12 The Basiles Under Nixon

In the 1968 election, Joe Basile voted for a man that he considered the “lesser of two evils” along with almost the entire nation. Richard Nixon is known for many things throughout his presidency and not many of them are very good. Like many other citizens who voted for Nixon that year, Joe felt Nixon had fallen through on far too many of his promises. Nixon’s coined phrase “Silent Majority”, referred to the majority of Americans that opposed what had become of the United States during the 1960s but simply did not express it. To spite this attempt at convincing the American people Nixon is the answer, Joe referred to himself as the “verbal majority”. In other words, Joe felt that he and the rest of the country were very expressive of how poorly they thought of Nixon.
To permanently scar his already terrible first term, Nixon decided to lead the Watergate scandal. After making it clear that he tried to spy on the other party’s campaign he then became the only president in the history of the United States to resign. Every American family, including the Basiles, was feeling aggravation, confusion, deceit and most of all embarrassment on a global level. The president of the most powerful nation in the world had lied to his own people on numerous occasions and then fled the scene of the crime without even a slap on the wrist.