Nixon Park Nature Center

The presidency of Richard Nixon began on January 20, 1969, when Richard Nixon was inaugurated, and ended on August 9, 1974 when he resigned, the first U.S. president ever to do so. A Republican, Nixon took office after the 1968 presidential election, in which he defeated Hubert Humphrey, the then–incumbent Vice President. Four years later, in 1972, he won reelection in a landslide victory over U.S. Senator George McGovern. Nixon, the 37th United States president, succeeded Lyndon B. Johnson, who had launched the Great Society, a set of domestic programs financed and run by the federal government. In contrast, Nixon advocated a New Federalism domestic program model, one in which certain powers would devolve back to the states. The creation of the EPA, passage of the Endangered Species Act, and the integration of Southern public schools happened during his presidency, as did the end of military draft and the Apollo program, which successfully landed Americans on the Moon. Nixon's primary focus while in office was on foreign affairs. His foreign policy agenda, known as the Nixon Doctrine, called for indirect assistance to American allies in the Cold War, with the Vietnamization of the Vietnam War being the most notable example of this policy. Nixon ended American involvement in the Vietnam War, and his administration succeeded in achieving a negotiated settlement. Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit the People's Republic of China, taking advantage of the Sino-Soviet split and significantly altering the nature of the Cold War. Nixon also pursued a strategy of detente with the Soviet Union, resulting in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and SALT I, the first two landmark arms control treaties of their kind. Beginning in 1973, Nixon was forced to devote increasing attention to the Watergate scandal that enveloped his administration. He resigned from office in the face of near-certain impeachment. He was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford, who had become vice president nine months earlier, following Spiro Agnew's resignation from office. While Nixon's premature departure from office tends to dominate contemporary assessments of his presidency --and Nixon's domestic and foreign policy accomplishments are largely overshadowed by the scandals that enveloped his administration-- his legacy has undergone reevaluation in the more than 40 years since his resignation. Political historian and pollster Douglas Schoen argues that Nixon was the most important American figure in post-war U.S. politics, while constitutional law professor Cass Sunstein noted in 2017, If you are listing the five most consequential Presidents in American history, you could make a good argument that Nixon belongs on the list.
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