Nixon was a disaster at home, a success abroad. The Watergate scandal brought him down, and did immeasurable damage to the institution of the presidency. But before this catastrophe Nixon ended the Vietnam war and put the west on a much friendlier footing with the communist world
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Richard Nixon. later to be the champion of detente with communist countries, rose rapidly in the Republican party on the McCarthyite wave of anti-communist feeling
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Nixon's career was dogged by suggestions that he was dishonest. As vice-presidential candidate in 1952 he had to make a special television broadcast to deny allegations of corruption
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Nixon and the Republicans began to distance themselves from McCarthy in 1954, when the senator suggested the army had been infiltrated by communists. This was too much for President Eisenhower, a former army general
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Nixon narrowly lost to John Kennedy in the presidential election of 1960. In televised one-on-one debates with his opponent, Nixon's heavy-jowled and often shifty appearance did him no favours against the young and dashing Kennedy
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Nixon finally triumphed in the 1968 presidential campaign by skillfully appealing to different sections of a nation divided by the Vietnam war, race riots and youth rebellion
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When Nixon finally made it to the White House it seemed the years of struggle and disappointment were finally over. But greater troubles, and the worse scandal ever to befall an American president, were not far away
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In 1972 employees of Nixon's re-election campaign team were arrested breaking into the Democratic Party's headquarters at the Watergate hotel in Washington. The Watergate scandal would dominate Nixon's second administration and bring down the president
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A congressional enquiry into the Watergate break-in pointed the finger of suspicion at Nixon advisers Bob Haldeman (centre) and John Ehrlichman (right) Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (standing) escaped censure, but did admit bugging colleagues and journalists
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Nixon claimed that his aides had acted without his knowledge and authority during the Watergate break-in. However, evidence was soon forthcoming of Nixon's involvement
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The Watergate scandal was exposed by newspaper reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (centre of picture), of the Washington Post. Their exploits spawned numerous books, films and television programmes
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Facing impeachment by Congress, a beaten and bitter Nixon resigned in in August 1974. His successor, Gerald Ford, controversially pardoned him
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Johnson's presidency had been wrecked by the Vietnam war. Nixon was determined not to make the same mistake and promised to withdraw US troops from Vietnam
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After months of secret talks, secretary of state Henry Kissinger negotiated an end to US involvement in Vietnam in 1973. But the agreement the US signed with North Vietnam only delayed the communist triumph
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The biggest triumph of Nixon's presidency was the establishment of relations with communist China. Ironically, it was America's failure to prevent the communist takeover of China in 1949 that led the young Nixon to suspect there were communist agents in the US government
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Henry Kissinger, secretary of state, was the architect of the foreign policy of the Nixon presidency. The two men were politically close but personally competitive: both wanted to take the credit for establishing friendly relationships with Russia and China
