As hard as it is to believe today, there was a time not so very long ago when most Americans were willing to give the benefit of doubt to the president of the United States. And the moment that broke this bond of goodwill can be traced to one man. Before Richard Milhous Nixon first took office in 1969, the U.S. presidency enjoyed a rather noble reputation. But during Nixon’s run for a second term, all that changed. In what became known simply as Watergate, several of the president’s men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters, located in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., kicking off a tsunami of revelations that exposed the Nixon administration as the backbone of multiple interlocking scandals. This break-in, along with an aggressive cover-up led by the president himself, forced the public to confront messy truths about the fight to win and maintain power in America. Nixon’s most famous quote regarding Watergate was “I am not a crook.” But his more troubling comment came during a televised interview with British journalist David Frost years later: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” The country has lived with the echoes of that statement for 50 years.
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