DBWI: Nixon had conspired to cover up the break-in at DNC headquarters?

What if President Nixon, rather than firing John Mitchell and Gordon Liddy from his re-election campaign (CRP) on June 20, 1972 after the break in at the DNC's headquarters at the Watergate Building and publically supporting Att. Gen. Richard Kleindienst's investigation of it, and later that winter firing John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman, he had attempted to cover up the CRP and White House staff's involvement in the break in?

How might such a cover up have played out?
How would this have impacted Nixon's 2nd term?
Would the US still have been able to stablize the South Vietnam government and withdraw our armed forces by the end of 1975?
Would Spiro Agnew's tax problems still have come to light and force him to abort his campaign for the 1976 Republican nomination?
Would we still have seen the Republicans (Reagen-Richardson) defeat the Democrats (Udall-Carter) in the 1976 Presidential election?
What would have become of the 1975 National Health Care Act and other aspects of Nixon's domestic and foreign agenda?
 
Okay, as an non-american, I´m an outsider to this, but could this really have some impact. Okay, in the parlamentary systems in western europe it propably could lead to something. But an US-president doesn´t resign and I don´t believe they would impeach him about such a petitese.
 
Okay, as an non-american, I´m an outsider to this, but could this really have some impact. Okay, in the parlamentary systems in western europe it propably could lead to something. But an US-president doesn´t resign and I don´t believe they would impeach him about such a petitese.
Agreed. It would probably ruin his chances of re-election though, especially if the democrats got a bit of negative advertising underway.
 
It would really depend on how insistent this cover-up was, and how it came out. A guy on TV just saying isn't the same as say, audiotapes. But, I don't think Nixon would have been dumb enoughto tape the cover-up, right?
 
I imagine that the Democratic party headquater would be full of staff around the clock making a break in impossible anyway.
 
It would really depend on how insistent this cover-up was, and how it came out. A guy on TV just saying isn't the same as say, audiotapes. But, I don't think Nixon would have been dumb enoughto tape the cover-up, right?

I absolutly agree; Nixon was no dummy. There's no way he would be careless enough to record conversations that could implicate him in obstructing justice! But wow, what if he were that foolish?
 
*comes from a different angle at this* ^.^;;

Well, if he HAD managed to successfully cover it up, top to bottom, (keeping guys like Deep Throat quiet) and basically erase any trace of his Administration's involvement, then we'd probably not know it all till about... i dunno.... now, if ever?

So basically, if Watergate had never really managed to take him down, I seriously doubt he'd suffer much in the elections, (though of course he had already been re-elected by the time this broke out). Again, no real damage to him from the Watergate scandal, (if nobody REALLY knows, how's that gonna effectively hurt ya?) He'd probably have completed his second term in office. Not to mention he had won his re-election in a landslide victory AND had brought about the end of the War in Vietnam.

The only people who'd be really pissed about it is the Hippie and Counterculture Movements, who would've eventually run out of their own steam anyway, specially since one of the biggest issues of theirs (Vietnam) had been effectively ended in and around this time.

Thus, who knows how that would've effected the then next election. Would Jimmy Carter have even been elected if nothing really major happened (or managed to stick) to the Nixon Administration?
 
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