Richard Nixon: Resigned

01VOA Learning English presents America's Presidents.

02Today we are talking about Richard Nixon.

03Nixon is well known to many Americans for one reason.

04He was the only president to resign from the position.

05Facing possible legal action by Congress, Nixon left office early in his second term.

06Yet Nixon's early political career was marked by success.

07He also had some noteworthy achievements during his White House years, and he attained his goal of moving the government in a more conservative direction.

08In his later years, Nixon and his supporters tried to reclaim his place as an expert on international affairs.

09But for many Americans, the name Nixon remains linked to distrust of national leaders, abuse of power, and political wrongdoing.

10Richard Nixon had a difficult early life.

11He was the second of five sons in a Quaker family.

12His parents owned a lemon ranch in California, near the city of Los Angeles.

13But the family struggled financially, and two of Richard's brothers died, one as a small child and one as a young adult.

14In time, his parents' business failed, and the Nixons moved to a nearby town.

15The parents and children all worked at a filling station that sold fuel and other products.

16Despite the many hours he worked at the store, Richard Nixon was a top student in high school.

17He was offered financial aid to attend Harvard University, but the family needed even more money to send him there.

18Instead, he attended a local college, where he became the student body president, joined a debate team, acted in the theater, and played football.

19Nixon went on to law school at Duke University in North Carolina.

20Even with his impressive background, he did not get the jobs he sought at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, or top law offices.

21So he returned to the California town where he grew up, and began working as a lawyer.

22There, he married another actor at the community theater.

23Her name was Thelma Ryan, but she was called Pat.

24The Nixons went on to have two daughters, Tricia and Julie.

25In 1942, Nixon accepted a job with the federal government in Washington, D.C.

26He did not stay in the position long.

27After the United States entered World War II, Nixon joined the Navy.

28He served as an officer in the Pacific.

29When he returned to the U.S., Republican Party officials asked him to be a candidate for Congress.

30Nixon agreed.

31He won two terms in the House of Representatives, and then a seat in the U.S.

32Senate.

33Two years later, Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican presidential candidate, asked Nixon to be his vice president.

34The two men won in an electoral landslide, and in 1953, Nixon took office as vice president.

35He was only 40 years old, the second youngest vice president in U.S.

36history.

37Nixon's early political career is remembered for several reasons.

38One is how quickly he rose to high government office.

39Another is for his part in the Alger Hiss case in the late 1940s.

40Hiss was a top official in the State Department.

41He was accused of being a communist in the 1930s and 1940s, and of passing information about the U.S.

42government to Soviet spies.

43Hiss denied the accusations.

44The case was big news in the United States.

45It showed the clash between people who believed Hiss was falsely accused as a way to discredit liberal policies, and people who believed the government was protecting communist sympathizers.

46Nixon was in the second group.

47He was part of the investigation against Hiss and pushed for his indictment.

48Nixon's efforts succeeded, and Hiss went to jail for almost four years.

49Later, Nixon said that the case was one of the reasons for his rise to power.

50Nixon also earned national attention with an event that has become known as the Checkers' speech.

51It happened in 1952, when Nixon was running for vice president.

52Some reporters accused Nixon of corruption.

53They said he was accepting money and gifts from wealthy donors in exchange for his political support.

54Nixon went on television to deny the claims personally.

55At the time, Americans were not used to seeing politicians speaking directly to the public.

56Yet Nixon spoke informally and emotionally, from what appeared to be a home.

57He explained his family's finances.

58He said he did not accept campaign donations for personal benefit.

59But, he added, there was one exception.

60A supporter had once given the Nixon children a black and white dog they called Checkers.

61Nixon said he refused to return his daughter's pet.

62The public and Republican Party officials loved the speech.

63Nixon appeared warm and likable.

64Middle-class Americans especially said they could relate to him.

65Most forgot the claims against him.

66And Nixon's political career was saved.

67During the following eight years, he served as vice president in the Eisenhower administration.

68But then, Nixon's luck turned.

69In 1960, Nixon lost as a presidential candidate to John F.

70Kennedy.

71He blamed, in part, the media.

72Then, in 1962, he lost his efforts to be governor of California.

73Nixon said he was retiring from politics.

74He famously told reporters, you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore.

75Yet, seven years later, he was in the White House.

76It was one of the most memorable comebacks in U.S.

77political history.

78The White House Some Americans thought the country was in crisis.

79The economy was not doing well.

80Race riots had been erupting in big cities.

81Many people were still trying to recover from the violence of a year earlier.

82Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

83and President John F.

84Kennedy's brother, Robert, had both been shot and killed.

85Pollution of the environment was becoming a major political issue.

86Women were pressing for equal rights.

87And many Americans continued to protest American involvement in Vietnam.

88Nixon took action.

89During his first years in office, he supported reforms and rules to improve the economy, protect the environment, increase workplace and other opportunities for women, support civil rights, and, in his words, bring peace with honor in Vietnam.

90But for the most part, Nixon did not have the support of Congress to enact legislation.

91So he expanded the power of the presidency to carry out his goals.

92He is remembered especially for three foreign policy moves.

93In 1972, he visited China, with which the U.S.

94government had tense relations since the Chinese Communist Party took power.

95As the Alger-Hiss case showed, Nixon was strongly anti-communist, but he made establishing diplomatic relations between the two sides possible again.

96He also visited the Soviet Union and was the first U.S.

97president to visit Moscow.

98Nixon and the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, agreed to limit the growth of nuclear arms.

99Their actions helped ease tensions at a time when U.S.

100officials were worried about the expansion of communism.

101And Nixon did succeed in reaching a peace agreement with North Vietnamese leaders.

102In 1973, American troops slowly began to leave the country, although fighting there continued.

103Nixon's foreign policy achievements helped him in the 1972 election campaign.

104His first presidential election had been extremely close.

105The second he won by one of the widest electoral vote margins in U.S.

106history.

107The second he won The second he won is the first presidential election The second he won is the first presidential election of the United States.

108of the United States.

109The second he won The second he won is the first presidential election of the United States.

110The second he won is the first presidential election of the United States.

111The second he won is the first presidential election of the United States.

112The second he won of the United States.

113The second he won is the first presidential election The second he won is the first presidential election to prevent any damaging information from reaching the media.

114Later, its job expanded to include investigating any information that might hurt his public image.

115About five months before election day, five men broke into the opposition party's headquarters at the Watergate, a hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C.

116The team had already stolen copies of secret campaign documents.

117Now, in the middle of the night, the men were trying to add listening equipment to the telephones.

118In other words, spy on the opposition.

119But a security guard became suspicious and called the police.

120The men were caught and arrested.

121When the story came to light, Nixon publicly denied that any White House officials were involved in the crime.

122But in time, the public learned that Nixon was lying.

123In fact, he assisted with payments to the men who were arrested.

124and he tried to use the Central Intelligence Agency to block an FBI investigation of the crime.

125Nixon knew that the Watergate break-in was only part of the illegal or questionable acts he could be held responsible for.

126Later, people connected with Nixon told investigators that the president had taped everything that happened in his office.

127investigators demanded the tapes.

128They would prove how much Nixon knew about the illegal operations.

129The president refused.

130He dismissed the lead investigator.

131Two other Justice Department officials resigned in protest.

132A new investigator was appointed.

133And the U.S.

134Supreme Court ordered Nixon to release the tapes.

135At the same time, the House of Representatives voted to remove Nixon from office.

136They charged him with obstructing justice, abusing his power, covering up a crime, and violating the Constitution.

137Finally, Nixon released the tapes.

138But before the Senate could hold a trial, in which the president would almost certainly be found guilty, Richard Nixon resigned.

139He left the White House the following day.

140Nixon lived for 20 more years.

141He wrote a number of books, traveled, spent time with his family, and offered foreign policy advice to other leaders.

142He continued to deny that he had done anything criminal as president.

143Instead, Nixon said he had made bad decisions.

144And he did not go to trial.

145The next president, Gerald Ford, used his power to pardon Nixon for all offenses against the United States.

146But Nixon's image was permanently damaged.

147Most people found evidence in the tapes that Nixon knew about a related series of crimes commonly known as Watergate.

148They also found that some of his public statements were dishonest.

149They said he made them to forward his own political goals, not to further the public good.

150As a result, Nixon's place in U.S.

151history is generally thought to be a troubled one.

152To be sure, he made a number of positive accomplishments, both within the U.S.

153and internationally.

154But his presidency left the country shaken.

155When Ford replaced him as president, he said to Americans, our long national nightmare is over.

156I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.