I did an essay on this! Watergate enforced privacy laws on the United States, and provided more security and controlled actions on the president, resulting in no more scandals of the like while a president was in office. Here’s a brief paragraph (please don’t copy and paste it as it is plagiarism) — hope this helps :):
Watergate was a scandal where Richard Nixon was caught hiring 5 men to steal compromising documents belonging to Nixon’s political rival, George McGovern, so that the former would be able to beat the latter in the election for Nixon’s second term; the hotel where the documents were stored was a popular hotel named Watergate -- the hotel that gave its name to the scandal. The burglars were caught in the act and named Nixon as the orchestrator of the burglary, who denied it, but the recording device Nixon kept in his office, however, caught his phone conversation with the burglars; although everyone knew he did it, he denied the charges but still resigned as he knew the only other option would be impeachment; later, he released the incriminating recording in exchange of facing no repercussions of his actions, but every coin -- especially in the Watergate case-- has a flip side:Watergate -- and Nixon -- brought up privacy issues around the country and, in turn, privacy laws, which we may not have today if not for then. Watergate also brought attention to how a person in political power could assimilate more influence by having people who favor them join the Senate: Nixon’s biggest leg to stand on during his impeachment trials was that all the people who voted “no” for his impeachment were his followers, and/or agreed with his political ideas and priorities. Referring to the privacy situation mentioned earlier in the paragraph: at the time, privacy was a big issue that went unaddressed in the US… until the Watergate scandal went public: the community found out about how Nixon’s staff bugged each other, how Nixon kept a recording device in the Oval Office, and realized that something needed to be done -- who knows whose conversations could have been recorded by bugs, and who knows where those bugs might be? Privacy laws were passed in the years after Nixon resigned, and if it weren’t for Watergate, there’s a chance we could legally have our every move recorded without our knowledge today, by other average citizens, with no good intentions.
