My Academic Writing Sample # 3
This paper was written for my HIS 340 Class - Recent American History. The topic is Watergate and the Constitutional Crisis.
The year 1968 was a pivotal year in elections and crucial to the winning of the White House. Firstly, the year 1968 was known as the 'summer of hate' because of the racial violence that was going on around the country. This also included the shocking and senseless assassinations of both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, brother of the late President John F. Kennedy and a serious contender for the White House.
The Republicans were helped along by the divisive and violent Democratic Convention, after their own orderly convention in Miami earlier that year. Nixon was elected President, but it was not but by the "...narrowest margin amidst...worst violence and disorder in nearly 100 years" (Moss, 2010). However, when Nixon won his second term in 1972, it was by a landslide margin.
Despite the fact that Nixon was a formidable political adversary during the 1972 campaign, he did have one major flaw - a "...chink in his armor which was corruption" (Moss, 2010). George McGovern, who was running on the Democratic ticket that year said that Nixon had "...the most morally corrupt administration in political history" (Moss, 2010). Nixon had hired underlings to use 'dirty tricks' to sabotage the Democratic Party.
Watergate actually began on June 17, 1972 when five men, under the auspices of President Nixon, broke into the Democratic National Convention headquarters, called Watergate Complex. These men were "...had CIA and Cuban connections" (Milner, 1996) and were hired by Nixon. The main objective was to wiretap the office of the chairman of the DNC but a security guard in passing, caught the intruders. They were arrested, but of course a cover-up began with hush money, which eventually led back to the president.
Ultimately, Watergate became one of the biggest political scandals in the United States history; and although it was designed to help Nixon win re-election and he did by a landslide, it also helped to bring his presidency to an end. The scandal brought about criminal charges against more top government officials than any other scandal, including charges against the former Attorney General John N. Mitchell; two of Nixon's top aides, John D. Erhlichman and H. R. Haldeman. There were various charges including "...burglary, wiretapping, and violations of campaign financing laws" (Lukas, 2011). Punishment included prison time, heavy fines and of course, resignation from their office.
If one wants to analyze the way the three branches work; the executive, legislative, and judicial, one only has to delve into the complexities of the Watergate affair. It also proves that the U.S. Constitution "...has a complex web of safeguards built into it...including no one branch belonging to another branch of the government" (Farnsworth, 2009). The checks and balances inherent in the U.S Constitution are apparent when viewed as such; for example, the president is head of the government and yet he does not control either the legislative or judicial branches.
When James Madison was writing and drafting the U.S. Constitution, he had envisioned the three different branches of government, and as he wrote it so eloquently in the Federalist paper # 51, "...the different governments will control each other, at the same time they will be controlled by itself" (Madison, 1788). Furthermore, he continues on to state that "...each structure of the government, by mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in place" (Madison, 1788). This clearly shows that the three branches of the government are not independent of one another, and yet they function separately and can and do function together at times.
The basic gist of the checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution is designed to prevent abuses within the system. Given the fact that in cases such as Watergate, where the president did invoke and use his powers in office for criminal means, it means that he did abuse and intend to abuse the Constitution. If he had been able to have duplicitous roles, say in another branch of the government as well, that could have posed more constitutional problems; say for example, if he could make the laws and then use them to his own advantage and enforce them...well you can see why the Constitution with its built in safeguards prevents such a thing from happening and it worked very well with the Watergate case. The framers of the Constitution were vindicated with their system throughout this scandalous affair.