Research Paper on:
The Media and the Modern Presidency

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
made by themselves or by key members of their administrations. According to Woodward, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton failed to "accept that the adversarial,  investigative culture of Washington was now entrenched and got in trouble accordingly" (McDaniel 38). The picture that Woodward paints is one in which each of the last five presidents  failed to realize the extent to which Watergate changed the face of American politics and the way in which the media and the public would react to the presidency. His  argument is compelling. Gerald Ford The way Woodward pictures it, the culture change was immediate in pardoning Nixon, Ford misjudged the  public (McDaniel 38). Ford sincerely thought it was time to move on while much of the country believed that the former president should be punished (McDaniel 38). Ford, essentially,  misjudged the situation and the country. Woodward points out that to the country the pardon seemed to be on Nixons terms "early, complete and without acknowledgement that he had committed  crimes or even impeachable offenses (23). Woodward makes his point quite well with Ford in the way that he details the Fords reasoning relative to the pardon. Ford had  all legal precedents thoroughly researched and based his decision on the case of Burdick v. the United States. Woodward relates how Ford carried around for years the part of the  ruling that said "The justices found that a pardon carries imputation of guilt, acceptance, a confession of it" (38). Jimmy Carter Carter campaigned on a promise to enforce strict  ethical standards, but then the Carter administration quickly sought an exception when questions came up about the business dealings of this friend and budget director Bert Lance (McDaniel 38). Also,