Nixon: 1969-74

President Richard Nixon was a complex and contradictory character.  His presidency ended in disgrace and resignation after the Watergate Scandal (when he was exposed not only as having illegally funded his campaigns, but of authorising the burglary of the Democrats' HQ when he thought they had found out, and then lying about it all to Congress and the public):

Going Deeper

The following link will help you widen your knowledge:

Interpretations of Nixon - a historiography

Nixon's Domestic Programme [ESCAPE]

1. Economic growth

   • Nixon struggled (and failed) to control Stagflation.  In 1971 he came off the Gold Standard and allowed the dollar to ‘float’, resulting in a reduction in the value of the dollar … which worsened inflation. 

   • In 1971 he imposed temporary 90-day freeze on wages, prices, and rents to try to combat inflation. 

   • As part of his belief in ‘small’ central government, he enacted the State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act, redirecting federal funds to state and local governments; this helped stimulate local economies.

2. Space race

   • Nixon tried to scale back the space programme, redirecting funding to other priorities. 

   • Nevertheless, he continued NASA’s Apollo program, which during his presidency achieved six lunar missions including the Apollo 11 Moon Landing (1969), and in 1972 he approved development of the Space Shuttle program

3. Civil Rights and Women's Rights

   • Nixon was personally luke-warm on Civil Rights, with an aide saying: “The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect". 

   • He urged Congress not to extend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and to end the Fair Housing Enforcement Program. 

   • He appointed conservatives to the Supreme Court, and reduced the rights of defendants. 

   • Nevertheless, Nixon implemented the Philadelphia Plan (1969), the first effective federal affirmative action policy requiring contractors to hire minority workers. 

   • His administration passed the Indian Education Act (1972), abolished the Termination programme (1953) and passed the Indian Financing Act (1974). 

   • In 1974, the Equal Educational Opportunity Act required Latino pupils to be taught in their own language. 

   • Nixon was also personally luke-warm on Women's Rights, and vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act (1971), which aimed to create a national childcare system, saying he wanted to preserve traditional family values. 

   • Nevertheless, in 1971 he required federal agencies to develop plans to hire more women in top positions; he appointed women to key government and army positions, and women entered the FBI and Secret Services. 

   • The Nixon administration also passed Title IX of the Education Amendments (1972) prohibiting gender discrimination in federally funded education programs. 

   • The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was passed by Congress, but not adopted by sufficient States to be ratified. 

4. Alleviate Poverty/ Housing

   • Nixon dismantled Johnson’s Great Society programme.  His 1971 State of the Union address called it “a monstrous consuming outrage ...  pouring money into a bad program” and promised to abolish it and replace it with a system which did not just help the poor, but helped them to help themselves. 

   • He abolished the Model Cities Program and the Office of Economic Opportunity. 

   • Nevertheless, the 1972 Supplemental Security Income Act (SSI) consolidated federal welfare programs for the elderly, blind, and disabled, providing consistent benefits nationwide, and increased funding for housing programs … leading to an increase in federal spending on welfare from $182 billion in 1969 to $215 billion in 1973.  During Nixon's Presidency spending on welfare exceeded spending on defence for the first time since WWII.

   • Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan (FAP) proposed a guaranteed minimum income for families at a cost of $4 billion a year, but it failed in Congress. 

5. Public Health/ Medical/ Environment

   • In 1971 Nixon established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to ensure workplace safety and health standards. 

   • He proposed a National Health Insurance Partnership to replace Medicare/Medicaid, but it failed in Congress. 

   • In 1970 he created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to enforce environmental protections, and in 1973 passed the Endangered Species Act protecting threatened wildlife’s habitats - but tried (unsuccessfuly) to veto the Clean Water Act of 1972 (because it cost $18 billion). 

6. Education

   • Nixon increased federal funding on education, especially for disadvantaged schools (under Title I programs). 

   • A proposed School Voucher Plan to allow poorer students to attend private schools failed in Congress. 

   • Nixon appeared personally luke-warm on School Desegregation, supporting in 1974 anti-bussing amendments in Congress to appease Southern politicians. 

   • Nevertheless, under Nixon, the percentage of Black students in integrated schools in the South rose from about 5% in 1968 to over 90% by 1974 (though this progress was arguably due to Swann v.  Charlotte-Mecklenburg, not his personal support). 

Interpretations

This is a summary – for the full article see here. 

James Burns’s 2005 summary of Nixon as “brilliant and morally lacking” shows the difficulty historians face in interpreting this complex figure, resulting in a range of different ideas. 

Even before Watergate, historian Arthur Schlesinger criticized Nixon’s misuse of power, blaming it on the unchecked growth of presidential authority since WWII. 

Other people, like the psycho-historians of the 1970s, labelled Nixon as psychologically damaged, even psychopathic, and in 2000 journalist Anthony Summers painted him as drunkard wife-beater, though such views are now discredited. 

Nixon himself portrayed his career as a series of battles, through which he overcame setbacks through determination.  A few biographers have praised his resilience, and defended his actions – even Watergate. 

Critics have argued that Nixon was a cynical pragmatist, caring only about political gain rather than principles.  In the 1990s, historians like Herbert Parmet and Stanley Kutler suggested that his reforms were merely schemes to outmanoeuvre liberals, while others saw his appeals to the ‘silent majority’, and his support for environmental reforms and the Family Assistance Plan, merely as a ploy for votes. 

At the same time, however, other historians were reassessing Nixon as a liberal.  Tom Wicker and Joan Hoff highlighted his progressive policies, and a former aide explained that any contradictory actions stemmed from the political reality that his voters were conservative. 

LLater, David Greenberg and John Farrell portrayed Nixon as a shape-shifter, constantly adapting his image to the needs of the moment without fixed convictions. 

Keith Olsen (2011) concluded that Nixon’s presidency left a sordid legacy of mistrust; whilst law professor Cass Sunstein (2017) ranked him among the five most important presidents of all time.