African American History

Was Richard Nixon A Good President?

Introduction

Richard Nixon became the president of America in 1968.Nixon received 43% of the popular votes and got 301 electoral votes. Nixon was the first person from California to serve the white house and was the second youngest president of America. He was also the first president to resign from presidency.

Discussion

Richard Nixon, during his presidency, travelled to china and established trade relations with Russia. Within two weeks of his successful china trip, he signed trade agreement with china and also negotiated with china to reduce the chance of nuclear war in the world.

His greatest achievement was to eliminate racial discrimination and to give equal rights to African Americans.

Despite of all the achievements, Nixon also made couple of blunders on both international and domestic fronts. The biggest mistake made by Nixon was the Vietnam War. Nixon had sent American troops to Cambodia, as he thought that Vietnamese troops were present there. These operations resulted in heavy bombing in Cambodia. Nixon informed that the American troops will be called back and the war will be ended. But the troops remained underground and Nixon expanded the war to other neighboring countries.

Nixon also got involved in illegal activities such as bugging the office of political opponents. These activities are termed as the Watergate. Nixon along with his administration ordered harassment by the intelligence agencies. This issue came up when five people were caught and they took Nixon name. Nixon did'nt accepted and stated that this news is misleading and incorrect. Due to these events Nixon lost support from his own party and other people. Nixon could not face the losses so he resigned from the presidency in 1974.

Conclusion

Though Nixon contributed in building trade relations with many countries, but he made a couple of mistakes that affected his political career. ...