The United States government has played an important and very influential role in the growth and development of countries. Public opinion of American politics has fluctuated in many ways since 1789, and was completely reshaped in 1972, when the Watergate scandal had one of the most powerful political impacts in our country's history (Guernsey). The media has also changed the way Americans perceive government, controlling how much people know and influencing their opinions. The Watergate scandal of the 1970s negatively affected how American citizens viewed the U.S. government before, during, and after the catastrophe. Communications and transportation were very limited in the early years of the government until the mid-1900s, thus denying constant and consistent news coverage. With so little knowledge, the American people were unaware of everything that went on in government. This lack of information has meant that misinformation and failure to reach agreement with leadership are common among the average citizen. During the Kennedy and Eisenhower presidencies, after the United States had emerged from the Great Depression and won a world war, there was a real period of trust in government. According to polls conducted between 1958 and 1964, three-quarters of Americans believed they could have confidence that the government in Washington would do what was right. In 1974, 36% of Americans said they still had faith in government (Schneider). Even in the 1940s and 1950s, privacy was taken into account and the internal side of politics was not covered by journalists. Now, it is a known fact that during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt had polio. He tried to disguise it as physically as possible, and nothing has been done since to restore the trust lost during Nixon's presidency. With this newfound distrust, the media became extremely vigilant in reporting everything that happened in politics that could be of interest to anyone and played a decisive factor in the success and failure of several political figures. An example of this would be the case of President Bill Clinton. Such extensive coverage of this public embarrassment was magnified compared to the size of other scandals of the last century that absorbed less media attention. Watergate turned the erosion of public trust into a collapse (Schneider). Public opinion of the government has been severely influenced by the media and scandalous events since its creation, and "In the early sixties, people believed that the government could be used to help people.