Watergate And Vietnam War: Impact On American Public Opinion

The above question is based upon the events like Watergate and Vietnam War which affected the public’s opinion regarding the U.S government. It asks us to explain about these events and how these events have affected the American’s public opinion relating to the US government. It mainly gives the ideas about the US government and are the opinions of the public regarding it. This question asks the question about the public opinion which is being affected by two of the events that are the Vietnam War and Watergate.

The Watergate scandal is said to cause a lot of Americans in having a substantially strong distrust regarding the government. In the Watergate event there were more than 69 government officials who were being charged and there were 48 of them who were said to be found guilty. The public eventually changed their view of the scandal and viewed the scandal as a serious matter. There were a lot of negative views about Nixon where most of the Americans started ignoring the notion of making Nixon leave the office (Priest, Andrew). The Watergate scandal was started because of an effort for bugging the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel. There were subsequent efforts in covering the heavy tolls on the ratings and even finding efforts to know the public concerns about the inflation. The Watergate event even limited the contributions towards the presidential campaigns. It simply stopped the president from going in the war and even supporting from that of the congress. It simply set the rules regarding the government’s collection of the information. It even given gives the people the right to see the government documents about them and in making several changes which are being developed.

It was seen that as there were several reports coming in from the field, it even became increasingly accessible to the citizens and this simply led them to turn against the US government although many of the Americans continued in support of it. There were several others who were seen to be betrayed by their government as they said he was not truthful regarding the war. This increases the public pressure in ending the war and asking to end the war soon. There were many people who were opposing the war in terms of moral grounds along with getting appalled by devastation as well as the violence of the war (Lunch, William and Sperlich). There were certain conflicts which were raised against the Vietnamese independence and also getting involved in opposing it as they said to lack most of the clear objectives and even said to appear unwinnable. The war faced a staggering number of deaths and killed approximately 2 million Vietnamese civilians and 1.1 million North Vietnamese troops along with 200,000 south Vietnamese troops. America was said to have dropped around 8 million tons of bombs in the year 1965 to 1973. The public opinion changed and turned against the war in Vietnam by following the Tet offensive. It even contributed in increasing the American cynicism regarding their government and the nation’s leader said to be misleading them. It even lowered the age of voting to the age of 18 years and all the wars were said to have passed by restricted the president’s ability in sending various troops without the congressional approval. The inflation had affected their opinion and even made them believe that the war created a very negative impact upon their lives and even made them extensively against the war which needs to be there. The most important aspect is that the public found them to be against the specific change and even in dealing with the ideas which were being related to the war.

The words that I had typed in the search engine to get the relevant results are Vietnamese war, Watergate event, public opinion.

summary: the website gives the basic background of the Watergate event and how it affected the public opinion in understanding the challenges which the American politics had to face.  audience: the audience were the citizen from the US who were affected by the government’s challenges.  purpose: the main purpose of this to give an idea regarding the event and how it affected the public’s opinion.  explanation of use: the source can be used as a proof to understand the challenges which were being faced while the event took place.  quote: ‘although not peculiar to democracies, has an especially important role in a system of government that encourages distrust of authority’ summary: this explain how the Americans were being affected by the war and how they went against the war and wanted to end it soon.  audience: the audience was the citizens of America.  purpose: the purpose of this paper was to know about the ideas and making sure that they are being needed as to know the public opinion well.  explanation of use: this was to be used to know the public’s opinion regarding the US government.  quote: Barefoot empiricism takes a few steps forward and present the data flow of Americans attitude concerning the Vietnamese war.

References

Lang, Gladys Engel, and Kurt Lang. "Watergate: An exploration of the agenda-building process." Agenda setting. Readings on media, public opinion and policymaking (1991): 277-289.

Lunch, William L., and Peter W. Sperlich. "American public opinion and the war in Vietnam." Western Political Quarterly 32.1 (1979): 21-44.

Mackenzie, G. Calvin. Scandal proof: Do ethics laws make government ethical?. Brookings Institution Press, 2004.

Priest, Andrew. "Power to the people? American public opinion and the Vietnam war." The US Public and American Foreign Policy. Routledge, 2010. 57-72.

Schudson, Michael. "Notes on scandal and the Watergate legacy." American Behavioral Scientist 47.9 (2004): 1231-1238.

Squires, Jessica. Building sanctuary: The movement to support Vietnam War resisters in Canada, 1965-73. ubc Press, 2013.