LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Richard Nixon: White House
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In 1946 Nixon ran to become the US representative from California's twelfth Congressional District (Whittier and parts of Los Angeles). He defeated the five time incumbent Democratic Representative Jerry Voorhis. Nixon helped draft the Taft-Harley act. Nixon emerged as a national figure due to his position as Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Special Subcommittee to investigate whether government officials were former Communists. This became known as the Alger Hiss case.
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In many ways, Nixon emerged as the party's spokesman during these years because Eisenhower was unwilling to take on that role. Eisenhower was determined to be president of "all the people," and did not "intend to make of the presidency an agency to use in partisan elections." Apparently, he had no such qualms about the vice-presidency, and who better to rally the party faithful than Nixon, the man a contemporary observer called the "scientific pitchman of politics." While Eisenhower would not go after the Democrats, he was quite willing to let Nixon do so. According to White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams, "[Ike] told Nixon and others, including myself, that he was well aware that somebody had to do the hard-hitting infighting, and he had no objection to it as long as no one expected him to do it." Nixon therefore conducted another aggressive campaign for the midterm election, covering nearly 26,000 miles to ninety-five cities in thirty states on behalf of Republican candidates. The outcome was not favorable for the GOP, which lost two Senate seats and sixteen House seats, and Nixon received little public credit for his efforts.
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As a member of the House of Representatives, Nixon became known throughout the nation for his part in the Alger Hiss case. Alger Hiss was a former official in the state department. He had been accused of helping provide secret information to the Soviet Union. He denied the accusation. Nixon demanded a congressional investigation of the case. Other members of the House thought it should be dropped.
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Running for Congress in California as a Republican in 1946, Nixon defeated Rep. Jerry Voorhis. As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, he made a name as an investigator of Alger Hiss, a former high State Department official, who was later jailed for perjury. In 1950, Nixon defeated Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas, a Democrat, for the Senate. He was criticized for portraying her as a Communist dupe.
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From Publishers Weekly - Nixon was both the best and the worst of modern presidents, opines Hoff, who argues that Watergate clouded his substantial domestic achievements. In this closely argued reassessment, she criticizes his foreign policy accomplishments--only rapprochement with China remains intact--and profiles a president whose radical proposals for restructuring welfare and creating a national health insurance program remain relevant today, in her estimate. She ... commends Nixon's expanded enforcement of affirmative action, bold reorganization of federal agencies and redistribution of power away from Congress and the federal bureaucracy toward state and local governments. Hoff, a professor of history at the University of Indiana, draws on her interviews with Nixon and his advisers, as well as recently released Nixon White House papers and tapes, to shed light on his role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up, his tense relations with Henry Kissinger and his rationalizations and paranoid insecurities. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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During 1973, Nixon's problems had been compounded by the resignation of the Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, after pleading "no contest" to tax evasion charges. In his place, Nixon nominated a Republican member of the House of Representatives, Gerald R. Ford. It was Ford who took the oath of office as Nixon's successor on 9 August. One of Ford's early acts in office was to pardon Nixon for any offence he may have committed.
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