History

History

• Contact Us
• People
• Blog
• Undergraduate
  • Prospective Students
  • Current Undergraduates
    • Your Degree
    • Course Choices
    • Courses, Assessment and Deadlines
    • Personal Support
  • Affiliate Students
  • Results 2013
• Postgraduate
• Employability
• Research
• Media & Press
• Alumni
• Staff Intranet

HIST7355 Richard Nixon and Watergate

Teacher: Iwan Morgan

Short description:

Watergate has become one of the most famous words in the English language but its meaning is little understood. The most common descriptor applied to it is ‘scandal,’ which tends to personalize its associate with the disgrace of Richard Nixon. In reality, Watergate is better understood as a crisis of the imperial presidency, whose roots are located in the Cold War developments of the 1940s and 1950s. Without doubt, however, Nixon’s flawed personality contributed to the culmination of presidential abuse of power on his watch. As such, in the words of historian Arthur Schlesinger, the Nixon presidency represented the “singular confluence” of the job with the man.

This course will explore the meaning of Watergate as constitutional crisis more than scandal and assess the historical, institutional, and personal factors involved in its development. As such it will consider Watergate as arising out of: Cold War developments, especially pertaining to Vietnam and concerns about America’s Great Power credibility; the presidency’s evolution from testing the limits of its constitutional power to exceeding them; and Richard Nixon’s determination to win a second term in office. It will also consider why Nixon engaged in a disastrous cover-up of illegal activities committed by his aides and how this sealed the fate of his presidency. It will finally assess the legacy of Watergate for late twentieth and early twentieth century America through examination of Nixon’s post-presidential efforts to manipulate historical memory of his presidency and how the imperial presidency has survived his personal disgrace.

Assessment: 2 essays of 2,500 words each

Non-assessed course work: in-class presentations

List of lectures/seminars:

Week 1: Introduction: Remembering Nixon and Watergate

Week 2: The Rise of the Imperial Presidency, 1940-1968

Week 3: Tricky Dick? Nixon’s Political Rise, 1946-1968

Week 4: The Quest for “Peace with Honour” in Vietnam, 1968-1973

Week 5: The Quest for a New Republican Majority, 1968-1972

Week 6: The White House Horrors: Abuse of Power, 1969-1972

Week 7: The Watergate Cover-Up: Obstruction of Justice, 1972-1974

Week 8: The Final Days: The Impeachment Debate and Resignation, 1974

Week 9: The Manipulation of History: The Campaign for Nixon’s Redemption

Week 10: The Legacy of Watergate

Select general bibliography:

Primary Sources

Michael Genovese (ed.) The Watergate Crisis (Greenwood, 1999)

H.R. Haldeman The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon (Putnam, 1994)

Jeffrey Kimball The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the Secret History of Nixon-Era Strategy (University Press of Kansas, 2004)

Stanley Kutler (ed.) The Abuse of Power: the New Nixon Tapes (Touchstone, 1997)

Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978)

John Woolley and The American Presidency Project (University of Gerhard Peters California, www.presidency.ucsb.edu)

Select Bibliography

Stephen Ambrose Nixon, 3 Vols. (Simon & Schuster, 1987-1991)

Daniel Frick Reinventing Richard Nixon: The Cultural History of an American Obsession (University Press of Kansas, 2008)

Michael Genovese A Presidential Nation: Causes, Consequences, Curses (Westview, 2012)

Michael Genovese & Watergate Remembered: Its Legacy for American Iwan Morgan, eds., Politics (Palgrave, 2012)

David Greenberg Nixon’s Shadow: The Cultural History of an Image (Norton, 2003)

Jeffrey Kimball Nixon’s Vietnam War (University Press of Kansas, 1998)

Stanley Kutler The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (Norton, 1992)

Robert Mason Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority (University of North Carolina Press, 2004)

Iwan Morgan Nixon (Arnold, 2002)

Keith Olson Watergate: The Presidential Scandal that Shook America (University Press of Kansas, 2003)

Rick Perlstein Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (Scribner, 2008)

Arthur Schlesinger The Imperial Presidency (Houghton Mifflin, 1973)

Michael Schudson Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past (Basic Books, 1992)

Melvin Small The Presidency of Richard Nixon (University Press of Kansas, 1999)

Melvin Small (ed.) A Companion to Richard Nixon (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)