America's Lost Innocence

   In today's society, the public has very little trust in the government, and every personal move made by politicians is available for everyone in the country to see and judge.  Whether it be Barack Obama partying in college or Michael Grimm exploding on a reporter (http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/01/29/video-gop-lawmaker-michael-grimm-curses-threatens-reporter-after-state-union for those of you who don't know what I'm referencing), everything that politicians do or have done in their past are brutally exploited by the public.  However, America has not always been this way.  The Watergate Scandal of Nixon's presidency and the Pentagon Papers from the Vietnam war led the American public to watch their government much more closely.  The Pentagon Papers were the history of the United States involvement in the war in Vietnam, and showed how the American military had been doing during the war.  When these papers were released to the public in 1971, the public was shocked when it learned that the Johnson administration had lied to the American public about the condition of the war.  The Johnson administration led the public to believe the war was going well for the US when in fact it was not, and the administration withheld information from the public about the expansion of the war into Cambodia.  When President Nixon was in office, a group of men broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters.  This incident was at first not a large deal, because no immediate connection was made to the White House, and President Nixon denied any connection to the break in.  But as evidence poured out, the public began to be very suspicious of Nixon's involvement.  Although Nixon was never proven to have participated in the Watergate break in, the public suspicion about the president refusing to hand over White House recordings and other suspicious activities committed by the president, he finally became overwhelmed and resigned from office.   These actions by the Johnson administration led the public to view the White House and the American government in general with a closer eye.