Counting the President's Prayers
GLASS, ANDREW J.
Washington-USA COUNTING THE PRESIDENTS PRAYERS BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington Richard Nixon apparently finds solace in comparing his plight with that of Hairy Truman after he fired General...
...Clair, the President's latest impeachment lawyer, was appalled...
...As one top-level bureaucrat put it, "Don't forget, Nixon is 27 per cent in the country and nowhere in Washington...
...In addition, most journalists regarded MacArthur as too vain for their tastes, with just enough of the Boulanger in his make-up to possibly emerge as a dangerous man on horseback...
...It is not popular today to defend self-indulgence," said Brewster, somewhat self-indulgently...
...But the Democratic leadership is unlikely to be drawn into a showdown along these lines...
...With the most powerful elements in the society lined up on Truman's side in the battle, it was only a matter of time before the pro-MacArthur fever in the country subsided through sheer lack of sustenance...
...The Secretary of Commerce, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission sat in the audience...
...Nonetheless, he mused that when one reads what some of the panel's members are saying in public, it would certainly be difficult to reach any other conclusion...
...At the Yale Club dinner, three blocks away, no one paid attention...
...Nixon's enemies are earnest in their resolve to impeach him...
...At the same time, John Doar, the committee's counsel, insists that the House inquiry should be viewed as the constitutional equivalent of a grand jury hearing...
...Keep checking the headlines of your favorite newspaper...
...The Nixon drama, on the other hand, is being played out in an altogether different setting...
...What to do...
...The Yale President utilized the occasion to praise the virtues of a liberal education for its own sake...
...None of them thought Richard Nixon has a prayer...
...Such Senate friends as the late Richard Russell of Georgia arranged for the hearings on the General's dismissal to be structured in a manner favorable to Truman's interests...
...If, as Doar contends, the committee is also charged with clearing the innocent, then its target cannot validly withhold documents and tapes from his impartial examiners...
...Most reporters have been around public men long enough to admire those who are willing to go all-out for a cause in which they believe...
...Early in March, the Yale Club of Washington held a dinner to commemorate its 100th anniversary...
...Indeed, who among the Yale men cared what this former nongraduate of Johns Hopkins (who has since taken his turn in a Federal courtroom as a defendant) now thought of them...
...Failure to comply—or, worse yet, selective compliance—could lead the public to conclude that the White House was still covering up...
...What class was he...
...His advantage was that he never lost the basic respect of the nation's opinion-making institutions...
...That means they are now ready, if not eager, to abandon the President in order to save the Presidency...
...Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans grow more nervous...
...In his remarks, Yale President Kingman Brewster recalled that Spiro Agnew had once publicly demanded that he be fired on the grounds that he lacked sufficient maturity to run the university...
...But the country would be less secure without centers dedicated to intellectual truth...
...The idea is that key Republicans could be persuaded that Nixon had gone as far as he could without being, as Zieg-ler put it, "constitutionally irresponsible...
...a telephone company executive...
...Spiro Agnew," Brewster inquired...
...Whatever small comfort it may bring to its beleaguered author, the analogy fails to hold up: Truman's enemies—who included one Senator Nixon of California—were merely playing political games...
...In all probability, the Judiciary Committee will delay, pleading that it needs more evidence to render a fair verdict...
...What is more important, the depth of the defection within the Establishment reaches quite beyond the ever-cynical press...
...As Brewster observed to the obvious satisfaction of his audience that evening, "There's nothing like the troubles of others to restore one's self-esteem...
...Some will undoubtedly face primary opponents who will raise as their main issue whether to support a man who has betrayed the party...
...The shifting mix of administrators, lawyers, lobbyists, staff men, and politicians who constitute the backbone of official Washington have increasingly come to feel that the preservation of their individual institutions must take first priority...
...At one table, representing the Class of '57, was a typical group in their late 30s: a patent attorney and his wife, who is a medical student...
...Moreover, the President recognizes the underlying political nature of the affair...
...This is heady stuff...
...At the time, Truman stood even lower in the polls than does Nixon after 12 months of Watergate revelations, soaring inflation and energy shortages...
...This has little to do with the Administration's policies, or lack of them, although the President would surely argue otherwise...
...In due course, the Republican Elders might become sorely tempted to ask Nixon to step down...
...Recently, I asked Ronald Zieg-ler, the sole remaining veteran of the Good Old Days, whether the President regarded the Judiciary Committee's inquiry as an adversary proceeding...
...Agnew had taken exception to Brewster's view that some people may not be able to get a fair trial in America...
...In this action, the House committee had gone far beyond anything the Special Prosecutor's office had requested...
...A Senator, a Supreme Court Justice, a retired chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, among others, were at the head table...
...Ziegler really didn't want to tell me...
...For one thing, he has lost the respect of the main body of Washington correspondents...
...Washington-USA COUNTING THE PRESIDENTS PRAYERS BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington Richard Nixon apparently finds solace in comparing his plight with that of Hairy Truman after he fired General Douglas MacArthur in 1951...
...And yet, Nixon reminds us, Truman bounced back to finish his term and, ultimately, to earn the praise of Presidential historians...
...the counsel of the Senate Commerce Committee and his date, a professor of English...
...When Truman sacked Mac-Arthur 23 years ago, he still retained his capacity to govern...
...But for reasons that bear deeply on the nature of their trade, reporters cannot abide compulsive trimmers...
...In the process, Nixon made inoperative an August 15, 1973, statement to the effect that he had never known the money was being used to buy the defendants' silence...
...He also knows that parts of his tape library from March and April of last year would shock the pants off some veteran Republicans were they to be played back on the Hill...
...and their wives...
...And if that usually reliable guide, Democrat Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, is correct, the forthcoming report of the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation, which has been looking into the President's tax returns, will not help matters...
...a top Treasury aide...
...Consequently, one theory making the rounds here has the President maneuvering to frame the House impeachment vote in the best possible light, stressing his Mmited lack of cooperation with the investigating authority...
...It bears instead almost entirely on his personality...
...In particular, Nixon is widely viewed by the press corps as a trimmer—a politician who habitually shaves perhaps 15 per cent off the truth in any given circumstance to permit the facts to slide more easily into his personal universe...
...James St...
...In the very hour that Brewster spoke, Nixon was telling a televised press conference at the White House how John Dean informed him on March 21, 1973, that hush money had been given to Watergate defendants...
...With each passing week, the net draws tighter...
...a journalist...
...a Foreign Service officer...
...In truth, however, a majority of the members will vote for impeachment no matter what the evidence suggests, while a sizable minority will accept whatever alibis Nixon is able to offer...
...In early March, the House Judiciary Committee asked the President's counsel to supply copies of every White House memorandum relating to intervention in any pending antitrust case, environmental protection decision, oil import question, Cost of Living Council ruling, Federal bank charter issuance, or broadcast license proceeding before the Federal Communications Commission...
...But it is as certain as the rain in April that sooner or later an enterprising Congressman or two would pass some of this material along to an eager reporter...
Vol. 57 • April 1974 • No. 7
