Watergate scandal

=== Political and cultural reverberations ===
According to Thomas J. Johnson, a professor of journalism at [[University of Texas at Austin]], Secretary of State [[Henry Kissinger]] predicted during Nixon's final days that history would remember Nixon as a great president and that Watergate would be relegated to a "minor footnote".<ref>Thomas J. Johnson, ''Watergate and the Resignation of Richard Nixon: Impact of a Constitutional Crisis'', "The Rehabilitation of Richard Nixon", eds. P. Jeffrey and Thomas Maxwell-Long: Washington, D.C., CO. Press, 2004, pp. 148–149.</ref>

When Congress investigated the scope of the president's legal powers, it belatedly found that consecutive presidential administrations had declared the United States to be in a continuous open-ended [[state of emergency]] since 1950. Congress enacted the [[National Emergencies Act]] in 1976 to regulate such declarations. The Watergate scandal left such an impression on the national and international consciousness that many scandals since then have been labeled with the "[[List of scandals with "-gate" suffix|-gate suffix]]".

[[File:1976 campaign button f.JPG|thumb|One of a variety of anti-Ford [[Pin-back button|buttons]] generated during the 1976 presidential election: it reads "Gerald&nbsp;... Pardon me!" and depicts a thief cracking a safe labeled "Watergate".]]

Disgust with the revelations about Watergate, the Republican Party, and Nixon strongly affected results of the [[1974 United States Senate elections|November 1974 Senate]] and [[1974 United States House of Representatives elections|House elections]], which took place three months after Nixon's resignation. The Democrats gained five seats in the Senate and forty-nine in the House (the newcomers were nicknamed "[[Watergate Babies]]"). Congress passed legislation that changed [[Campaign finance in the United States|campaign financing]], to amend the [[Freedom of Information Act (United States)|Freedom of Information Act]], as well as to require financial disclosures by key government officials (via the [[Ethics in Government Act]]). Other types of disclosures, such as releasing recent income tax forms, became expected, though not legally required. Presidents since [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] had recorded many of their conversations but the practice purportedly ended after Watergate.

Ford's pardon of Nixon played a major role in his defeat in the [[1976 United States presidential election|1976 presidential election]] against [[Jimmy Carter]].<ref name="shanescott" />

In 1977, Nixon arranged [[The Nixon Interviews|an interview]] with British journalist [[David Frost]] in the hope of improving his legacy. Based on a previous interview in 1968,<ref>{{Cite magazine |url=http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,947901-2,00.html |title=The Nation: David Can Be a Goliath |date=May 9, 1977 |magazine=Time |access-date=January 15, 2015 |archive-date=January 14, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210114215209/http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,947901-2,00.html |url-status=live }}</ref> he believed that Frost would be an easy interviewer and was taken aback by Frost's incisive questions. The interview displayed the entire scandal to the American people, and Nixon formally apologized, but his legacy remained tarnished.<ref name="NYTimes David Frost">{{Cite news |last=Stelter |first=Brian |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/world/europe/david-frost-known-for-nixon-interview-dead-at-74.html |title=David Frost, Interviewer Who Got Nixon to Apologize for Watergate, Dies at 74 |date=September 1, 2013 |work=The New York Times |access-date=November 25, 2014 |archive-date=February 23, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150223121327/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/world/europe/david-frost-known-for-nixon-interview-dead-at-74.html |url-status=live }}</ref> The 2008 movie ''[[Frost/Nixon (film)|Frost/Nixon]]'' is a media depiction of this.

In the aftermath of Watergate, "[[follow the money]]" became part of the American lexicon and is widely believed to have been uttered by Mark Felt to Woodward and Bernstein. The phrase was never used in the 1974 book ''[[All the President's Men]]'' and did not become associated with it until the [[All the President's Men (film)|movie of the same name]] was released in 1976.<ref>"Follow The Money: On The Trail Of Watergate Lore", NPR, June 16, 2012</ref> The 2017 movie ''[[Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House]]'' is about Felt's role in the Watergate scandal and his identity as Deep Throat.

The parking garage where Woodward and Felt met in Rosslyn still stands. Its significance was noted by Arlington County with a historical marker in 2011.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.arlnow.com/2011/08/17/historical-marker-installed-outside-deep-throat-garage/ |title=Historical Marker Installed Outside 'Deep Throat' Garage |date=August 17, 2011 |access-date=January 23, 2018 |archive-date=November 6, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106015713/https://www.arlnow.com/2011/08/17/historical-marker-installed-outside-deep-throat-garage/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=55498 |title=Watergate Investigation Historical Marker |access-date=January 23, 2018 |archive-date=January 24, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180124070810/https://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=55498 |url-status=live }}</ref> In 2017 it was announced that the garage would be demolished as part of construction of an apartment building on the site; the developers announced that the site's significance would be memorialized within the new complex.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/parking-garage-where-deep-throat-spilled-beans-watergate-being-torn-down-180961733/ |title=The Parking Garage Where Deep Throat Spilled the Beans on Watergate Is Being Torn Down |last=Lewis |first=Danny |access-date=January 23, 2018 |archive-date=March 3, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180303225141/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/parking-garage-where-deep-throat-spilled-beans-watergate-being-torn-down-180961733/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Maher |first=Kris |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/watergate-parking-garage-to-be-torn-down-1402874716 |title=Watergate Parking Garage to Be Torn Down |date=June 20, 2014 |work=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |access-date=January 23, 2018 |archive-date=January 24, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180124005742/https://www.wsj.com/articles/watergate-parking-garage-to-be-torn-down-1402874716 |url-status=live }}</ref>