9th Grade Winners for the 1999-2000 School Year
Martha Mitchell
Creative Writing Contest
9th Grade Winners for the 1999-2000 School Year
$200.00 First Place Winner:
Jennifer L. Woods from Carlisle High School
Martha Mitchell's Place in History-
The Nature and Significance of Her Impact on Washington Politics.
Martha Mitchell
A Political Warrior
Martha Mitchell was a warrior in many ways. She can be looked up to and admired, or she can be looked down upon, reprimanded, and criticized. Martha Mitchell can be commended for being one of the first women to take a bold step on the political stage. However, many belittle her because she continually meddled in her husband's occupational affairs and caused a great disturbance in Washington, D.C.
One reason Martha Mitchell can be recognized as a political warrior is because she was a woman who grabbed many people's attention. By mid-October 1970, she was known by seventy-six percent of the American public because of an issue she would not let die. The issue that I speak of is when reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, accused her husband, John Mitchell, the Attorney General for President Richard Nixon, of being involved in the Watergate break-in. She did everything she could to try and clear his name, and in doing so she proved to the American people that women do belong in politics. Thanks to Martha Mitchell, we now have more and more women running for positions in the Senate and in Congress.
Even so, we must not forget that Martha Mitchell contributed a great deal to the national uproar, the Watergate Break-in. Many people thought of her as a public nuisance. She claimed that President Nixon was using her husband as a scapegoat, or someone to put the blame on, for all of the many dirty dealings and illegal activities going on in Washington, D.C. She thought the dirty and illegal antics should be attributed to President Nixon alone. She tried to tell White House officials in the legislative and the judicial branches that it was President Nixon's fault and that her husband was innocent. When they would not listen, she went straight to the press with her story. Martha Mitchell then called the Washington Post and talked to Woodward and Bernstein. She was trying to convince them that her husband was a pawn being used by President Nixon. Since the newspaper could not print anything on her testimony alone, she allowed them to look in his private, home office files for evidence proving her testimony true. Unfortunately for Martha, when they looked they found things proving that John Mitchell was truly loyal to the President and that he was much more involved than Martha realized.
Whether you admire or criticize Martha Mitchell for her role in the Watergate break-in issue is solely up to you. I admire her because she was simply trying to defend her husband's good name. I will admit though, that she had no right to go behind her husband's back and let them look at his files. Overall, I enjoyed this project because I did not know anyone in Arkansas had such input in the Watergate trial.