Nixon Resignation Speech Analysis

Even though three presidents faced impeachment charges, only one president left office. Richard Nixon, the thirty-seventh president of the United States, a man in the public eye for many years as both a U.S. representative and Senator (“Richard”), was a well-educated and around sixty when he resigned from the position as president. On the evening of August 8, 1974, Nixon delivered his resignation speech over a public broadcast from his Oval Office to the people of the United States. The former president gave his resignation speech to inform the nation of the upcoming changing president; he also voiced his hopes for the country in future affairs, especially the foreign policies Nixon himself set up, as well as his regrets with the Watergate …show more content…
The appeal to emotions makes up the majority of the former president’s speech, in his attempts to show the audience his regrets for his resignation. In the second paragraph of Nixon’s resignation speech, he argues from adverse consequence by implying that he was not guilty of Watergate, but he lost the support of Congress so he must resign. By stating, “I would have preferred to carry through to the finish whatever personal agony it would have involved, and my family unanimously urged me to do so,” Nixon attempts to sway the negative opinions of those who did not support him by trying to sway them towards empathy for him and the situation he is in. Although the main reason for Richard Nixon resigning the presidency was because of the Watergate Scandal, he only mentions it briefly twice, by avoiding that topic is an example of using red herring. The use of observational selection is evident throughout the speech, with Nixon pointing out such things as his lack of support of Congress and how the American people need, “to put the bitterness and divisions of the recent past behind us and to rediscover those shared ideals that lie at the heart of our strength and unity,” he fails to mention the divisions and bitterness was his involvement in a scandal that results in his resignation. The word “tried” is continually reused by Nixon throughout the speech in attempt to have the reader feel emotional for what he is going through. Nixon uses hyperboles in attempts to show his regret for leaving office, using phrases such as, “abhorrent to every instinct in my body,” and “as I have a breath of life in my body, I shall continue this spirit.” Using these types of fallacies and figurative language throughout his speech as well as abounding pathos is where Nixon begins to lose some of the support of those looking for validity in his