✌️Richard Nixon

37th President · 1969–1974 · Republican

Richard Nixon is the only U.S. president to have resigned from office. Before Watergate brought him down, he had ended the Vietnam War, opened diplomatic relations with Communist China, signed landmark arms control treaties with the Soviet Union, created the Environmental Protection Agency, and withdrawn the United States from the gold standard. His resignation on August 9, 1974 remains the deepest institutional crisis any president has provoked.

Long Road Back

Nixon rose in California Republican politics as a fierce anti-communist, serving in the House and Senate before Eisenhower picked him as running mate in 1952. He served eight years as Vice President, lost the 1960 presidential race to Kennedy in one of the closest elections ever, lost the 1962 California governor's race (announcing that the press "won't have Nixon to kick around anymore"), and then staged a remarkable political comeback to win the presidency in 1968.

Opening China and Détente

In February 1972, Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit the People's Republic of China, ending more than 20 years of frozen diplomatic relations and reshaping the Cold War. His administration negotiated the SALT I arms control treaty with the Soviet Union, launched a policy of détente, and pursued productive summit diplomacy with Leonid Brezhnev.

Ending Vietnam

Nixon campaigned on a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War. His actual approach was complicated — Vietnamization of the ground war, massive bombing campaigns in North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, and eventual peace negotiations. The Paris Peace Accords in January 1973 ended direct U.S. involvement. South Vietnam fell to the North in April 1975 after Nixon had left office.

Watergate

On June 17, 1972, five men broke into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington. Investigation by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, a Senate special committee, and a special prosecutor gradually revealed that the burglary was part of a broader pattern of political espionage, sabotage, and obstruction directed from the Nixon White House. A secret White House taping system confirmed Nixon's involvement in the cover-up. The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment. Rather than be impeached and likely convicted, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974 — the only U.S. president to do so.

Nixon Trivia

• Nixon was the first president to visit all 50 states in office.
• He established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970, signed the Clean Air Act, and created OSHA.
• The 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age to 18, was ratified during his presidency in 1971.
• Nixon ended the Bretton Woods international monetary system by taking the U.S. dollar off the gold standard in 1971.
• His successor Gerald Ford pardoned him in September 1974 for any crimes he may have committed as president.

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