Exactly 46 years ago, on August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon's adventure as the 37th president of the United States of America ended. Republican politician, remembered as one of the most controversial US presidents, was engulfed in the Watergate scandal and forced to resign after two years of attempted cover-ups. Nixon, who was replaced by Deputy Gerald Ford and who then died 20 years later, in 1994, had been under impeachment for four days: that's why, to avoid being dismissed, he decided to voluntarily leave office and was the first and so far the only US president to resign before the end of his mandate, which in his case, re-elected in 1972, would have lasted until 1976.
Watergate was arguably the greatest postwar American political scandal, and was named after the Watergate Complex, a building complex in Washington that houses the Watergate Hotel, the hotel where the wiretaps that started the scandal were made. The facts emerged thanks to the journalistic investigation promoted by two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, which brought to light a series of practices and activities studied and organized by the Nixon administration, between 1972 and 1973, to consolidate its system of power and weaken the political opposition of the pacifist movements and the Democratic Party. Burning documents also concerned the management of the war in Vietnam and other conflicts in Southeast Asia. The "bomb" already exploded in 1972, Nixon withstood two years of mounting political difficulties but was then impeached and effectively forced to leave. The story has inspired several books and films, including All the president's men.
In addition to Watergate, Nixon is remembered for his progressive disengagement of men on the ground in the Vietnam War in favor of less expensive (in terms of American human lives) bombing, diplomacy and covert warfare. convinced anti-communist, opened to China in an anti-Soviet key, and gave partial support for civil rights, particularly in the fight against segregation and in the fight against the prohibition of soft drugs. He supported the first very mild environmental commitment policies of the United States, but his presidency was also stained by open support for the military dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile.
