Nixon, Richard Administration

Richard milhous nixon (1913–84) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as vice president under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nixon defeated his Democrat opponent Hubert Humphrey in a narrow vote by mobilizing a coalition of southern social conservatives organized by Strom Thurmond. In 1974 Nixon became the only U.S. president to resign from office.

In office, Nixon's administration was widely, and somewhat unfairly, believed to be primarily motivated [Page 1251]by foreign affairs and to have little interest in domestic policies. Nixon inherited the American involvement in Indochina and this ended during his administration. Another notable event occurred when he visited Chairman Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Communist Party, in Beijing.

Nixon's environmental legacy is remarkable, and perhaps unmatched by any later presidential administration. Most of these policies were forced on Nixon's administration by an environmentally active Congress and a growing environmental movement, but his presidency presided over some of the strongest and longest lasting reforms of federal legislation regarding environmental issues. While he was reluctant to sign some environmental legislation, many experts suggest that, for a conservative Republican administration in the midst of domestic and international crises, the political costs appeared to outweigh the benefits.

Most notably, in 1970 Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the first coordinated federal agency to manage the mounting crises of the period. Consumer and environmental groups had been lobbying for years on behalf of many different environmental and health issues and this had resulted in a mishmash of laws at several levels of government. The complexity added to legal costs and also provided loopholes and inconsistencies that could be exploited.

The EPA was established to harmonize these different laws and regulations and to determine a suitable method of policing them. The EPA has been responsible for a significant proportion of the reduction of pollution in and from the United States. Nixon also signed the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1969. He also oversaw the introduction of catalytic converters for automobiles, perhaps the first serious federal intervention into industrial production for consumer health and air quality. Nixon also oversaw the creation of the Organizational Health and Safety Administration (OHSA), which extended environmental protection to workers in the workplace, ranging from exposure to hazardous materials to dangerously high levels of noise pollution.

The decline of the Nixon administration was rooted both in the drawn-out end to the war in Vietnam and in the Watergate scandal, in which the President and members of his administration were accused of the breaking and entering of Democratic Party headquarters, illegal wiretapping, and other criminal acts. Threatened with impeachment, Nixon eventually resigned and was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford, as his previous Vice President, Spiro Agnew, had already resigned after another scandal. Nixon's administration eroded trust in politicians and in the political process.

Nevertheless the environmental agencies and laws established during the Nixon presidency remain the bedrock of contemporary environmental management in the United States. While the effectiveness, funding, and commitment of later administrations to these innovations would wax and wane, the Nixon legacy for U.S. environmentalism is undeniable. In the years following his resignation until his death, Nixon produced extensive writings on the presidential process and on foreign policy. However, some critics maintain that in doing so he revealed his indifference toward the details of public policy and obscured his administration's important role in helping protect and improve the environment.

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