Three months after
Richard M. Nixon became the first president to resign his office, Democrats netted 49 new House seats in the November 1974 congressional elections, a tidal wave that opened the way for a burst of post-Watergate reforms.
New limits on campaign contributions, the Ethics in Government Act, the Presidential Records Act, the creation of a legal framework for special prosecutors all these and more burst out of Congress between 1974 and 1978. Not all those laws succeeded, but many of their provisions continue to set limits on elected officials more than four decades later.
Democrats and some former Republicans hoped for a similarly sweeping election victory this year, believing that