America in the 1970's and 1980's (Essay Sample)

America in the 1970s and 1980s Name Institution America in the 1970s and 1980s Credibility Gap was a strategy applied by the President Johnson’s skeptics to question the truthfulness of Johnson’s policies and statements regarding the Vietnam War. The discussion about Credibility Gap rose during the 1968 Tot Offensive where the media was able to illustrate how the government deceived its public. Tot Offensive helped in showing to the public the gap that existed between administration’s speeches and reality. Watergate, on the other hand, was a scandal involving President Nixon‘s administration. The scandal reads that Nixon’s associates, in 1972, broke into Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in Watergate to acquire opposition’s documents and to plant microphones in their offices. Iran-contra was a scandal during President Ronald Reagan’s administration whereby U.S secretly supplied fund to contra rebels in Nicaragua (Ayers, 2011). The funds were profits gained by selling of arms to Iran. The paper compares the above mentioned scandals and assesses how each event has inspired America’s perception of its government, society, and government-society interactions in the past and in today’s society and politics. In my view, the above events compare in many ways. First, all scandals involves Presidents and their administration. Credibility gap came due to President Johnson’s poor administration policies. Watergate saw involvement of President Nixon while Iran-Contra involved President Reagan. They all represent Presidents’ self-interests by sometimes misleading the public for a political gain or justification. Another similarity among the three scandals is that they all illustrated how powerful media can be in exposing administration irregularities. I also believe that the Credibility gap, Watergate, and Iran-Contra played a great role in changing the public’s perspective regarding its government. People realized that administrations needed to be kept in check to allow transparency and the truth. People understood that there are political speeches and the truth, whereby they needed to investigate these speeches to prevent governments from mis...