The
political institutions of the United States survived the turmoil of the Watergate scandal. The
Supreme Court asserted its growing powers with its decision to force President Nixon to turn
over the White House recordings in US v. Nixon, and it was the threat of
impeachment and removal by Congress that led Nixon to resign in August of 1974. The federal law
enforcement bureaucracy found itself under scrutiny after Nixon's attempts to use it to
investigate political opponents, but it remained powerful in the aftermath of
Watergate.
Watergate's effects were not necessarily on political institutions
themselves but were rather on the political attitudes of American voters. It led to sharp
declines in public trust in the presidency, attitudes that combined with a stagnant economy in
the 1970s to hamstring the presidencies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Ironically (considering
Richard Nixon was a Republican) the scandal, and the distrust of government it fostered,
bolstered the "small-government" conservatism espoused by Ronald Reagan in the 1980
election.
In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Presidents were the
subjects of far more intense scrutiny from the national media, which took an unprecedented
interest in the private lives of Presidents as well as their conduct while in office. This was
manifested twice in the decades that followedin the Iran-Contra scandal that plagued the Reagan
White House in its later years and in the scandal involving Monica Lewinsky that led to Bill
Clinton's impeachment in 1998.
In short, the effects of Watergate were more
on public faith in the institutions of the federal government than on the structure or functions
of these institutions.
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