NIXON

Election of Kennedy received much support from the poorer classes and from African Americans who believed Kennedy would continue the struggle for civil rights, this led to his assassination. - On April 4, Martin Luther King's assassination also eventually led to the assassination of Robert Kennedy a few months after. He was shot after speaking to a crowd for his California primary. - After the Assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the democratic party nominated Humphrey, but the nation began to feel that the Democrats were a party of disorder because of the riots that were occurring to stop Humphrey from being elected. - The Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon won the election - Nixon got 301 electoral votes, and won 43 percent of the popular vote

DOMESTIC POLICY -Domestic policy is an area of public policy which concerns laws, government programs, and administrative decisions which are directly related to all issues and activity within a nation's borders -differs from foreign policy, which refers to the ways a government advances its interests in world politics -Nixon deeply desired to restore order in American society -supported the new Social Security benefits and subsidized housing for the poor and oversaw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration -Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Federal agency created in 1970 to oversee environmental monitoring and cleanup programs -Nixon accepted idea of deficit spending: took the nation off the gold standard. The dollar’s value would float on the world market rather than being tied to the value of gold -90 day freeze on on wages, rents, and prices, designed to halt the inflation caused by the massive spending on the Vietnam War -Supported “black capitalism” - adjustments of quotas favoring minority contractors in construction projects -Eventually accepted the principle of school integration but rejected the busing programs required to implement racial balance

Stagflation ●High inflation ●High unemployment ●Stagnant economy ●Creates competition amongst companies in prices ●OPEC cut it oil quota and increased it’s prices, therefore partially blamed for this ●There was a small recession during the 1970s ●Nixon was running for election, but to gain support he wanted to lower inflation rates ●Nixon freezed market’s ability to raise prices, leading to the business’ inability to remain profitable, leading to laying employees off, increasing unemployment, leading to less demand, resulting in a stagnant economy. ●His role wa essentially to regulate costs and wages

Watergate ★ Political scandals between 1972 and 1974 ★ Refers to the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. ○June 17, 1972: Five men, one of whom says he used to work for the CIA, are arrested at 2:30 a.m. trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel and office complex. ○August 1, 1972: A $25,000 cashier’s check, apparently earmarked for the Nixon campaign, wound up in the bank account of a Watergate burglar ★ Nixon believed that a war was being fought between “us” and “them” ○“us”- middle and working class Americans who thought that the US was in danger of falling apart ○“them”- young, anti-war, liberal counterculture figures who wanted to transform American values Kayla

Watergate Continued ★ White house group known as “Plumbers” was established to eliminate administration leaks to the press ○1st target- Daniel Ellsberg who worked on the Pentagon Papers ■vandalized the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to find discrediting info to release to the public ★ James McCord admitted in a letter that members of the Nixon Administration ordered the Watergate break-in when the burglars were tried in January of 1973 ★ In U.S. v. Nixon, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to give the evidence to the Congress ○The House Judiciary Committee already drawn up articles of impeachment- knew that he didn’t have the votes in the Senate to save his presidency ★ Nixon becomes the first President to resign on August 8, 1971