<P> The release of the "smoking gun" tape destroyed Nixon politically . The ten congressmen who had voted against all three articles of impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee announced they would all support the impeachment article accusing Nixon of obstructing justice when the articles came up before the full House . </P> <P> On the night of August 7, 1974, Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott and Congressman John Jacob Rhodes met with Nixon in the Oval Office . Scott and Rhodes were the Republican leaders in the Senate and House, respectively; Goldwater was brought along as an elder statesman . The three lawmakers told Nixon that his support in Congress had all but disappeared . Rhodes told Nixon that he would face certain impeachment when the articles came up for vote in the full House . Goldwater and Scott told the president that there were enough votes in the Senate to convict him, and that no more than 15 Senators were willing to vote for acquittal . </P> <P> Realizing that he had no chance of staying in office, Nixon decided to resign . Nixon chose to resign after realizing public opinion was not in his favor to remain in office . In a nationally televised address from the Oval Office on the evening of August 8, 1974, the president said, in part: </P> <P> In all the decisions I have made in my public life, I have always tried to do what was best for the Nation . Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate, I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me . In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort . As long as there was such a base, I felt strongly that it was necessary to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion, that to do otherwise would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately difficult process and a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future.... </P>

Which of the following was a key issue in the 2004 u.s. presidential election answers