The Public Policy
Rusthoven, Peter J.
"The Public Policy" conspiracy after another, and by utilizing secrecy, secrecy, secrecy, in every story." The most recent effort to bring the Bilderberger conspiracy to light came during the Rockefeller confirmation...
...When the gentlemen of the law informed me of his real identity I was so mortified I attempted to have done with myself by leaping into the Tidal Pool...
...Tell them he always drinks when he drives so that if he has an accident he will be relaxed...
...I was never very impressed with the women libbers, but it is apparent from the coverage my misfortune has received in the press that there is a great deal of sexism shown toward women who have chosen stripping for a career...
...If you are dissatisfied with these suggestions give Ted Sorensen a call...
...Moreover, the trials of the ex-President's more prominent subordinates, currently getting under way, should provide a sufficient forum for disclosing any new evidence of a more general nature...
...If you could come by my office I would be glad to show you my collection of campaign buttons...
...He could sit alone in a corner with his horn and a glass of gin and be completely satisfied, totally oblivious to the world around him...
...But to make heavy weather of this issue, as so many are doing, is rather superficial...
...Unfortunately, for all the highly critical public discussion, almost no one has articulated a set of standards that should be brought to bear in determining whether a pardon is appropriate...
...And no one perceives any irony in the situation at all...
...Dean and Colson were not President of the United States...
...This subscription will begin with the next issue...
...Ford possessed the constitutional authority to act as he did...
...Hirshhorn's museum, and now with Mr...
...Plunkitt expects to earn ten million dollars from sales of his new book, he has agreed to continue to advise public figures through this column...
...It can also be seen as the struggle of a shy, tortured young artist at large in the world...
...To begin, there should be no doubt that Mr...
...Moreover, whatever one's philosophical or political starting point in evaluating Mr...
...Or consider the 50,000 young Americans who avoided service in the armed forces during the Vietnam unpleasantness, who are currently developing their more refined theory of civil The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1974 27 disobedience—namely, that one should have the "right" to violate "immoral" laws without subjecting himself to punishment...
...Nixon to his grave, it becomes almost impossible to argue that any additional (albeit more traditional) punitive measures are called for...
...He is faced with these sorts of difficulties all the time...
...There is, I submit, no clearer illustration of how warped and hysterical our discussion of political events in general, and of the Presidency in particular, has become...
...Here, many would contend that Mr...
...Now all of this is not to say that the pardon of Richard Nixon is so clearly right that no reasonable person should disagree...
...But on the other hand, neither have there been loud protestations of innocence, nor any attempt to encourage the development of the so-called "myth of the martyred President...
...Soon, however, they realized that Bix had to do things his own way...
...More significantly, though, it is at least a partial answer to all those original folk who keep chanting "No man is above the law" to re-emphasize that the pardon is emphatically an expression (albeit a rarely used one) of the legal process—that it is indeed rooted in the single document that most symbolizes the rule of law in this country...
...1 Please open the following subscription RD THE PUBLIC INTEREST and bill me...
...ter Horst, was disturbed enough to resign his post, a gesture which he modestly labelled an "act of conscience," and for which he received lengthy huzzahs .and a special award from his fellow journalists for this courageous illustration of the honor of their craft...
...And the President himself is not some tragic hero who started to save us, only to fall victim to that one fatal mistake...
...This man Mills misled me—he told me his name was Wilbert—into thinking he was a man of refinement...
...Nixon has "suffered enough...
...Mills...
...Although Dr...
...The second point is a bit less clear—and indeed, a good many people are bothered not so much by a pardon per se as by the fact that the judicial process was not first permitted to run its course...
...It is unnecessary here to attempt to compile a definitive list of the former President's accomplishments in some twenty-eight years of public service...
...Not since the days of Camelot has a Washington solon shown such a lively interest in high culture...
...The pardon of Mr...
...Of course, most of the sniping over the pardon centers not on its legality, but rather on whether it should have been granted in this particular case...
...Nixon's possible deficiencies on this score constitute a decisive argument against a grant of clemency...
...Stringfellow: Frankly I do not understand the lurid pother that the philistines in the media have stirred up over this very unexceptionalaffair...
...To the degree that anyone who receives a pardon can be said to have earned one, Mr...
...Testifying before the Senate Rules Committee, the Liberty Lobby left no skeletons unturned in their efforts to tie Rockefeller to the "Wallenbergs and other billionaire international financiers or their proxies...
...Address all correspondence to The Bootblack Stand, c/o The Alternative, P.O...
...I thought he was a salesman for the Living Bible...
...President Ford was much impressed by this factor, as evidenced by his oft-quoted (and occasionally derided) language to the effect that Mr...
...Nixon...
...Now personally, I must confess that all this rather surprised me...
...They were musicians and were pleased when he showed musical talent...
...Initially, this seems impressive: Dean and Colson, after all, are going to jail, and Mr...
...His fatal (and yes, even criminal) mishandling of the issue that led to his 26 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1974 The Bootblack Stand by George Washington Plunkitt Dr...
...but I hardly think that Mr...
...The first question, which arises due to the timing of this pardon, is whether or not a trial would have accomplished anything...
...Personally, I cannot fathom what such a punishmenf would be...
...Plunkitt: What the hell are we to do...
...Nixon would seem to offer relatively little, either substantively or symbolically...
...Nixon should not escape the criminal sanctions imposed on subordinates like John Dean or Charles Colson...
...I cannot imagine how Mr...
...Nor is the whole Watergate period a trauma equivalent to the Civil War, all talk (including Mr...
...Your friend, Jay Stringfellow Campaign Director Dear Mr...
...On the first point, it seems highly unlikely that any striking new evidence would be forthcoming in a prosecution of Mr...
...There are factors to be weighed in the scales of equal justice in judging a former President that are simply not present elsewhere...
...Time magazine, which only a few weeks earlier had featured Ford's visage on a pair of covers entitled "The Healing Begins" and "Ford on the Move," now shifted gears and presented disapproving cover stories on "The Pardon" and "Ford Under Fire...
...Bix was a constant source of aggravation to his family...
...THRiblic Interest Name Address City State Zip THE PUBLIC INTEREST • BOX 542 • OLD CHELSEA POST OFFICE • NEW YORK, N.Y...
...One must wonder, however, whether Bix ever had a choice between roads, or whether his fate was sealed from the first moment he became aware of the power of a musical note...
...What with the opening of Mr...
...Men, if you want your nation to remain free—you better act fast...
...and realistically, they have not been subjected to anywhere near the suffering that he has...
...It is past time, I think, that we brought back a little perspective to our consideration of such matters...
...As one of Bix's teachers, Miss Robinson, remembers, "He was a dreamy little fellow and was happy finding his own niche rather than joining the larger group...
...Ford's qualified amnesty proposal among the same people who so abhor granting clemency to Mr...
...The phrase "No man should be above the law" enjoyed a renewed burst of popularity that (incredibly) exceeded the homage paid to that concept during the earlier controversy over whether Mr...
...Ford clearly did) the physical and emotional difficulties that will accompany Mr...
...For Bix, the ultimate retreat was music and booze...
...Moreover, Mr...
...How the hell can we explain this to the stuffy ignoramuses who have been reelecting the old boy since the McKinley Administration...
...Any vengeful pleasure some might take at seeing this particular former President in the dock, I think, can be safely ignored among reasonable people...
...Dear Dr...
...Nixon's case is undoubtedly stronger than that of any previous beneficiary of executive clemency...
...When the cops pull him out of the car his face is bleeding like a ruptured blood vessel, his breath is combustible, and one of the broads leaps into the Tidal Basin...
...Tyrrell has described, in the Wall Street Journal, as his "untimely venture into Christian charity," and we are told that this one act has cost the President not only his credibility, but (shudder) his "honeymoon" as well...
...If there are individuals who can conceive of a more profound, lasting, or fitting punishment than being forced to become the first man in history to resign the Presidency in disgrace, I congratulate them on their imaginatively punitive minds...
...It was then that he bought his first horn and was on his way to immortality...
...The fourth factor to be weighed is the degree of contrition displayed by the wrongdoer...
...The fact that Mr...
...almost certainly he didn't care...
...So what if he now tries to give a boost to adult librairies, genuine art films, and /a danse...
...opined that the President's action spelled the end of "200 years of history and tradition of equal justice for all," an assessment shared, according to the network news, by "large numbers" of "disturbed Americans...
...Nixon should be obligated to turn over his tapes to the special prosecutor...
...active promotion of the Silver Slipper, The Scene, and the career of "the Argentine Firecracker," it seems entirely possible that Washington will soon rival New York as a cultural center...
...Ford's) about "binding up the Nation's wounds" notwithstanding...
...The real point, it seems to me, is that the pardon is a perfectly defensible and in many ways appropriate act—and that the virulence of the reaction to it is both indefensible and inappropriate in the extreme...
...Indeed the vast number of them makes one wonder whether the Bavarian Illuminati is not at work...
...The most recent effort to bring the Bilderberger conspiracy to light came during the Rockefeller confirmation hearings for Vice President...
...This issue depends in turn on whether important new disclosures are likely to come to light in a criminal prosecution...
...and (save for the exception of impeachment cases) it is unlimited and unqualified...
...Finally, there is the whole question of "equal justice"—the argument being that Mr...
...presumably, there is also some symbolic value, in terms of demonstrating the equality of American justice, in bringing a former President to trial...
...Nixon's largely ignored statement issued as he accepted the pardon did indeed express both his genuine remorse for the grief he had caused the nation, and the personal guilt he bore as a result...
...Nixon's case, as Ihave attempted to demonstrate, is unique...
...George Washington Plunkitt, our prize-winning political analyst, is celebrating the publication of his new book, which is now available at avant-garde bookstores throughout New Jersey...
...Perhaps Bix's death best exemplifies his alienation...
...The President's own press secretary, Mr...
...It didn't occur to him to let anyone know...
...they have not made the contributions to the nation that Mr...
...Mills' constituents could be displeased...
...I-1 one year $7.50 r) two years $14.00 Shouldn't you be reading this intelligent quarterly edited by Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer...
...Pundits everywhere hastened to inform us that "the honeymoon is over," and Mr...
...10011 28 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1974...
...Had I known beforehand of the pardon, of course, I would have anticipated that some measure of adverse reaction would be forthcoming...
...Faced with humdrum daily routine, Congressional offices can only delight in hearing from those of their cons who thrive on the conspiracies we have in America today...
...Third, there is the issue of mercy, which should take into account the extent to which the individual in question has already been punished for his wrongdoing...
...Nevertheless, the immense pother that has accompanied the pardon of Richard Nixon does strike me as a matter of some significance...
...But Iwould never have predicted that the whole pack in Washington and Cambridge and New York would start baying as loud and as long as they have...
...Thus, a trial of Mr...
...There are certain temperaments that seem to be at home only in that queer inner world...
...Daniel Ellsberg is flitting about from one campus and talk show to another, cashing in on his illegal revelation of classified material, and all the while being acclaimed as a moral hero for doing so...
...Essentially he had been dying for a long time...
...It wasn't until Bix was seventeen and in high school, though, that he finally began to taste the freedom from his family's traditions that he so desperately sought...
...The remainder of Bix's twenty-eight goo4 Rev:t4v Remembering Bix: A Memoir of the Jazz Age by Ralph Berton Harper and Row $10 years can be seen as a constant pursuit of music and as the struggle to overcome the guilt which he felt for deserting his family's ideals...
...GWP Dear Dr...
...Possibly he didn't really know himself...
...The alienation of the artist has been a common theme in fictional literature, but here biography contributes a vivid real-life example: Bix's day-to-day anguish in attempting to cope with what to him was a foreign society...
...Heartbroken, Fanne Fox, the Argentine Firecracker Dear Miss Fox: My dear, you have been shamelessly deluded by a low rascal indeed...
...Meanwhile, Mr...
...But on balance, it is difficult to see what additional symbolic demonstration of the workings of American justice is truly needed...
...and Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors...
...Roy Ash, Director of the Office of Management and Budget...
...Ford, in an effort to salvage his hoped-for "good marriage" with the Congress, was preparing to mount Capitol Hill to field some sharp legislative inquiries about the reasons for his unpopular act...
...If your constituents continue to grouse tell them that the Congressman was drunk...
...I think, however, that at least five interrelated factors can be identified as significant in making this determination...
...it is unambiguous...
...Berton uses as his epigraph a stanza from Robert Frost's famous poem of human decision, "The Road Not Taken": ". . . I shall be telling this with a sigh/ Somewhere ages and ages hence:/ Two roads diverged in a wood, and I/ I took the one less travelled by,/ And that has made all the difference...
...The conflict was evident even when Bix was a child...
...The business of the nation will probably proceed a bit more smoothly if we do, and we will certainly be able to discuss it with more intelligence and equanimity.^ Mary Jo Doyle Young Man With a Horn BIX BEIDERBECKE'S short life was governed by two conflicting drives: the need to gain acceptance from his traditional middle-class German family and the desire to play jazz in a way that it had never been played before...
...Plunkitt's book is about the importance of altruism in politics and it is titled What's in It for Me...
...Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution states that "The President...
...Perhaps more profound displays of mea culpa would be appropriate...
...Yet public discussion of Mr...
...In Remembering Bix, Beiderbecke's friend Ralph Berton has woven a -beautifully poignant biography around the struggle between these drives...
...Tuesday morning old Wilbur is driving around the Jefferson Memorial with a car full of strippers and his lights out...
...His own complicity in the events at issue was as sufficiently and painfully demonstrated as such things need to be in the transcripts released the Monday before his resignation...
...Nixon has been forced to resign the highest office in the land, with all the humiliation, both present and historical, attendant upon that act, should be arleloquent example to all but the densest observer that justice is no respecter of position and power...
...I take it as an extremely auspicious sign when I hear that Congressmen are again patronizing the arts...
...Nixon, important as it is, is simply not the great ethical issue of our times that all this frenzied breast-beating of late would indicate...
...The prerogative granted by this section is complete...
...I suggest that we could profitably quit indulging this penchant for dramatic themes, and relax a bit...
...This, perhaps, is more indicative of a certain naivete on my part than of anything else...
...I personally would not be caught dead with a Congressman or any other sort of politician...
...William Simon, Secretary of the Treasury...
...Or blame the whole thing on Nixon...
...Consider, for example, that even as all the keepers of the nation's conscience are in such a dither over the pardon, Mr...
...A second factor that should influence a decision on granting a pardon is the degree to which an individual, by virtue of his past contributions, merits special consideration...
...There has been no ex-plicit admission of criminal liability, and none is likely to be forthcoming...
...shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment...
...and while neither that list nor the discussion that follows is exhaustive, I believe that a legitimate casefor the pardon of Richard Nixon can be made on each point...
...Then along comes some TV cameraman who gets a shot of old Wilbur with his arm around a cop...
...He still wears white socks, does he not...
...In the days since, Mr...
...Box 877, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, Continental U.S.A...
...In general, he could not accept the standards which had been laid before him...
...Ford finds himself assailed on all sides for what the good R.E...
...For more than a week Bix had lain alone in the dusty furnished flat like an ownerless dog, his life ebbing away, drinking up what was left in a few bottles of bootleg rum and bathtub gin...
...He refused to learn to read music and preferred to pick out the complicated tunes by ear...
...Plunkitt: As a woman and as a stripper I have suffered a great deal of distress due to the press' exploitation of my misfortune at the hands of one Wilbur D. Mills...
...For them that is the real, and what the rest of us call reality is the dreamlike, a glimpsed chaos...
...Nixon's case is at its weakest, and to some degree this is true...
...And he still comes forward with the most extravagant boondoggles...
...These facts were easily available 'to the Washington Post, but their male chauvinists saw me as a stereotype or something...
...How about some evening next month...
...it suffices to say that such a list would be both lengthy and, in many respects, highly praiseworthy...
...We need not, I think, tarry too long over this point...
...Even Secretary of State Kissinger, blossoming in the garden of his "diplomatic successes," has the "glaring thorn" of the Bilderberger ties sticking in his side...
...Nixon's public activities, I think that all but the most churlish critics of our thirty-seventh chief executive would concede that he brought to his final office the intelligence, dedication, and sheer effort the position demands...
...I shall be glad ,to consult with you privately...
...Nixon has...
...Hence he was forced to retreat from that world: "What we have in Bix Beiderbecke is exile...
...GWP downfall simply does not wipe all this off the slate...
...Ford has suffered the wrath of the whole mob of media sophists who expected so much more of him, and the rest of us have been treated to yet another well-orchestrated display of morally alarmed hysteria...
...Some of these proxies include the Senate Banking Committee...
...And when in addition one considers (as Mr...
...Nixon centers mainly around whether we should exact any price from those who deserted—and to date, there has not been a peep from any one of them about whether these worthy gentlemen should be "above the law...
...Senator Birch Bayh (D.–Ind...
...The press has totally neglected the fact that most strippers have great pride and dignity...
...Indeed, this author is himself somewhat ambivalent on the issue, both in terms of its timing and its possible impact on more mundane matters such as the 1974 elections...
...Justice may be blind, but it is not undiscriminating...
...On this score, Mr...
...Nixon is not...
...And so, at twenty-eight, one of the greatest popular musicians of the century was dead...
...He still orders Moon Pies at Sans Souci , does he not...
...Those who think this is belaboring the obvious should be informed that at least one federal district judge (perhaps scrambling to join Judge Sirica in the history books) has indicated that he is quite willing to rule on the legality of the pardon...
...Nixon qualifies...
...by Peter J. Rusthoven On the Pardoning of Richard Nixon ON SEPTEMBER 8TH of this year, President Gerald Ford, in the most publicized gesture of executive clemency in the history of the Republic, issued a complete pardon to Richard Nixon for any and all offenses the former President either did commit or may have committed during his entire time in office...
...Much like Willa Lather's sculptor, Bix was thrown into a world which could neither understand nor appreciate him...
...and accordingly, an effort to examine the issue with a modicum of perspective seems very much in order...
Vol. 8 • December 1974 • No. 3
