Letter from a Whig
Slemp, C. Bascom
"Letter from a Whig" Editor's Note: From Mr. Slemp's first paragraph you will see that he wrote his column before Mr. Nixon actually did resign, but from subsequent paragraphs it becomes obvious that Mr. Slemp's...
...Slemp's perceptions were remarkably prescient and are enduringly instructive...
...This trend was carried to a ridiculous extreme in a recent series of articles carried by the Washington Post...
...The President planned to resign and become Governor of Delaware...
...Surely, Miss Kelley's article was less than incisive...
...What is her source for this 'game plan?' Senator Biden...
...Nixon is indeed suited to become our only Living Former President...
...Joseph Biden...
...Abbattoir, the country expected it: the blood-letting could have only one end...
...Newsbreak of the Century...
...which reflected smug "confidence...
...And there were people Johnson did not like...
...Nixon worthy of this position...
...Deep Throat...
...But unless our motives are true, Mr...
...Nixon, because of his concern for history and his strong interest in maintaining tradition, should resign so that he can fill the position of Living Former President as promptly as possible...
...Insensitive to these requests, Mr...
...There can, of course, be no simple response...
...In fact, no president can make a Senate appointment...
...The charges seem secondary, and almost tertiary, after the weeks, months—and yes—even years of Watergate...
...His earthy language almost invariably was part of a story that drove home a point...
...Not receiving Committee approval were the proposed articles pertaining to the bombing of Cambodia and the alleged tax fraud...
...It must he...
...The House and Senate will soon decide whether or not grounds for impeachment exist...
...The three articles approved by the Committee pertained to the Watergate cover-up, the misuse of power, and the defiance of Committee subpoenas...
...Nevertheless, a nagging question continues to persist: To what degree did long-standing anti-Nixon sentiment influence the impeachment bandwagon...
...What these articles are supposed to illustrate, presumably, is that Mr...
...Devoted Partisans All" When the House Judiciary Committee finally voted on the articles of impeachment, the moment while historic, was paradoxically also anticlimatic...
...We are told that Truman was "serious about his family and friends, old fashioned in personal ethics," and that his reaction to a West Point cheating scandal was "husky-voiced and moist-eyed...
...Emmett John Hughes's memories of the Eisenhower White House, while not intended as such, were possibly the least flattering of the reminiscences in the series...
...The logical derivative of the environment was that any idea implanted in Eisenhower's White House would have withered out of loneliness...
...and in consequence there was a "personal serenity in the Oval Office...
...Nixon's most long-standing critics think he is...
...There is no other way he could appoint anyone to the U.S...
...Is the impeachment assault on Nixon the outgrowth of personal enmity, ideological hatred, and just plain partisan politics...
...he has received a scrutiny no other President has been subjected to, or most likely, ever will again...
...Senator Hiden, a virtual unknown in Delaware politics, defeated sixty-three-year-old Republican incumbent Caleb Boggs in the 1972 elections...
...In fact, even if Nixon could have made the appointment, he would not have wanted DuPont appointed (DuPont has never been one of the White House's "regular fellas...
...the warmth of these reflections notwithstanding, who yet has met an obsequious reporter...
...Of FOR we learn that he ruled the White House with "undiluted charm...
...The sight was not pretty...
...Sentimental, touching —a distorted picture—yes...
...Her willingness to believe anything about the President...
...It is doubtful," writes Califano, "that any Presidents [sic] in our history would sound like Richard Nixon [possibly so] . . . This is not to say that other Presidents—Lyndon Baines Johnson included—never took the name of the Lord in vain...
...But while not excusing Nixon, there can be no doubt that he is the victim of a double standard...
...Perhaps this is the real Watergate truth...
...And in fact, if Boggs had retired, DuPont undoubtedly would have run a more efficient campaign against Biden than Boggs did...
...In a letter to the editor on this very article, one incensed reader wrote: "Kitty Kelley has scored the news-break of the century...
...As we move to the sixties the self-serving quality of the reminiscences becomes even more apparent, and the critique of Nixon takes on malicious tones...
...But that distinction undoubtedly does not belong to women alone, as The Washington Post's series on presidential reminiscences written by men all too clearly illustrates...
...Biden spoiled the game plan (by defeating Boggs) in 1972...
...Nixon, to date, has rebuffed any suggestion of resignation...
...In fact, the Nixon White House has never shown any party loyalty towards GOP candidates...
...Is Mr...
...Nixon is not serious about his family and friends, that he is lacking in old-fashioned personal ethics, and that he has not mastered the art of swearing perfected by his predecessors...
...It was not, as Nixon's is, the language of a teenage tough who thinks the frequent use of profanity and Anglo expletives as adjectives demonstrate machismo [sic...
...Beyond that, writes former Roosevelt associate James Rowe, "I cannot ever remember hearing [Roosevelt] swear...
...Washington)—RECOGNIZING THAT the death of Lyndon Johnson has left the Nation without a living former President for the longest period in the century, many Americans have come to believe that Mr...
...The American public has experienced the Theater of the Absurd...
...Former Johnson assistant Joseph Califano, goes even further than Salinger on the mythical journey of understatement and predilective reality...
...More than one such critic introduced legislation urging impeachment some two years ago...
...Apparently even some of Mr...
...Nixon should be impeached on any of the three charges...
...Truman "could not comprehend how young men in whom such trust had been placed would violate a solemn oath...
...Devoted partisans all," wrote The Post of the respective Administration aides;their articles provided the George Washington never-tell-a-lie syndrome of selective memory and history...
...Kitty Kelley recently wrote an article for the Washingtonian magazine on the "All-American Boy"—Delaware'sfreshman Democrat Senator...
...Then Nixon planned to appoint Congressman Pierre DuPont on the Republican side of the aisle...
...The series portrayed the reminiscences of aides to earlier White House incumbents, from FDR through Johnson...
...Indeed, those critics who have formed the nucleus of the "Committee for a Living Former President" have consistently seemed to argue that Nixon's ascendency to the Presidency—in and of itself—was ground enough for impeachment...
...But in the partisan emotion of the current impeachment debate, previous presidents are being eulogized to point out Nixon's deficiencies...
...Nixon's political adversaries and the national media became the phlebotomists...
...In fact, Nixon rejected Boggs's request for personal support...
...He may deserve to be impeached...
...It will now fall to the House of Representatives to decide whether Mr...
...Nixon may well be impeached...
...According to Califano (and as difficult as this may be for readers of The Alternative to accept), Johnson could even get angry at his opposition...
...The Eisenhower Oval Office, writes Hughes, was divorced from the country's "intellectual community...
...These articles create a fairy-tale past, a past that was supposedly simpler than the present, and they add momentum to the already pervasive disillusionment and disgust with the Nixon White House...
...there was no hospitality for "creative or innovative ideas...
...On the subject of the press, former Truman aide, George Elsey, writes: "Reporters were Truman's friends He liked their straightforward no-nonsense lack of obsequiousness...
...Nixon will not be the greatest victim in this national tragedy...
...According to Kelley, Boggs had wanted to retire but "Nixon persuaded him to run for a third term, suggesting that he resign after a year...
...Scandal after scandal erupted in the headlines of The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, picked up by network TV and local newspapers...
...Senate from Delaware...
...the Nation saw the inner-workings of a Presidential Administration as never before...
...Kennedy, says former aide Pierre Salinger, "was not above using a little profanity," but according to Salinger he used it only "to illustrate or underline a point...
...The Constitution...
...Not to be outdone, however, the "Committee for a Living Former President" has initiated impeachment proceedings to see whether Mr...
...Miss Kelley's article brings to mind Jefferson's observatio,n that women's tender breasts were never meant for political convulsions...
...No one who worked for Lyndon Johnson would call him a Saint [It's hard to believe, isn't it...
...To say he was no fan of Robert Kennedy would be the understatement of his Administration...
...All presidents have had their character flaws, Nixon not excepted...
Vol. 8 • October 1974 • No. 1
