed Nixon about the break-in against Ellsberg's psychiatrist soon after it happened, despite Nixon's later denials; Attorney General John Mitchell also hosted a meeting where Liddy outlined his "Operation Gemstone" plan which led to the break-in, though it's still unclear if he told Nixon about it at the time[[/note]] and raised no objection until they were caught in the act.

Cox's firing brought America to the edge of a constitutional crisis and became a PR disaster for Nixon. The tug-of-war for the tapes reached the Supreme Court in July 1974, who ordered they be released to investigators. The tapes gave Nixon the old one-two punch: first, by being the SmokingGun which revealed that he was behind the obstruction surrounding Watergate; second, by revealing his private tendency of being a SirSwearsALot towards his opponents, media figures and a variety of minority groups - most infamously towards Jews. With Nixon's involvement now confirmed, the House began impeachment proceedings with the Judiciary Committee voting in July to introduce three articles of impeachment, making him the second of only two presidents to have an impeachment resolution brought against him (the only other president was UsefulNotes/JohnTyler). Knowing he was doomed, Nixon resigned the office on the morning of August 9, 1974, famously departing the White House via helicopter. Shortly thereafter, successor Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon of any and all crimes he committed during his own administration. In October 1974, after resigning from office, Nixon fell ill with phlebitis; after consulting his doctors, who told him that if he didn't undergo surgery, he could die from the illness, Nixon reluctantly went under the knife and chose surgery, which extended his lifespan.

Nixon would undergo his final RedemptionQuest to salvage his legacy through the famous ''Frost/Nixon'' interviews and his expertise of foreign affairs, which made him a sought-after commentator and valued, informal foreign policy adviser to succeeding administrations. Nixon urged Reagan to collaborate with the Soviets on space travel as a peace gesture, met UsefulNotes/DengXiaoping after Tiananmen Square to reiterate the U.S. government position, and while originally critical of UsefulNotes/BillClinton, congratulated the new President on his well-run campaign. Clinton was a CountryMouse and Southern governor who just arrived with his team from Arkansas, and his administration was facing [[FirstDayFromHell a rough start]] with the bulk of it, including the President himself, being novices to Washington. An OddFriendship began, where Nixon advised Clinton on how to handle a volatile situation in Russia concerning American support for Boris Yeltsin (Nixon told Clinton to support him.) Clinton began to consult more frequently with Nixon. The FallenHero and BrokenAce would mentor the new President, and the two grew so close, a visibly distraught Clinton presided over Nixon's funeral services in 1994.

The combination of Nixon's many positive achievements with his abuses of power and the resulting distrust in government institutions has left him with a very complicated legacy. Reactions to his death in 1994 further illustrated how historians and the public had been struggling to understand how to view the disgraced President. It has been repeatedly expressed that had Watergate not occurred, Nixon could be easily ranked as one of America's ''greatest'' Presidents, especially with his achievements in foreign policy. Had Watergate not happened, his approval ratings were high enough that it is very likely he would have been elected anyway - the ultimate irony being that [[SelfFulfillingProphecy he would most likely never have been removed from power had he not been so desperate to ensure that didn't happen.]] However, opinion of him skews strongly negative and he has been consistently ranked as one of the worst Presidents in surveys of both scholars and the public. Posthumous allegations from one of his associates claiming that he wanted to suppress liberals and African-Americans via [[https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html the war on drugs]] certainly didn't help, nor did recent confirmation of the long-standing rumors that [[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/nixon-tried-to-spoil-johnsons-vietnam-peace-talks-in-68-notes-show.html he sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks]] to secure his election, and increased public knowledge and scholarly debate about his expansion of American military operations in Vietnam to Cambodia (where the North Vietnamese had already been basing themselves for years) and the lasting effects it had on the southeast Asian nation (some, mostly journalists without formal historical credentials, claim that it helped bring the Khmer Rouge to power, while historians [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal#Outcome emphasize the military situation]], which was objectively unfavorable for the Khmer Rouge before the withdrawal and the subsequent March 1970 North Vietnamese invasion in support of their fellow communists). He has also been credited, or blamed depending on one's perspective, with cementing the conservative takeover of the Republican Party while pioneering the divisive rhetoric endemic to modern politics. He is effectively a persona non grata in American politics and being a Nixon supporter today is about as socially acceptable as supporting the Westboro Baptist Church.

A major facet of Nixon's legacy is his endurance as the face of political corruption in America, as the Watergate scandal and his numerous abuses of power it revealed continue to outweigh any and all of his administration's positive achievements in the public conscience. Successor UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's pardon of him generated widespread outrage and while Nixon again achieved good things as an elder statesman in TheEighties, such as his role in arranging the historic [[UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev Gorbachev]]-[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan]] talks (accompanied by this [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dwprnp62YFs/Uo5Q93C__FI/AAAAAAAAd8Y/ym3Rhc0JhAI/s1600/IMG_6759.JPG famous cover of a 1986 issue of Newsweek]] declaring "He's Back"), he never managed to shake off the legacy of Watergate. He has continued to serve as the prototype for a corrupt President in popular culture with the term "Nixonian" being been coined to describe behavior and abuses of power by politicians that are reminiscent of his. Likewise, virtually every major scandal in the Anglosphere (political or otherwise) will eventually be referred to with the suffix "-gate" as part of the snowclone {{Scandalgate}}, in reference to the Watergate scandal. Whenever a President is caught up in a scandal, comparisons to Nixon are almost mandatory. This was particularly the case when Nixon served as the linchpin of the national debate over the impeachment of UsefulNotes/BillClinton in 1998: Allies argued that his misdeeds were petty when compared to Nixon's while opponents argued that Clinton was undermining the rule of law in a manner just as severe as Nixon's. The numerous scandals that shadowed UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump and contributed to his two impeachments have yet again brought Nixon to the forefront of American political discussion with historians concluding that the former's actions make Nixon look tame.

Nixon's equally popular for fictional portrayals. One can even make the case that he and his Presidency is the most frequently depicted in popular culture as HistoricalDomainCharacter, far more than any office-holder other than Lincoln. One reason for this is that his presidency coincided with the politically charged period of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood, where films like ''Film/AllThePresidentsMen'' released a few years after Watergate cemented him in popular memory before the setting-in of the halo that earlier scandal-plagued presidents underwent. This ensured that films critical of Nixon established itself as a market for Hollywood. Ironic, since Nixon -- a Southern California native (indeed, he was the first person born on the West Coast to be President)[[note]]The only other one is UsefulNotes/BarackObama, born in Hawaii. The two other Presidents who had California as their home state were born in the Midwest (UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover was born in Iowa; UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan was born in Illinois).[[/note]] -- was [[TheMovieBuff a huge movie buff]] and [[http://articles.latimes.com/2003/aug/17/entertainment/ca-dargis17 indeed provided tax cuts]] to the motion picture industry during the same period, creating the very conditions for this politically charged era of film history. While Nixon's unique appearance and idiosyncrasies make him such an appealing subject for caricature, it also makes it hard to find an actor who actually resembles him, at least by conventional standards of leading men.

* Played by Creator/AnthonyHopkins in ''Film/{{Nixon}}'' (1995), from Creator/OliverStone. [[Film/SilenceOfTheLambs Which is saying something]]. Stone's portrayal of Nixon isn't unsympathetic, devoting time to his [[FreudianExcuse troubled background]] and [[HappilyMarried loving marriage]], but focuses heavily on the President's obsession with antiwar "subversives," his shady dealings with the CIA and Big Business, and naturally the Watergate scandal.

Nixon's political career began in earnest in 1947, when local Republicans in California's 12th congressional district asked him to head their challenge the Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis. Nixon, who had already participated in school politics in his youth, found the prospect exciting and accepted the nomination. In a bit of foreshadowing of his future career in politics would turn out, Nixon's campaign was mainly rooted in attacking Voorhis for vague second-hand connections to communist organisations and insinuating that he held radical views. Nixon eventually defeated Voorhis with about 15,000 votes in his favor.

The firing of Cox brought America to the edge of a constitutional crisis and became a PR disaster for Nixon. The tug-of-war for the tapes reached the Supreme Court in July 1974, who ordered they be released to investigators. The tapes gave Nixon the old one-two punch: first, by being the SmokingGun which revealed that he was behind the obstruction surrounding Watergate; second, by revealing his private tendency of being a SirSwearsALot towards his opponents, media figures and a variety of minority groups - most infamously towards Jews. With Nixon's involvement now confirmed, the House began impeachment proceedings with the Judiciary Committee voting in July to introduce three articles of impeachment, making him the second of only two presidents to have an impeachment resolution brought against him (the only other president was UsefulNotes/JohnTyler). Knowing he was doomed, Nixon resigned the office on the morning of August 9, 1974, famously departing the White House via helicopter. Shortly thereafter, successor Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon of any and all crimes he committed during his own administration. In October 1974, after resigning from office, Nixon fell ill with phlebitis; after consulting his doctors, who told him that if he didn't undergo surgery, he could die from the illness, Nixon reluctantly went under the knife and chose surgery, which extended his lifespan.

The combination of Nixon's many positive achievements with his abuses of power and the resulting distrust in government institutions has left him with a very complicated legacy. Reactions to his death in 1994 further illustrated how historians and the public had been struggling to understand how to view the disgraced President. It has been repeatedly expressed that had Watergate not occurred, Nixon could be easily ranked as one of America's ''greatest'' Presidents, especially regarding his achievements in foreign policy. Had Watergate not happened, his approval ratings were high enough that it is very likely he would have been elected anyway - the ultimate irony being that [[SelfFulfillingProphecy he would most likely never have been removed from power had he not been so desperate to ensure that didn't happen.]] However, opinion of him skews strongly negative and he has been consistently ranked as one of the worst Presidents in surveys of both scholars and the public. Posthumous allegations from one of his associates claiming that he wanted to suppress liberals and African-Americans via [[https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html the war on drugs]] certainly didn't help, nor did recent confirmation of the long-standing rumors that [[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/nixon-tried-to-spoil-johnsons-vietnam-peace-talks-in-68-notes-show.html he sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks]] to secure his election, and increased public knowledge and scholarly debate about his expansion of American military operations in Vietnam to Cambodia (where the North Vietnamese had already been basing themselves for years) and the lasting effects it had on the southeast Asian nation (some, mostly journalists without formal historical credentials, claim that it helped bring the Khmer Rouge to power, while historians [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal#Outcome emphasize the military situation]], which was objectively unfavorable for the Khmer Rouge before the withdrawal and the subsequent March 1970 North Vietnamese invasion in support of their fellow communists). He has also been credited, or blamed depending on one's perspective, with cementing the conservative takeover of the Republican Party while pioneering the divisive rhetoric endemic to modern politics. He is effectively a persona non grata in American politics and being a Nixon supporter today is about as socially acceptable as supporting the Westboro Baptist Church.

A major facet of Nixon's legacy is his endurance as the face of political corruption in America, as the Watergate scandal and his numerous abuses of power it revealed continue to outweigh any and all of his administration's positive achievements in the public conscience. Successor UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's pardon of him generated widespread outrage and while Nixon again achieved good things as an elder statesman in TheEighties, such as his role in arranging the historic [[UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev Gorbachev]]-[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan]] talks (accompanied by this [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dwprnp62YFs/Uo5Q93C__FI/AAAAAAAAd8Y/ym3Rhc0JhAI/s1600/IMG_6759.JPG famous cover of a 1986 issue of Newsweek]] declaring "He's Back"), he never managed to shake off the legacy of Watergate. He has continued to serve as the prototype for a corrupt President in popular culture with the term "Nixonian" being been coined to describe behavior and abuses of power by politicians that are reminiscent of his. Likewise, virtually every major scandal in the Anglosphere (political or otherwise) will eventually be referred to with the suffix "-gate" as part of the snowclone {{Scandalgate}}, in reference to the Watergate scandal. Whenever a President is caught up in a scandal, comparisons to Nixon are almost mandatory. This was particularly the case when Nixon served as the linchpin of the national debate over the impeachment of UsefulNotes/BillClinton in 1998: Allies argued that his misdeeds were petty when compared to Nixon's while opponents argued that Clinton was undermining the rule of law in a manner just as severe as Nixon's. The numerous scandals that shadowed UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump and eventually led to his two impeachments have yet again brought Nixon to the forefront of American political discussion, with recent historiography concluding that Trump's actions during his time in office make Nixon look tame.

Nixon has long been a subject of particular interest for presidential historians, and serves as the canonical example of a deeply conflicted leader who "could be considered ''both'' a failure ''and'' great or near-great" (Alan Brinkley). 1995's ''Film/{{Nixon}}'', starring Creator/AnthonyHopkins as the nation's 37th president, directed by Creator/OliverStone, is one of the more recent biopics done about his life, as well as one of the more controversial (with Stone being accused of being both too hard and too soft on Nixon, depending on who you ask). Biographers often see him as a "tragic" figure: a brilliant, driven and capable man who was undermined by his prejudices, paranoia, and emotional scars. Thanks to his particular brand of paranoid neuroses (among other things, his tapes include lengthy rants about people-- mainly part of the [[GreedyJew "liberal east-coast establishment"]]-- allegedly plotting against him), he's also been quite the fertile figure of study for psychologists. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Also, he famously added a bowling alley to the White House.]]

Nixon was born into a poor household in the Quaker colony of Whittier, Los Angeles County, UsefulNotes/{{California}}, in what was then the vast rural hinterland of UsefulNotes/LosAngeles. The son of lemon farmers Hannah and Francis Nixon, he was the second youngest of a group of five brothers. Nixon's early years was marked by hardship and poverty; one of his brothers, Arthur, would die at the age of 7, while another, Harold, passed away from tuberculosis in his early twenties. Nixon would eventually work his way through the education system, where he managed to distinguished himself, earning a bachelor's degree in history from Whittier College in 1934 and a law degree from Duke University in 1937.

A major facet of Nixon's legacy is his endurance as the face of political corruption in America, as the Watergate scandal and his numerous abuses of power it revealed continue to outweigh any and all of his administration's positive achievements in the public conscience. Successor UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's pardon of him generated widespread outrage and while Nixon again achieved good things as an elder statesman in TheEighties, such as his role in arranging the historic [[UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev Gorbachev]]-[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan]] talks (accompanied by this [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dwprnp62YFs/Uo5Q93C__FI/AAAAAAAAd8Y/ym3Rhc0JhAI/s1600/IMG_6759.JPG famous cover of a 1986 issue of Newsweek]] declaring "He's Back"), he never managed to shake off the legacy of Watergate. He has continued to serve as the prototype for a corrupt President in popular culture with the term "Nixonian" being been coined to describe behavior and abuses of power by politicians that are reminiscent of his. Likewise, virtually every major scandal in the Anglosphere (political or otherwise) will eventually be referred to with the suffix "-gate" as part of the snowclone {{Scandalgate}}, in reference to the Watergate scandal. Whenever a President is caught up in a scandal, comparisons to Nixon are almost mandatory. This was particularly the case when Nixon served as the linchpin of the national debate over the impeachment of UsefulNotes/BillClinton in 1998: Allies argued that his misdeeds were petty when compared to Nixon's while opponents argued that Clinton was undermining the rule of law in a manner just as severe as Nixon's. The numerous scandals that shadowed UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump and eventually led to his impeachments have yet again brought Nixon to the forefront of American political discussion, with recent historiography concluding that with Trump's actions, Nixon is no longer the most unpopular President in American history.

The Watergate break-in itself was the doing of Nixon's privately-run "intelligence" agency known as the "Plumbers." After Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers detailing government lies about Vietnam[[note]]which were effectively declassified to the American public after Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel read them into the Senate record, rendering Nixon's attempts to suppress them moot[[/note]], Nixon became obsessed with stopping leaks and felt the FBI wasn't responsive to his orders. The Plumbers[[note]]Officially known as the "Special Investigations Unit," nicknamed after one of their members told his mother that his job at the White House was to "stop leaks" and she assumed he was a literal plumber[[/note]] (among them ex-FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy and former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt) almost immediately descended into illegal behavior. Among their activities: a break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to find damaging information, intimidating witnesses in an anti-trust action against ITT (a major donor to Nixon's campaign), spying on and planting damaging stories about UsefulNotes/TedKennedy and other Democrats in the media, and beating up antiwar demonstrators. Which isn't to mention Liddy's proposals to firebomb the liberal Brookings Institution and assassinate journalist Jack Anderson, which were (thankfully) [[EvenEvilHasStandards vetoed by his superiors]].

Through these means (which collectively became known as the "White House horrors"), Nixon and his campaign then worked to sabotage the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates to ensure that they nominated [=McGovern=], the candidate Nixon thought he could most easily defeat in the general election.[[note]]While Nixon's reelection is sometimes considered a ForegoneConclusion, his other potential opponents - notably Edmund Muskie of Maine - led Nixon in many early polls, and the event that completely destroyed any remote chance that [=McGovern=] had of winning the election -- namely throwing his initial running-mate Thomas Eagleton off the ticket because of his past mental health issues after initially saying he stood by his choice -- didn't happen until nearly two months after the Watergate break-in[[/note]] While Nixon likely didn't order the Watergate break-in personally, his White House staff - including chief of staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and domestic adviser John Ehrlichman, known as the "Berlin Wall" for their closeness to the President - provided the Plumbers with a long leash to engage in ''any'' activities, legal or otherwise, which might help the President's reelection chances. Nixon was at least broadly aware of the Plumbers' activities[[note]]Ehrlichman, for instance, informed Nixon about the break-in against Ellsberg's psychiatrist soon after it happened, despite Nixon's later denials; Attorney General John Mitchell also hosted a meeting where Liddy outlined his "Operation Gemstone" plan which led to the break-in, though it's still unclear if he told Nixon about it at the time[[/note]] and raised no objection until they were caught in the act.

The firing of Cox brought America to the edge of a constitutional crisis and became a PR disaster for Nixon. The tug-of-war for the tapes reached the Supreme Court in July 1974, who ordered they be released to investigators. The tapes gave Nixon the old one-two punch: first, by being the SmokingGun which revealed that he was behind the obstruction surrounding Watergate; second, by revealing his private tendency of being a SirSwearsALot towards his opponents, media figures and a variety of minority groups - most infamously towards Jews. With Nixon's involvement now confirmed, the House began impeachment proceedings with the Judiciary Committee voting in July to introduce three articles of impeachment. Knowing he was doomed, Nixon resigned the office on the morning of August 9, 1974, famously departing the White House via helicopter. Shortly thereafter, successor Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon of any and all crimes he committed during his own administration. In October 1974, after resigning from office, Nixon fell ill with phlebitis; after consulting his doctors, who told him that if he didn't undergo surgery, he could die from the illness, Nixon reluctantly went under the knife and chose surgery, which extended his lifespan.

Nixon was born into a poor household in the Quaker colony of Whittier, Los Angeles County, UsefulNotes/{{California}}, in what was then the vast rural hinterland of UsefulNotes/LosAngeles. The son of lemon farmers Hannah and Francis Nixon, he was the second youngest of a group of five brothers. Nixon's early years was marked by hardship and poverty; one of his brothers, Arthur, would die at the age of 7, while another, Harold, passed away from tuberculosis in his early twenties. Nixon would eventually work his way through the education system, where he managed to distinguished himself, earning a Bachelors degree in history from Whittier College in 1934 and a Masters degree in law from Duke University in 1937.

Nixon's rise to the vice-presidency under Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 was mostly a purely pragmatic decision. When his campaign was under way in 1952, Eisenhower had no strong feelings about what kind of vice-president he wanted, and the Republican party eventually selected Nixon for the post based on his relatively young age of 39, his anti-communism views, and his strong base in California. Nixon, however, ran into trouble during the campaign, when it was revealed that he maintained a political fund supported by his backers, which reimbursed him for political expenses. While such a fund was not strictly speaking illegal, it still exposed Nixon to allegations of possible conflicts of interest and corruption, and resulted in calls for him to resign from the campaign. Nixon, however, once again revealing his talent for propaganda and spin, decided to address the issue himself, through a public speech to the nation, which was broadcasted on radio and television, and as such was heard by about 60 million Americans. In the speech, Nixon overtly played to the audience's emotions, claiming that the fund was no secret, but that it was all above board and subject to oversight, and that he was nothing but an honest American patriot and a family man who lived within modest means. The clincher of the speech, however, was his insistence that the only really questionable gift he had received through the fund was "a little cocker spaniel dog ... sent all the way from Texas", and since his young daughter, Tricia, had taken a likening to it and even named it "Checkers", he refused to give it back. The "Checkers speech", as it would be nicknamed, prompted a huge public outpouring of support for Nixon, and Eisenhower ultimately decided to retain him on the ticket.

This would all set the stage for Nixon's actual first run for the White House, which came in 1960, making him the first incumbent vice-president to run for the top job in a century. This resulted in a surprise loss to UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, and while many blamed Nixon's defeat on a combination of bad luck and strategic errors -- particularly his poor performance in the first presidential debate (Nixon had suffered a bout of flu prior to the debate, and was still running a low fever during it, making him look rather pale and sweaty, which made him come across as nervous and uncomfortable -- Kennedy, on the other hand, had just returned home from a vacation, and as such had a healthy light tan and appeared energized and confident) [[note]]though the perception that he had performed poorly was made by people who ''watched'' the debate, which was the first to be televised; people who ''heard'' the debate on the radio actually felt he won[[/note]], and an AwesomeButImpractical attempt to campaign equally in all 50 states -- Nixon himself believed that the Kennedy family, along with Democratic running-mate UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson and Chicago mayor Richard Daley, had all conspired to commit electoral fraud. While he certainly wasn't the only person to believe this,[[note]](In fact, many historians concur in retrospect that Daley almost certainly '''did''' engage in unethical, if not outright illegal actions in order to help Kennedy out, though it's debated as to whether or not this made the difference between Kennedy's winning or losing the state given that Kennedy was a Catholic, and thus would have done well in Chicago anyway due to its high Catholic population. Regardless, evidence for Johnson rigging the result in Texas is far sketchier, and without that state, Nixon would have lost the election regardless of what happened in Illinois. For what it's worth, while Nixon thought Johnson had cheated, he also believed he'd have lost Texas regardless, due to a Republican congressman organizing a protest which ended up turning violent and resulted in Johnson's wife being assaulted)[[/note]] in retrospect it's often pointed to as his StartOfDarkness, with many close to him later saying it just made him more determined to win the White House than ever. Nixon was further humiliated in 1962, when he ran for Governor of California and lost in a landslide to popular incumbent Pat Brown. He capped off his defeat with a bitter, angry rant [[NeverMyFault blaming the press for his defeat]], termed his "Last Press Conference" as everyone assumed that Nixon had torpedoed his own career.

His reputation damaged by these defeats, Nixon held off on immediately running again in 1964 on the grounds that he could tell that running against Johnson (who replaced Kennedy after his assassination) would be futile. He spent the next several years rebuilding his reputation as a statesman and campaigning for Republican candidates in off-year elections, allowing him to present himself as a pragmatist who could act as a conciliator between the party's conservative and moderate wings, which had bitterly divided during Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign. Nixon easily won the Republican nomination in 1968, and crushed Democratic nominee UsefulNotes/HubertHumphrey in the general election; Humphrey, as Johnson's Vice President, suffered from public backlash towards the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar, a divided opposition vote with segregationist candidate George Wallace, and his nomination being seen as a ConsolationAward after the assassination of UsefulNotes/RobertFKennedy. Nixon is the most recent President to be elected after having previously been defeated, the last before him being UsefulNotes/GroverCleveland in 1892.

Despite his poor reputation today, Nixon had a very successful first term in office with many positive achievements. He continued to implement Johnson's policies of achieving racial integration in American society and oversaw the desegregation of schools. He oversaw the creation of the EPA and OSHA, the passage of the Clean Air Act and other policies aimed at preservation of the environment and natural resources, the Moon Landing (even though he cut funding for NASA almost immediately afterwards) and worked to reform the American health care system with a proposal that was eerily similar to UsefulNotes/BarackObama's Affordable Care Act, though only bits and pieces of it made it through Congress. In 1974, he signed into law an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act to raise wages and encompass more employees covered by the law. His administration also helped to advance women's rights, as he supported and oversaw the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment through Congress (even though it failed to achieve ratification after he left office) and oversaw the creation of social programs that expanded girls athletics and skills training in schools. (Yes, the current US standard of girls having equal athletic and extracurricular programs as boys in in public schools is owed to Nixon.) He also oversaw the ratification of a constitutional amendment that lowered the voting age to 18. He signed the National Cancer Act of 1971, which was the first major national effort towards cancer eradication, generally considered to be the starting point of the War on Cancer. More controversially, he also launched the War on Drugs. He also implemented a number of sudden economic reforms that became known as the "Nixon shock", most notably ending the gold standard and turning the US Dollar into a floating currency.

Playing to patriotism, religious conservatism, and backlash against the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement, Nixon framed the Democrats of the era as the party of [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal "acid, amnesty, and abortion"]] -- a party defined by the worst excesses of the counterculture that was happy to welcome [[DraftDodging draft-dodgers]] back in with open arms (the "amnesty" part) and force shocking new social mores on the rest of the country (the [[DrugsAreBad "acid"]] and [[GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion "abortion"]]), versus a Republican Party that stood for [[GoodOldWays the flag, faith, and family values]]. Nixon dreamed of a massive realignment of the political system, creating [[TakeAThirdOption a new party consisting of the conservative elements of both parties]] (he had as little use for "liberal Republicans" like Nelson Rockefeller as he did Democrats), though in practice this never happened. He parlayed his longtime suspicion of the "Eastern Establishment" into a [[SlobsVersusSnobs populist anti-elitism]], emphasizing that he wasn't part of the upper crust that went to UsefulNotes/IvyLeague schools[[note]]He was offered a tuition grant to go to Harvard but turned it down, instead going to Whittier College near his house so he could care for his sick father[[/note]], but was rather a WorkingClassHero raised on a ranch.

Given all of his achievements, Nixon enjoyed high approval ratings throughout his first term to the point that his re-election in 1972 appeared a given. His major foreign policy breakthroughs during the election year prevented the Democrats from launching any meaningful campaign against him and he easily steamrolled opponent George [=McGovern=] in one of the biggest landslide victories in history. Nixon won every state except for Massachusetts, which lead to "Don't Blame Me, I'm From Massachusetts" bumper stickers becoming popular as Nixon's support cratered. Another notable event of this election was when [[InnocuouslyImportantEpisode five men were arrested in June 1972 after being caught breaking into the Watergate hotel to bug the Democratic National Committee's offices]].

The Watergate break-in itself was the doing of Nixon's privately-run "intelligence" agency known as the "Plumbers." After Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers detailing government lies about Vietnam[[note]]which were effectively declassified to the American public after Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel read them into the Senate record, rendering Nixon's attempts to suppress them moot[[/note]], Nixon became obsessed with stopping leaks and felt the FBI wasn't responsive to his orders. The Plumbers[[note]]Officially known as the "Special Investigations Unit," nicknamed after one of their members told his mother that his job at the White House was to "stop leaks" and she assumed he was a literal plumber[[/note]] (among them ex-FBI agent Gordon Liddy and former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt) almost immediately descended into illegal behavior. Among their activities: a break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to find damaging information, intimidating witnesses in an anti-trust action against ITT (a major donor to Nixon's campaign), spying on and planting damaging stories about UsefulNotes/TedKennedy and other Democrats in the media, and beating up antiwar demonstrators. Which isn't to mention Liddy's proposals to firebomb the liberal Brookings Institution and assassinate journalist Jack Anderson, which were (thankfully) [[EvenEvilHasStandards vetoed by his superiors]].

The investigation took a dramatic turn in the summer of 1973 as the [[HauledBeforeASenateSubcommittee Senate Watergate Committee]] held televised public hearings into the scandal, with numerous Nixon aides (notably [[HeelFaceTurn John Dean]], his former counsel) detailed presidential involvement in the cover-up. The committee learned from a seemingly minor witness, Alexander Butterfield, that there was a system in the White House that recorded Nixon's conversations.[[note]]While previous presidents had recorded some of their conversations, Nixon used a self-operating system that recorded ''every'' conversation in the White House, including ones that implicated him[[/note]] Pressure mounted on Nixon to turn the tapes over to Congress and Archibald Cox, but he refused on the grounds on executive privilege, offering to hand over redacted transcripts instead (and later offering to have them verified by longtime Senator John Stennis, who was both a Nixon supporter and partially deaf), which he said was necessary to prevent the exposure of sensitive information regarding national security. When Cox subpoenaed the White House for the tapes, Nixon moved to have him fired in what became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre," which also resulted in the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, for refusing to fire Cox. Around the same time, Vice President Spiro Agnew [[FromBadToWorse resigned]] on unrelated charges of bribery and tax evasion, further eroding Nixon's credibility; Agnew was soon replaced by UsefulNotes/GeraldFord, the House Minority Leader. Ironically, Ford's appointment made Nixon's impeachment more likely, as Congress viewed him more favorably than the controversial Agnew.[[note]]Agnew, who was mostly known for colorfully insulting Nixon's political opponents, was called by many (including Nixon himself) as the President's "impeachment insurance," assuming Democrats would rather have the corrupt but competent Nixon as President than the corrupt ''and'' incompetent Agnew[[/note]]

Nixon would undergo his final RedemptionQuest to salvage his legacy through the famous ''Frost/Nixon'' interviews and his expertise of foreign affairs, which made him a sought-after commentator and valued, informal foreign policy adviser to succeeding administrations. Nixon urged Reagan to collaborate with the Soviets on space travel as a peace gesture, met Deng Xiaoping after Tiananmen Square to reiterate the U.S. government position, and while originally critical of Bill Clinton, congratulated the new President on his well-run campaign. Clinton was a CountryMouse and Southern governor who just arrived with his team from Arkansas, and his administration was facing [[FirstDayFromHell a rough start]] with the bulk of it, including the President himself, being novices to Washington. An OddFriendship began, where Nixon advised Clinton on how to handle a volatile situation in Russia concerning American support for Boris Yeltsin (Nixon told Clinton to support him.) Clinton began to consult more frequently with Nixon. The FallenHero and BrokenAce would mentor the new President, and the two grew so close, a visibly distraught Clinton presided over Nixon's funeral services in 1994.

The combination of Nixon's many positive achievements with his abuses of power and the resulting distrust in government institutions has left him with a very complicated legacy. Reactions to his death in 1994 further illustrated how historians and the public had been struggling to understand how to view the disgraced President. It has been repeatedly expressed that had Watergate not occurred, Nixon could be easily ranked as one of America's ''greatest'' Presidents, especially regarding his achievements in foreign policy. Had Watergate not happened, his approval ratings were high enough that it is very likely he would have been elected anyway - the ultimate irony being that [[SelfFulfillingProphecy he would most likely never have been removed from power had he not been so desperate to ensure that didn't happen.]] However, opinion of him skews strongly negative and he has been consistently ranked as one of the worst Presidents in surveys of both scholars and the public. Posthumous allegations from one of his associates claiming that he wanted to suppress liberals and African-Americans via [[https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html the war on drugs]] certainly didn't help, nor did recent confirmation of the long-standing rumors that [[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/nixon-tried-to-spoil-johnsons-vietnam-peace-talks-in-68-notes-show.html he sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks]] to secure his election, and increased public knowledge and scholarly debate about his expansion of American military operations in Vietnam to Cambodia (where the North Vietnamese had already been basing themselves for years) and the lasting effects it had on the southeast Asian nation (some, mostly journalists without formal historical credentials, claim that it helped bring the Khmer Rouge to power, while historians [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal#Outcome emphasize the military situation]], which was objectively unfavorable for the Khmer Rouge before the withdrawal and the subsequent March 1970 North Vietnamese invasion in support of their fellow communists). He has also been credited, or blamed depending on one's perspective, with cementing the conservative takeover of the Republican Party while pioneering the divisive rhetoric endemic to modern politics. He is effectively a persona non-grata in American politics and being a Nixon supporter today is about as socially acceptable as supporting the Westboro Baptist Church.

A major facet of Nixon's legacy is his endurance as the face of political corruption in America, as the Watergate scandal and his numerous abuses of power it revealed continue to outweigh any and all of his administration's positive achievements in the public conscience. Successor UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's pardon of him generated widespread outrage and while Nixon again achieved good things as an elder statesman in TheEighties, such as his role in arranging the historic [[UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev Gorbachev]]-[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan]] talks (accompanied by this [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dwprnp62YFs/Uo5Q93C__FI/AAAAAAAAd8Y/ym3Rhc0JhAI/s1600/IMG_6759.JPG famous cover of a 1986 issue of Newsweek]] declaring "He's Back"), he never managed to shake off the legacy of Watergate. He has continued to serve as the prototype for a corrupt President in popular culture with the term "Nixonian" being been coined to describe behavior and abuses of power by politicians that are reminiscent of his. Likewise, virtually every major scandal in the Anglosphere (political or otherwise) will eventually be referred to with the suffix "-gate" as part of the snowclone {{Scandalgate}}, in reference to the Watergate scandal. Whenever a President is caught up in a scandal, comparisons to Nixon are almost mandatory. This was particularly the case when Nixon served as the linchpin of the national debate over the impeachment of UsefulNotes/BillClinton in 1998: Allies argued that his misdeeds were petty when compared to Nixon's while opponents argued that Clinton was undermining the rule of law in a manner just as severe as Nixon's. The numerous scandals that shadowed [[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump Donald Trump]] and eventually led to his impeachments have yet again brought Nixon to the forefront of American political discussion, with recent historiography concluding that with Trump's actions, Nixon is no longer the most unpopular President in American history.

A major facet of Nixon's legacy is his endurance as the face of political corruption in America, as the Watergate scandal and his numerous abuses of power it revealed continue to outweigh any and all of his administration's positive achievements in the public conscience. Successor UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's pardon of him generated widespread outrage and while Nixon again achieved good things as an elder statesman in TheEighties, such as his role in arranging the historic [[UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev Gorbachev]]-[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan]] talks (accompanied by this [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dwprnp62YFs/Uo5Q93C__FI/AAAAAAAAd8Y/ym3Rhc0JhAI/s1600/IMG_6759.JPG famous cover of a 1986 issue of Newsweek]] declaring "He's Back"), he never managed to shake off the legacy of Watergate. He has continued to serve as the prototype for a corrupt President in popular culture with the term "Nixonian" being been coined to describe behavior and abuses of power by politicians that are reminiscent of his. Likewise, virtually every major scandal in the Anglosphere (political or otherwise) will eventually be referred to with the suffix "-gate" as part of the snowclone {{Scandalgate}}, in reference to the Watergate scandal. Whenever a President is caught up in a scandal, comparisons to Nixon are almost mandatory. This was particularly the case when Nixon served as the linchpin of the national debate over the impeachment of UsefulNotes/BillClinton in 1998: Allies argued that his misdeeds were petty when compared to Nixon's while opponents argued that Clinton was undermining the rule of law in a manner just as severe as Nixon's. The numerous scandals that shadowed [[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump Donald Trump]] and eventually led to his impeachments have yet again brought Nixon to the forefront of American political discussion.

In foreign policy, Nixon worked with his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, to wind down UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, greatly reducing conscription (and abolishing it completely in 1973, making military service entirely voluntary) while turning over the defense of South Vietnam to their own forces in a process termed "Vietnamization". Although many of Nixon's tactics, such as increased bombing of North Vietnam and his 1970 invasion of Cambodia, were (and remain) extremely controversial, he was able to conclude American involvement in the war by the end of his first term.[[note]]It remains a point of considerable debate whether the Communist conquest of South Vietnam in 1975 would have happened had Nixon not been driven from office, though by that point Congress had severely limited the President's ability to with the War Powers Act anyway[[/note]] Most notable was Nixon's historic 1972 visit to China where he established US relations with Chairman Mao's Communist regime for the first time. It earned widespread media coverage and coined the phrase "only Nixon could go to China", to describe how a politician with an unassailable reputation on a certain cause can take action that would seem contrary to it without drawing criticism -- such as how Nixon could be trusted to visit and establish relations with Communist China given his unquestionable anti-Communist credentials[[note]]That might apply to American politics, but the firmly liberal Prime Minister of Canada, UsefulNotes/PierreTrudeau, defied his neighboring country's foreign policy and beat Nixon to it years earlier[[/note]]. The China visit had the side effect of reducing tensions with the Soviet Union, as Soviet Premier UsefulNotes/LeonidBrezhnev was so shaken by the idea of the Chinese moving closer to America that it moved him to invite Nixon to Moscow to work out their differences. Together they agreed to two landmark arms control treaties, SALT I and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The two leaders emerged from their meeting to announce the treaties and a new shared foreign policy goal of peaceful coexistence between the two nations, an objective that became known as "détente". He is also remembered as the American President under which the CIA plotted to support the overthrow of the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, by the Chilean military under general [[UsefulNotes/AugustoPinochet Pinochet]], in the larger context of "Operation Condor", a political repression campaign organized by right-wing authoritarian regimes in South America and the United States aimed at stopping [[RedScare "the spread" of socialism and communism]] in South American countries.

His reputation damaged by these defeats, Nixon held off on immediately running again in 1964 on the grounds that he could tell that running against Johnson (who replaced Kennedy after his assassination) would be futile. He spent the next several years rebuilding his reputation as a statesman and campaigning for Republican candidates in off-year elections, allowing him to pose as a conciliator between the party's conservative and moderate wings, who had bitterly divided during Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign. Nixon easily won the Republican nomination in 1968, and crushed Democratic nominee UsefulNotes/HubertHumphrey in the general election; Humphrey, as Johnson's Vice President, suffered from public backlash towards the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar, a divided opposition vote with segregationist candidate George Wallace, and his nomination being seen as a ConsolationAward after the assassination of UsefulNotes/RobertFKennedy. Nixon is the most recent President to be elected after having previously been defeated, the last before him being UsefulNotes/GroverCleveland in 1892.

Through these means (which collectively became known as the "White House horrors"), Nixon and his campaign then worked to sabotage the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates to ensure that they nominated [=McGovern=], the candidate Nixon thought he could most easily defeat in the general election.[[note]]While Nixon's reelection is sometimes considered a ForegoneConclusion, his other potential opponents - notably Edmund Muskie of Maine - led Nixon in many early polls, and the event that completely destroyed any remote chance that [=McGovern=] had of winning the election -- namely throwing his initial running-mate Thomas Eagleton off the ticket because of his past mental health issues -- didn't happen until nearly two months after the Watergate break-in[[/note]] While Nixon likely didn't order the Watergate break-in personally, his White House staff - including chief of staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and domestic adviser John Ehrlichman, known as the "Berlin Wall" for their closeness to the President - provided the Plumbers with a long leash to engage in ''any'' activities, legal or otherwise, which might help the President's reelection chances. Nixon was at least broadly aware of the Plumbers' activities[[note]]Ehrlichman, for instance, informed Nixon about the break-in against Ellsberg's psychiatrist soon after it happened, despite Nixon's later denials; Attorney General John Mitchell also hosted a meeting where Liddy outlined his "Operation Gemstone" plan which led to the break-in, though it's still unclear if he told Nixon about it at the time[[/note]] and raised no objection until they were caught in the act.

* ''MarkFeltTheManWhoBroughtDownTheWhiteHouse'' looks at the FBI investigation of the Watergate scandal and the story of the whistleblower Mark Felt aka “Deep Throat”.

* ''MarkFeltTheManWhoBroughtDownTheWhiteHouse'' looks at the FBI investigation of the Watergate scandal and the story of the whistleblower Mark Felt (aka “Deep Throat”.

In foreign policy, Nixon worked with his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, to wind down UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, greatly reducing conscription (and abolishing it completely in 1973, making military service entirely voluntary) while turning over the defense of South Vietnam to their own forces in a process termed "Vietnamization". Although many of Nixon's tactics, such as increased bombing of North Vietnam and his 1970 invasion of Cambodia, were (and remain) extremely controversial, he was able to conclude American involvement in the war by the end of his first term.[[note]]It remains [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment a point of considerable debate]] whether the Communist conquest of South Vietnam in 1975 would have happened had Nixon not been driven from office, though by that point Congress had severely limited the President's ability to with the War Powers Act anyway[[/note]] Most notable was Nixon's historic 1972 visit to China where he established US relations with Chairman Mao's Communist regime for the first time. It earned widespread media coverage and coined the phrase "only Nixon could go to China", to describe how a politician with an unassailable reputation on a certain cause can take action that would seem contrary to it without drawing criticism -- such as how Nixon could be trusted to visit and establish relations with Communist China given his unquestionable anti-Communist credentials[[note]]That might apply to American politics, but the firmly liberal Prime Minister of Canada, UsefulNotes/PierreTrudeau, defied his neighboring country's foreign policy and beat Nixon to it years earlier[[/note]]. The China visit had the side effect of reducing tensions with the Soviet Union, as Soviet Premier UsefulNotes/LeonidBrezhnev was so shaken by the idea of the Chinese moving closer to America that it moved him to invite Nixon to Moscow to work out their differences. Together they agreed to two landmark arms control treaties, SALT I and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The two leaders emerged from their meeting to announce the treaties and a new shared foreign policy goal of peaceful coexistence between the two nations, an objective that became known as "détente". He is also remembered as the American President under which the CIA plotted to support the overthrow of the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, by the Chilean military under general [[UsefulNotes/AugustoPinochet Pinochet]], in the larger context of "Operation Condor", a political repression campaign organized by right-wing authoritarian regimes in South America and the United States aimed at stopping [[RedScare "the spread" of socialism and communism]] in South American countries.

A major facet of Nixon's legacy is his endurance as the face of political corruption in America, as the Watergate scandal and his numerous abuses of power it revealed continue to outweigh any and all of his administration's positive achievements in the public conscience. Successor UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's pardon of him generated widespread outrage and while Nixon again achieved good things as an elder statesman in TheEighties, such as his role in arranging the historic [[UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev Gorbachev]]-[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan]] talks (accompanied by this [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dwprnp62YFs/Uo5Q93C__FI/AAAAAAAAd8Y/ym3Rhc0JhAI/s1600/IMG_6759.JPG famous cover of a 1986 issue of Newsweek]] declaring "He's Back"), he never managed to shake off the legacy of Watergate. He has continued to serve as the prototype for a corrupt President in popular culture with the term "Nixonian" being been coined to describe behavior and abuses of power by politicians that are reminiscent of his. Likewise, virtually every major scandal in the Anglosphere (political or otherwise) will eventually be referred to with the suffix "-gate" as part of the snowclone {{Scandalgate}}, in refernece to the Watergate scandal. Whenever a President is caught up in a scandal, comparisons to Nixon are almost mandatory. This was particularly the case when Nixon served as the linchpin of the national debate over the impeachment of UsefulNotes/BillClinton in 1998: Allies argued that his misdeeds were petty when compared to Nixon's while opponents argued that Clinton was undermining the rule of law in a manner just as severe as Nixon's. The numerous scandals that shadowed [[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump Donald Trump]] and eventually led to his impeachments have yet again brought Nixon to the forefront of American political discussion.

A major facet of Nixon's legacy is his endurance as the face of political corruption in America, as the Watergate scandal and his numerous abuses of power it revealed continue to outweigh any and all of his administration's positive achievements in the public conscience. Successor UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's pardon of him generated widespread outrage and while Nixon again achieved good things as an elder statesman in TheEighties, such as his role in arranging the historic [[UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev Gorbachev]]-[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan]] talks (accompanied by this [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dwprnp62YFs/Uo5Q93C__FI/AAAAAAAAd8Y/ym3Rhc0JhAI/s1600/IMG_6759.JPG famous cover of a 1986 issue of Newsweek]] declaring "He's Back"), he never managed to shake off the legacy of Watergate. He has continued to serve as the prototype for a corrupt President in popular culture with the term "Nixonian" being been coined to describe behavior and abuses of power by politicians that are reminiscent of his. Whenever a President is caught up in a scandal, comparisons to Nixon are almost mandatory. This was particularly the case when Nixon served as the linchpin of the national debate over the impeachment of UsefulNotes/BillClinton in 1998: Allies argued that his misdeeds were petty when compared to Nixon's while opponents argued that Clinton was undermining the rule of law in a manner just as severe as Nixon's. The numerous scandals that shadowed [[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump Donald Trump]] and eventually led to his impeachments have yet again brought Nixon to the forefront of American political discussion.

* Nixon appears in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' two-parter "The Impossible Astronaut" / "Day of the Moon" as a hard, paranoid man being followed by the voice of a CreepyChild. He enlists the Doctor and Canton to help him. [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation Despite his flaws being in full view for the episodes he actually comes off rather well due to how readily he helps the Doctor (said help being crucial in the Doctor's efforts against the Silence) and shows some genuine concern for the mysterious child calling him for help.]] [[WeirdAlEffect Something especially notable given how universal his vilification and pillorying is in other media.]] Of course, it happened early in his presidency, and it turns out that some of his habits -- paranoia and taping everything he did -- may have been [[ProperlyParanoid prompted or encouraged by their encounter]].

This would all set the stage for Nixon's actual first run for the White House, which came in 1960, making him the first incumbent vice-president to run for the top job in a century. This resulted in a surprise loss to UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, and while many blamed Nixon's defeat on a combination of bad luck and strategic errors -- particularly his poor performance in the first presidential debate (Nixon had suffered a bout of flu prior to the debate, and was still running a low fever during it, making him look rather pale and sweaty -- Kennedy, on the other hand, had just returned home from a vacation, and as such had a healthy light tan and appeared energized and confident) [[note]]though the perception that he had performed poorly was made by people who ''watched'' the debate, which was the first to be televised; people who ''heard'' the debate on the radio actually felt he won[[/note]], and an AwesomeButImpractical attempt to campaign equally in all 50 states -- Nixon himself believed that the Kennedy family, along with Democratic running-mate UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson and Chicago mayor Richard Daley, had all conspired to commit electoral fraud. While he certainly wasn't the only person to believe this,[[note]](In fact, many historians concur in retrospect that Daley almost certainly '''did''' engage in unethical, if not outright illegal actions in order to help Kennedy out, though it's debated as to whether or not this made the difference between Kennedy's winning or losing the state given that Kennedy was a Catholic, and thus would have done well in Chicago anyway due to its high Catholic population. Regardless, evidence for Johnson rigging the result in Texas is far sketchier, and without that state, Nixon would have lost the election regardless of what happened in Illinois. For what it's worth, while Nixon thought Johnson had cheated, he also believed he'd have lost Texas regardless, due to a Republican congressman organizing a protest which ended up turning violent and resulted in Johnson's wife being assaulted)[[/note]] in retrospect it's often pointed to as his StartOfDarkness, with many close to him later saying it just made him more determined to win the White House than ever. Nixon was further humiliated in 1962, when he ran for Governor of California and lost in a landslide to popular incumbent Pat Brown. He capped off his defeat with a bitter, angry rant [[NeverMyFault blaming the press for his defeat]], termed his "Last Press Conference" as everyone assumed that Nixon had torpedoed his own career.

This would all set the stage for Nixon's actual first run for the White House, which came in 1960, making him the first incumbent vice-president to run for the top job in a century. This resulted in a surprise loss to UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, and while many blamed Nixon's defeat on a combination of bad luck and strategic errors -- particularly his poor performance in the first presidential debate[[note]]though the perception that he had performed poorly was made by people who ''watched'' the debate, which was the first to be televised; people who ''heard'' the debate on the radio actually felt he won[[/note]], and an AwesomeButImpractical attempt to campaign equally in all 50 states -- Nixon himself believed that the Kennedy family, along with Democratic running-mate UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson and Chicago mayor Richard Daley, had all conspired to commit electoral fraud. While he certainly wasn't the only person to believe this,[[note]](In fact, many historians concur in retrospect that Daley almost certainly '''did''' engage in unethical, if not outright illegal actions in order to help Kennedy out, though it's debated as to whether or not this made the difference between Kennedy's winning or losing the state given that Kennedy was a Catholic, and thus would have done well in Chicago anyway due to its high Catholic population. Regardless, evidence for Johnson rigging the result in Texas is far sketchier, and without that state, Nixon would have lost the election regardless of what happened in Illinois. For what it's worth, while Nixon thought Johnson had cheated, he also believed he'd have lost Texas regardless, due to a Republican congressman organizing a protest which ended up turning violent and resulted in Johnson's wife being assaulted)[[/note]] in retrospect it's often pointed to as his StartOfDarkness, with many close to him later saying it just made him more determined to win the White House than ever. Nixon was further humiliated in 1962, when he ran for Governor of California and lost in a landslide to popular incumbent Pat Brown. He capped off his defeat with a bitter, angry rant [[NeverMyFault blaming the press for his defeat]], termed his "Last Press Conference" as everyone assumed that Nixon had torpedoed his own career.