Richard Nixon says goodbye with a victorious salute to his staff members outside the White House as he boards a helicopter after resigning the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974 in Washington. (AP Photo/Bob Daugherty, File) On Aug. 9, 1974, Richard M. Nixon resigned as president. He was facing an impeachment vote resulting from Congress’s investigation into the Watergate scandal. But Nixon’s resignation wasn’t the only major consequence of the lengthy and detailed investigation into Watergate.
Congress also passed numerous laws to protect against such conduct in the future and to reestablish confidence in the ethical operation of government.
Some of these included establishing the Federal Election Commission and setting limits on political contributions; strengthening the Freedom of Information Act, giving the public greater access to government information; passing the Sunshine Act, which requires federal agencies governed by more than one member to have their meetings open to the public; and passing the Ethics in Government Act.
Congress also established inspector general offices in federal agencies to identify and hence avoid or stop waste, fraud and abuse, and passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act to bar presidents from refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress.
Watergate was a tumultuous event that brought down a president in shame and rattled the public’s confidence in our federal government. But it also taught us a lesson, and based on that lesson, Congress acted to prevent federal officials, including the president, from engaging in the kinds of abuses exposed in Watergate and to restore confidence in the integrity of government operations.
In this 250th year of our Declaration of Independence, when we revisit the brilliance of both the goals and the concerns held by our country’s Founders, let’s not forget the lessons we have learned along the way.
James Madison, among others, was haunted by the prospect of tyranny materializing in our new country. “The accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny,” he wrote. That is the very reason for our three co-equal branches of government and the critically important role Congress plays in being a check on the president.
We learned that lesson in Watergate. Once evidence surfaced about possible illegal conduct by Nixon and those who worked for him, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to establish the Watergate Committee — a bipartisan panel charged with getting the facts on exactly “what the president knew and when he knew it” in addition to what had happened and when. Initially the Republicans on the committee were willing to give Nixon the benefit of the doubt, but that changed with the presentation of incontrovertible facts. In Watergate, Congress did what it was supposed to do under the Constitution — get the facts, challenge the president, avoid tyranny, protect the American people.
These are lessons we should never forget, particularly in this memorable year of 2026, when we honor our declaration of independence from British tyranny and celebrate our democracy.
From a journal of James McHenry, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, his record of the last day includes this: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin, ‘Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarch?’ — ‘A republic,’ replied the Doctor, ‘if you can keep it.'”
Watergate taught us — and let us not forget — that we need a strong, independent Congress to “keep it.”
Linda Gustitus is director of the Washington Office of the Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University Law School. She spent over two decades as a committee staff director working for the late U.S. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) conducting oversight investigations.
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