Elaboration would be helpful. I've got plenty of info on the scandal, and I strongly believe it was responsible, however I'm struggling to put this into a 4/5 paragraph essay for whatever reason. Any insight would be appreciated.
It was a little earlier than that. The Vietnam war certainly caused younger Americans to distrust the Federal Government. The Warren Commission and their report on the assassination of John F Kennedy was not widely believed and spawned a whole cottage industry of conspiracy theories about who shot JFK. However, it was when Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, in 1971, that the American public had proof that the Federal Government was lying about the Vietnam War. The 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers was when American citizens, over the age of thirty, really began to not trust the US Government. Watergate just cemented that perception.
I'll give you three Mark Twain quotes that should answer this:
"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
"God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."
The scandal had a big effect, we did not expect that our president would like. But I would say that the war did far more than Watergate.