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Richard Nixon's resignation speech was an address made on August 8, 1974, by President of the United States Richard Nixon to the American public. It was delivered in the White House Oval Office. The purpose of the speech was for Nixon, who had been intimately involved in the events surrounding the Watergate scandal that erupted during his second term, to announce to the nation that he was resigning from office. The scandal had cost Nixon much of his political support, and at the time of his resignation he faced almost certain impeachment and removal from office.
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Nixon was the ninth incumbent president not to complete the four-year term to which they had been elected since the presidency was established in 1789. He was however, the first to do so for a reason other than dying in office. His resignation remains the only one in U.S. Presidential history.
Background
On the evening of August 7, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger informed Nixon that his administration thought he should resign “in the national interest." Nixon agreed to resign, so speechwriter Raymond K. Price wrote the speech for Nixon the same evening.
At the Oval Office the next day, the speech was taped and then broadcast. The speech was also broadcast live on public radio.
Critical reaction and analysis
Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Nixon's speech "chose to look ahead," rather than focus on his term. This attribute of SP 3-125 coincides with John Poulakos’s definition of sophistical rhetoric in Towards a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric, because Nixon met the criterion of "[seeking] to capture what was possible" instead of reflecting on his term.
The Times of London article Mr. Nixon resigns as President; On this day by Fred Emery took a more negative stance on the speech, characterizing Nixon’s apology as “cursory” and attacking Nixon’s definition of what it meant to serve a full presidential term. Emery suggests Nixon's definition of a full presidential term as "until the president loses support in Congress" implies that Nixon knew he would not win his impending impeachment trial and he was using this definition to quickly escape office.
In his book Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 1973-1990, Stephen Ambrose finds that response from United States media to Nixon’s speech was generally favorable. This book cites provides Roger Mudd of CBS News as an example of someone who disliked the speech. Mudd noted that Nixon re-framed his resignation speech to accent his accomplishments rather than to apologize for the Watergate scandal.