US Elections 2024: Who was the only president to resign from office?

It has been exactly 50 years since on August 9, 1974, for the first time the president of the United States stepped down from his position.

Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, became the only president to have resigned from his position after he got entangled in the Watergate scandal.

The scandal brought into daylight the Nixon administration's engagement in burglary, wiretapping, obstruction of justice and political sabotage and the president decided to resign while he faced a near-certain impeachment situation in the US Congress.

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Who was Richard Nixon?

Richard Milhous Nixon was born into a Quaker family in Yorba Linda town of California on January 13, 1913.

He attended Whittier College and Duke University School of Law and cleared the California bar exam in 1937.

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Nixon worked at a local law firm and served in the US Navy during World War II before he retired from active duty in 1946.

He was elected to the US Congress in 1946 and to the Senate in 1950. In 1953, Nixon became the 36th Vice President of the United States during the regime of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Nixon's rise and fall

In 1960, Richard Nixon for the first time ran for presidential elections but faced defeat at the hands of John F. Kennedy.

In 1962, after his failed bid as the Governor of California, Nixon made a political comeback as the country's president.

During his presidential tenure, he made various foreign policy achievements and opened diplomatic relations with China.

Nixon also escalated theVietnam Warinto Cambodia and Laos and carried ahead the policy of detente with the Soviet Union. Later, he gradually withdrew US troops in Vietnam.

He also established theEnvironmental Protection Agency (EPA) and announced the “War on Drugs” while declaring drug abuse as the “public enemy number one.”

On June 17, 1972, the Watergate scandal broke out when five men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC and were later arrested.

The men were found to have a link with the 1972 re-election campaign of Nixon and soon it was found that the incident was part of political misdeeds and illegal activities of the Nixon administration.

The administration of Nixon was initially able to cover up its corrupt deeds and the president was able to again come to power in November 1972 with a landslide victory.

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However, after whistle-blowing within the FBI and investigative journalism, the illegal activities of the administration were uncovered.

The “Watergate Tapes” were out and revealed Nixon's clear involvement in the break-in, sanctioning hush money payment to the burglars and pressurising the FBI to put a halt to the investigation.

President Nixon, in his televised address to the country on April 30th, 1973, claimed that he was kept in the dark by his aides and infamously said he was “not a crook.”

However, bowing to the mounting pressure from the US Congress and the people, Nixon decided to resign from his post.

“I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interest of America first," the then-president said.

(With inputs from agencies)