Richard Nixon: Difference between revisions

==Biography==

Nixon was born into a poor family of Quakers in a small town in Southern California. He graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937 and returned to California to practice law. He and his wife Pat moved to Washington in 1942 to work for the federal government. He served on active duty in the Navy Reserve during [[World War II]].  

He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946. His pursuit of the Hiss Case established his reputation as a leading anti-Communist which elevated him to national prominence. In 1950, he was elected to the Senate. He was the running mate of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party's presidential nominee in the 1952 election, subsequently serving for eight years as the vice president. He unsuccessfully ran for president in 1960, narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy. Nixon then lost a race for governor of California to Pat Brown in 1962. In 1968, he ran for the presidency again and was elected, defeating Hubert Humphrey and [[George Wallace]] in a close election.

In 20 years of retirement, Nixon wrote his memoirs and nine other books and undertook many foreign trips, rehabilitating his image into that of an elder statesman and leading expert on foreign affairs. He suffered a debilitating stroke on April 18, 1994, and died four days later at age 81. Surveys of historians and political scientists have ranked Nixon as a below-average president. However, evaluations of him have proven complex, with successes as president contrasted against the circumstances of his departure from office.

On June 17, 1972, five suspects were arrested in the early hours of the morning for breaking into the Democratic Party's headquarters at the Watergate Office Building (which gave its name to the scandal) in Washington, D.C. They had photographic equipment and wiretapping devices on them. In the following months, connections between several of the suspects and one part or another of the White House were revealed.

As the investigation continued, it was revealed that the scandal was primarily to cover-up his administration's illegal activities as well as to sabotage the Democratic Party, just so his opposition would be weakened.

==Other villainy==

*He financed the 1973 Chilean coup d'état which allowed Augusto Pinochet to seize power in Chile.

*Nixon was an avowed [[Anti-Semitism|anti-Semite]] who strongly disliked Jews, and was a believer in the conspiracy theory that Jews were planning to take over the government.

*He was responsible for the creation of the Southern Strategy - a political strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans.

*He launched the War on Drugs, which has actually caused more problems than it has solved.

*Under his administration, the Justice Department initiated a crackdown on criticism of the government. Attorney General [[John N. Mitchell]] oversaw the prosecution of numerous anti-government protestors, most infamously the Chicago Seven. He also allowed the FBI's COINTELPRO program to continue and expanded Operation CHAOS, an illegal surveillance program targeting anti-government activists.

== Trivia ==

*He was the vice president of [https://real-life-heroes.fandom.com/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower Dwight D. Eisenhower]

*Richard Nixon was one of the inspirations for Emperor Palpatine from the ''Star Wars'' franchise as was [[Adolf Hitler]] and [[Napoleon Bonaparte]].

[[Category:Presidents]]

[[Category:Corrupt Officials]]