“Executive Privilege” (Watergate, #2)

In early 1973, Richard Nixon seemed stronger than ever. The voters had just handed him a landslide electoral victory, a massive mandate for the next four years. Yet within 20 months, his position would crumble, and his presidency would be no more. The cause of his downfall was – of course – the Watergate scandal. As we’ve seen in the first part, through 1972, most Americans did not take much note of the break-in or the irregularities in Nixon’s election campaign finance. In 1973, however, the connection to politics became evident during the trials of the Watergate burglars and then spread when the existence of a secret taping system at the White House became known. Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, but the reverberations of the scandal kept rippling through America.