Deacon's President Report

School has ended. Yay! I was just cleaning out Deacon's backpack and found this, the cover page of his very important report on President Nixon. I hadn't seen it before just now.



Here is the report:

Richard Nixon

Richard M. Nixon has been debated for years.  Was he good or bad?  He was a good president, but one fateful day, his own crew broke into the Watergate Hotel. He ended segregation and trained South Vietnamese soldiers to fight. He passed laws to help take care of the earth..  The Watergate situation caused his presidency to end.  He was Vice President for Dwight Eisenhower.

Richard Nixon was born on January 9, 1913 in Yorba Linda, California in the house that his father, Frank Nixon, had built.  Frank ran a gas station and a store.  His family was made up of his mother, Hannah Nixon, his father, himself, and 4 other boys.  That number went up to five when Richard was seventeen.  Sadly, one brother named Arthur died of tuberculosis when he was seven.  Another brother, Harold, died of the same disease in 1927.  The Nixons were Quakers and went to a Quaker Meeting house. Instead of a pastor speaking, everyone could speak. Richard Nixon could speak well.  This was a skill that would be useful in college. 

Nixon attended a local Quaker college, Whittier College.  He majored  in history, and he was elected president of the school.  He wanted to work hard for success.

Because of all his hard work, he won a scholarship to Duke University law school. He was elected president of the Duke Bar Association. He graduated third in his class and was prepared to begin his career as a lawyer.  Nixon started working at a law firm in Whittier.  

During his free time, Nixon acted in a community theater.  This is where he met his wife, Pat. They were married in 1940.  They soon moved to Washington D.C., so Richard could work at the Office of Price Administration (OPA).      

The OPA controlled prices during World War II. It also controlled how much of certain things people could buy.  Nixon was hired but soon got tired of all of the paperwork.  He enlisted in the Navy in 1942.

Nixon trained to be an officer and was stationed in the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command (SCAT).  He helped ship cargo to war zones and help wounded soldiers go back home.  In July 1944, he came back to the U.S.  He left the navy in 1945 and decided to begin his career in politics.

Nixon ran for Congress and U.S. Senate and won both times.  In 1962, he ran for governor of California against Pat Brown.  Brown said that Nixon took bribes, and Nixon lost the election.  He said he was finished with politics.  But this was proven false, as he became vice president in 1952.  

Dwight Eisenhower chose Nixon as his running mate in 1951.  They won both the 1952 and 1956 terms.  In his vice presidency, Nixon went to Asia, Europe, and South America.  He also substituted for Eisenhower when he was sick in 1955, 1956 , and 1957. After his two terms, he decided to run for President himself.  

Nixon ran for President against Senator John F. Kennedy in 1960. But Nixon had the flu and did not do well in his debate, and he lost the election. Nixon decided to run for President again in 1967.

Nixon was very anti-Communist.  This is how he won some of his previous elections.  He accused his opponents of being or having relationships with Communists.  The United States was very afraid of Communists at the time.

Nixon chose Spiro Agnew, the governor of Maryland, as his running mate.  Nixon and Agnew were in a three-way race against Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Independent George Wallace.   Nixon promised to bring the country together.  He won the 1968 election and was sworn in on January 20, 1969.  He soon got to work implementing policies.

Nixon made a task force on women’s rights, which helped to end sex discrimination at work.  His administration also included many women.  His next law was the Organized Crime Act.

In 1970, the Organized Crime Control Act went into action.  It fought the problem of organized crime by taking the profit out of illegal gambling.  Nixon persuaded J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, to work with other agencies.  In 1973, the Department of Justice put over 2,500 people in jail.  Many were important crime bosses.  Next, Nixon turned his attention to the environment.

Nixon signed the Water Pollution Control Act and Clean Air Act into law.  The Clean Air Act kept the amount of chemicals going into the air and water in check.  He also started the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  He made sure all agencies that helped pollution cooperated.  Nixon also oversaw the first Earth Day, which was first celebrated in 1971.  In addition to helping the environment, he wanted to help people with health problems.

In 1971, Nixon signed the Cancer Act.  The government gave 1.6 billion dollars to fund research of causes and cures of cancer.  Most of the success in fighting cancer came from federally funded research started by the Nixon administration. Nixon also had other successes.  

President Nixon wanted to reduce the number of crimes committed in Washington D.C.  Over two hundred serious crimes were committed per day in 1969.  He added one thousand police officers and more judges and assistant U.S. attorneys.   Two hundred crimes were reduced to less than one hundred by early 1973.  Next, Nixon wanted to help Native Americans.

Nixon wanted to let Native Americans decide what to do with their natural resources.  He also started programs that provided federal funding for educating Native American children.  Soon, there was a college managed by Native Americans, the Navajo Community College.  In addition to this, Nixon wanted to end segregation.

Nixon started a program called “New Federalism,” which solved the problem of segregation in the South.  He put in committees to help school desegregation.  In 1968, 70% of African American children went to all-black schools.  In 1970, only 18% of African American children went to all-black schools.  Meanwhile, Nixon oversaw the arrival of men to a place no man had ever gone before.

Neil Armstrong walked on the moon on July 20, 1969.  Nixon called him and said the world was watching them.  Over 528,000,000 people watched them on television.  But Nixon needed to solve problems on Earth.

Vietnam was in a civil war.  The North was Communist, and the South non-Communist.  The U.S. sent soldiers to South Vietnam to help them in 1965.  When Nixon took office in 1969, 550,000 U.S. soldiers were in Vietnam.  The war separated the country and caused social unrest.  Nixon wanted to make peace.  U.S. citizens did not understand why soldiers had to die to help South Vietnam.  Nixon wanted to take the United States out of the war soon.  Nixon tried a strategy of training South Vietnamese soldiers to fight.  That way, fewer Americans would be needed.  Nixon brought the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam to only 30,000 by 1972.  In 1973, they signed a ceasefire agreement and all troops went back to the U.S.  After the United States withdrew their troops, North Vietnam won the war.  Nixon then turned his attention to China.

The United States did not have anything to do with Communist China.  However, Nixon wanted to ease tensions.  He and Pat went to China for a week in February of 1972.  Many U.S. citizens were happy about this.  He met with Mao-Tse-tung, the Communist leader of China, and other officials.  After Nixon returned home, the United States had better relations with China.  Next, Nixon turned his attention to the Soviet Union.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union were building nuclear weapons to use against each other.  Nixon wanted to have a better relationship with them.  He visited the Soviet Union.  He and Leonid Brezhnev, ruler of the Soviet Union, signed an agreement to not make so many nuclear weapons.  This became known as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). During the time he was in the U.S.S.R., he also signed an agreement that united the Apollo and Soyuz space programs. However, a scandal at home would soon end his presidency. 

In June of 1971, the New York Times published the first paper of what became the Pentagon Papers.  These were secrets that had been kept by Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy about Vietnam.  The way they heard this information was from Daniel Ellsberg, a Defense Department researcher.  He gave them illegally and secretly.  Nixon wanted to stop the leaks.

To stop leaking, Nixon made a team, many of whom had experience in spying.  They were supposed to protect secret information.  They were called “the Plumbers.”  The Plumbers broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office and tried to find information to make him look bad.  They did not find any, and broke the law.  The Pentagon Papers incident made Nixon very suspicious of everyone.  Sadly, this was the start of Nixon’s resignation.

The Plumbers next broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.  They were caught by a night watchman, arrested, and put into jail.  Two reporters for the Washington Post decided to investigate.  They interviewed people at the White House.  That helped them connect Watergate to the White House.  Even with this scandal, Nixon won 49 out of 50 states in the 1972 election.  

In the summer of 1973, the Senate Watergate committee asked questions to people who worked with Nixon.  On June 25, 1973, John Dean said that Nixon was involved in the cover-up of Watergate.  John Dean was Nixon’s White House Counsel.  This hurt Nixon badly.  But soon, tapes Nixon had recorded were revealed, making matters even worse.

A White House aide said that Nixon sometimes secretly tape recorded conversations in his office.  The Senate Watergate committee wanted to hear them.  Nixon said they were private property.   In July of 1974, the Supreme Court said that Nixon had to hand over the tapes.  When he did, they proved that he was involved in the cover-up.  

On July 27, 1974, three Articles of Impeachment were passed by the House Judiciary Committee charging Obstruction of Justice.  On August 8, 1974, Nixon was the first president to resign.  Gerald Ford now was president.  He pardoned Nixon of all the Watergate charges.

In conclusion, Richard Nixon was a complicated president.  He did many things that are still practiced today, such as Earth Day and equal rights for women.  He was a good president some of the time, but he was also a sinner like everyone else.  Richard Nixon died at age 81 on April 22, 1994.  He is buried at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California.