Shooting Grunts
2008
Search results
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
- Richard Milhous Nixon, January 9, 1913, Yorba Linda, California, U.S.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Overview
- Early life and congressional career
- Vice presidency
Richard Nixon was the 37th president of the United States. He was a Republican, and he held the presidency from 1969 to 1974. Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign from office, because of the Watergate scandal.
What did Richard Nixon do?
As U.S. president, Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, proposed an affirmative action program in federal employment, expanded but then ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and established direct relations with the People’s Republic of China. He also resigned from the presidency in 1974.
How was Richard Nixon involved in the Watergate scandal?
During the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon and his administration were discovered to have been involved in a burglary attempt at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972. After a heavily publicized investigation and televised hearings, Nixon was ordered by the Supreme Court to turn over tapes from the Oval Office that eventually implicated him in the cover-up. The scandal resulted in Nixon’s resignation in 1974.
Did Richard Nixon support the Vietnam War?
Richard Nixon was the second of five children born to Frank Nixon, a service station owner and grocer, and Hannah Milhous Nixon, whose devout Quakerism would exert a strong influence on her son. Nixon graduated from Whittier College in California in 1934 and from Duke University Law School in Durham, North Carolina, in 1937. Returning to Whittier to practice law, he met Thelma Catherine (“Pat”) Ryan (Pat Nixon), a teacher and amateur actress, after the two were cast in the same play at a local community theatre. The couple married in 1940.
In August 1942, after a brief stint in the Office of Price Administration in Washington, D.C., Nixon joined the navy, serving as an aviation ground officer in the Pacific and rising to the rank of lieutenant commander. Following his return to civilian life in 1946, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating five-term liberal Democratic Congressman Jerry Voorhis in a campaign that relied heavily on innuendos about Voorhis’s alleged communist sympathies. Running for reelection in 1948, Nixon entered and won both the Democratic and Republican primaries, which thus eliminated the need to participate in the general election. As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAAC) in 1948–50, he took a leading role in the investigation of Alger Hiss, a former State Department official accused of spying for the Soviet Union. In dramatic testimony before the committee, Whittaker Chambers, a journalist and former spy, claimed that in 1937 Hiss had given him classified State Department papers for transmission to a Soviet agent. Hiss vehemently denied the charge but was later convicted of perjury. Nixon’s hostile questioning of Hiss during the committee hearings did much to make his national reputation as a fervent anticommunist.
In 1950 Nixon successfully ran for the United States Senate against Democratic Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas. After his campaign distributed “pink sheets” comparing Douglas’s voting record to that of Vito Marcantonio, a left-wing representative from New York, the Independent Review, a small Southern California newspaper, nicknamed him “Tricky Dick.” The epithet later became a favourite among Nixon’s opponents.
Britannica Quiz
At the Republican convention in 1952, Nixon won nomination as vice president on a ticket with Dwight D. Eisenhower, largely because of his anticommunist credentials but also because Republicans thought he could draw valuable support in the West. In the midst of the campaign, the New York Post reported that Nixon had been maintaining a secret “slush fund” provided by contributions from a group of southern California businessmen. Eisenhower was willing to give Nixon a chance to clear himself but emphasized that Nixon needed to emerge from the crisis “as clean as a hound’s tooth.” On September 23, 1952, Nixon delivered a nationally televised address, the so-called “Checkers” speech, in which he acknowledged the existence of the fund but denied that any of it had been used improperly. To demonstrate that he had not enriched himself in office, he listed his family’s financial assets and liabilities in embarrassing detail, noting that his wife, Pat, unlike the wives of so many Democratic politicians, did not own a fur coat but only “a respectable Republican cloth coat.” The speech is perhaps best remembered for its maudlin conclusion, in which Nixon admitted accepting one political gift—a cocker spaniel that his six-year-old daughter, Tricia, had named Checkers. “Regardless of what they say about it,” he declared, “we are going to keep it.” Although Nixon initially thought that the speech had been a failure, the public responded favourably, and a reassured Eisenhower told him, “You’re my boy.” The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket defeated the Democratic candidates, Adlai E. Stevenson and John Sparkman, with just under 34 million popular votes to their 27.3 million; the vote in the electoral college was 442 to 89.
During his two terms as vice president, Nixon campaigned actively for Republican candidates but otherwise did not assume significant responsibilities. (Asked at a press conference to describe Nixon’s contributions to his administration’s policies, Eisenhower replied: “If you give me a week, I might think of one.”) Nevertheless, his performance in office helped to make the role of vice president more prominent and to enhance its constitutional importance. In 1955–57 Eisenhower suffered a series of serious illnesses, including a heart attack, an attack of ileitis, and a stroke. While Eisenhower was incapacitated, Nixon was called on to chair several cabinet sessions and National Security Council meetings, though real power lay in a close circle of Eisenhower advisers, from which Nixon had always been excluded. After his stroke, Eisenhower formalized an agreement with Nixon on the powers and responsibilities of the vice president in the event of presidential disability; the agreement was accepted by later administrations until the adoption of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1967. Nixon’s vice presidency was also noteworthy for his many well-publicized trips abroad, including a 1958 tour of Latin America—a trip that journalist Walter Lippmann termed a “diplomatic Pearl Harbor”—during which his car was stoned, slapped, and spat upon by anti-American protesters, and a 1959 visit to the Soviet Union, highlighted by an impromptu profanity-filled “kitchen debate” in Moscow with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Students save 67%! Learn more about our special academic rate today.
Learn More
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Nov 9, 2009 · Richard Nixon (1913-94), the 37th U.S. president, is best remembered as the only president ever to resign from office. Nixon stepped down in 1974, halfway through his second term, rather than...
- 2 min
Other articles from history.com
Richard Nixon's tenure as the 37th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1969, and ended when he resigned on August 9, 1974, in the face of almost certain impeachment and removal from office, the only U.S. president ever to do so.
Apr 20, 2021 · Richard Nixon was the 37 th U.S. president and the only commander-in-chief to resign from his position, after the 1970s Watergate scandal. By Biography.com Editors Updated: Apr 20, 2021. Getty...
- editor@biography.com
- Staff Editorial Team And Contributors
People also ask
Who is Richard Nixon?
What did President Nixon do?
Where can I find a book about President Nixon?
Why did Richard Nixon resign?
Richard M. Nixon | The White House. The biography for President Nixon and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association. Richard Nixon was elected the 37th...
On January 20, 1969, Richard Nixon was inaugurated as the thirty-seventh president of the United States. During his time in the White House (1969–74), President Nixon sought to unite a divided nation after the social, political, and cultural turbulence of the 1960s.
