The Public Discourse
Weaver, Paul H.
Conference. The ensuing explications always tickle me and fuel my belief that man's closest relatives are not the primates but the hyenas. I have the suspicion that these interviews always...
...Thus far, brilliant defense lawyers, invocations of executive privilege, presidential speeches, and all the other weapons of political warfare haven't fazed it...
...The motivations of Congress in all this are similar in some ways, but much more complex...
...This much is widely acknowledged...
...But what I do say is that Watergates are not the only price we pay for our current system of presidential selection and for its divorcement from an ever weaker two-party system...
...The intentions of Madame Fgnda veal to the American citizenry that ----GWP III IIIIII II I [ I II I_ I II I I I 11 III I II II II II the problems go away...
...Agnew would become President -- and for various reasons, not the least of them incumbency, his chances in 1976 could be very good...
...I can see little good in it, because it elevates the vulgar and drives out the civilized...
...This is so because the actions of "'nondictatorial and democratic oppon ents . . . are governed by the majority opinion of a confused public...
...that the war was a struggle by the nationalist NLF to liberate and reunite their nation, which had a thousand-year tradition of unity...
...and practical application of pressure Women's Liberationists have tended to This talk of how Watergate has already against the wrongdoers...
...But I do mean to say that Watergate bears a direct, organic, cause-and-effect relationship to our currect system of presidential politics, and that until we make this connection we shall not have fully comprehended precisely what Watergate means to us...
...25 Ten copies...
...In particular, they are happy to go along with the campaignspending reformers, led by John Gardner, in attributing some of the blame in Watergate to campaignspending laws...
...I can see little good in it, because a nation zealously pursuing vulgar notions drifts toward the brutal...
...Bush deal to learn, and they might as well thing...
...Nor do I even have particular reference to the problems of campaign finance, though these are not trivial and do arise out of the public law and informal practices which define one particular sector of the System...
...4.00 Fifty Copies...
...Go to bookstores throughout New Jersey...
...I hope to hear from you soon Dear George" Mfair was a puckish attempt to re- wherever :,ou might be...
...that Ho Chi Minh was the "George Washington" of Vietnam...
...He has concern, but the difficulties are likely this woman more good than systematic fired all those who were involved and orto be practical and the way of life is bitching about female stereotypes...
...which is now available at avant-garde her mind...
...The North Vietnamese, Sulzberger reported, believe that their strategy is workable because "great powers engaged in small wars are more vulnerable at home than on the battlefield...
...Take, for example, the claim that Ho Chi Minh was a popular or natioffalist "George Washington...
...This is not, of course, to say that all these pathologies are of equal magnitude...
...City...
...Yet there is an old proverb- or if there isn't, there ought to be -- that warns: Beware the man who draws the moral of the story before the tale has come to an end...
...I devour them...
...Those convicted are politithese audacious political pronounce- cal prisoners...
...the primary system has replaced the brokered nominating conventions...
...All this is unquestionably to the good...
...it has convicted several persons of crimes...
...You can help us to increase our readership and at the same time introduce your friends to one of the liveliest and most provocative journals in America...
...Now the serious problem with a nation whose citizens take themselves so seriously is not the episodic tragedies brought on by serf-righteous scoundrels nor the degradation of rhetoric and the elevation of the thoughts of flatulent yahoos...
...These institutions may work slowly, but they do work, and for that we may all be thankful...
...Of course, it could turn out otherwise...
...But this aside, and for the most part, the Democrats would like to be able to attribute most of the blame for Watergate to Nixon himself, and not to the System...
...This is not to say that this system must give rise to Watergates, or that Water gates are the only kind of pathology to which our method of presidential politics is prone...
...By praising the System, he suggests that the entire episode has now come to a close and that justice has been completely served..and second, he wants to denounce his aides and their actions while also dissociating himself from them...
...Is there a backwater in the country that has not had some leavings of this rendition floated upon it...
...Myths of the Vietnam War --The Pentagon Papers Reconsidered by Robert F. Turner in "Southeast Asian Perspectives" Number 7 September, 1972 In an especially lucid moment several years ago, C.L...
...Against considerable resistance, it identified and publicized a lot of intolerable behaviors...
...Or perhaps the Blob will prefer to listen to those in the press and elsewhere who are imploring it to roll on and on until every sinner in the land has been brought before the bar of justice and sent to his eternal reward...
...it will almost certainly convict many more in the future...
...Civilization seems doomed...
...the situation will improve...
...We should be aware of this fact, and let it cheer us up a bit over the coming months as the Ervin committee exhumes and reconstructs the whole sordid mess...
...The Blob may not listen, or may not believe what the System-praisers are saying...
...Others are bored...
...But it has already become clear that there is grave danger to all concerned...
...Cultural changes seem an important part of the explanation, and so are certain developments in public law over the last seventy years...
...Among other things, a pro knows that you don't bug the opposition, or commit other felonies, because the benefits are always small and the po26 The Alternative June-September 1973 tential costs enormous...
...This is a situation which has made Democrats and Republicans, President and congressmen, join together in singing the praises of the System...
...The Republicans have a great to, but I am sure she is up to some- Dear Mr...
...Americans have always been given to overdoing things...
...So much for academic integrity...
...The only alternative is to attribute Watergate tothe System itself Now it is true that Democratic congressmen are prepared to blame the System to some extent and for some purposes...
...2.00 Twenty-five copies...
...Many are besotted in anomie...
...The answer goes to the very heart of the American political system, and to its greatest emerging slaw...
...Although Dr...
...Of course, it isn't certain that this rhetorical strategy will work...
...7.00 Name...
...So why didn't it weed out Nixon in 1968 and 1972...
...The Blob goes forward, uncontrolled and perhaps uncontrollable...
...Who ever reminds us that after Ho left Vietnam at the age of twenty-one (in 1911), he effectively expatriated himself, that he became one of the founders and official representatives of the French Communist Party, helped originate the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 not as a Vietnamese "THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA has an enviable but embarrassing budgetary surplus ot $850 million, which Governor Reagan would like to return 'to the people who had it in the first place.' That proposal is too drastic for some ot the Governor's critics, who conclude he is a dangerous radical, .~ which is exactIy rl9g ht...
...Z ip...
...One reason why Congress makes this latter forecast is that if the Watergate actions are described as alien to the System, then the mind-set that gave rise to Watergate can be attributed to Richard Nixon personally, who, after all, is the one who hired and promoted Haldeman, Erlichman, Dean, Mitchell, Magruder, Strachan, and all the rest...
...Mobilize the forces of justice...
...I do not mean, of course, that Watergate is an expression of the alleged rottenness" of American society as a whole -- that's utter nonsense...
...11, Box 360, Bloomington, ring to the Watergate matter...
...Those indicted are in ments, the Democrats will crown the same fix...
...The Watergate Gains...
...By describing Watergate as a triumph of the System, he suggests that they were alien to the System while he, by contrast, is the System's servant and defender...
...Everyone has quite properly observed that Watergate would never have happened had the people around the President and in the CRP been authentic political professionals...
...For the President, the Blob threatens impeachment...
...Still, for those (continued on page 25) 4 The Alternative June-September 1973 The Bootblack Stand are really quite simple, but then what the Democratic Headquarters is indoes one expect from a creature whose habited by wierdos...
...Enclosed is...
...In practical terms, this would mean that popular passions over Watergate would cool off, and that Congress and the courts wouldn't feel so constrained at each point to go yet one extra mile to punish yet one more person involved, directly or indirectly, actually or allegedly, in the entire repulsive mess...
...II I ~ I I I I I I II Great American Series When constituents begin asking politicians, "What have you undone for me lately...
...Consider GoverDear Mr...
...I urge you to get William her -- a development dearly to be Kuntsier, the ACLU, and the editors desired by all high-ranking Republi- of The New York Times into the act cans...
...For a free copy of NATIONAL REVIEW, write: Dept, 8, 150 E. 35 Street, N. Y. 10016...
...They, war criminals and the like is nothing not the flag burners, demonstraless than the 1976 Democratic presi- tors, and draft dodgers, nor the astro dential nomination...
...WEAVER unequal opportunity and pay, and pro- Growth is painful, and Women's Libera- (continued from page 4) fessional disincentives, and wraps up the tionists might, in addition to facilitating o subject by saying, "These are, however, the practical arrangements necessary for who want to bring the Blob under conissues of injustice that lend themselves expanded commitments, encourage the trol, their only remaining hope is to try not to the large-scale analyses of a liber- timid or uncertain woman to exercise to talk it into submission...
...Such men are often isolated from contact with the various sectors of American society...
...And if the Greeks knew nothing else, they knew their sins...
...After all, who isn't...
...The Alternative June-September 1973 27...
...Government becomes grim business, unsympathetic with civil liberties or disagreement...
...the tale" he is concerned about may well be his own...
...First, he lays out the pieces of historical misinterpretation in all their detail and ingenuity: that the United States became involved in Vietnam to restore French colonialism...
...State...
...My own view is that it is a little of both, but that it contains much more science fiction than anyone has yet acknowledged...
...Why this erosion of party has taken place is a long story, and nobody has yet told it all...
...pity this woman, to sneer at her, or to vindicated the System also serves the Conversation with educated young encourage her openly to disrupt the very more personal interest of the various women will probably reveal that they relationships from which she derives players...
...In this The Alternative June-September 1973 25 situation, he praises the System for two reasons...
...for...
...If you succeed in this, the Blob may then start acting as if it were dead, or anyway moribund...
...it ruthlessly weeds out all other kinds of people...
...Sulzberger neatly sketched an essential impediment to .American success in Vietnam...
...Most important, he wants to concede wrongdoing on the part of his aides and to encourage their prosecution, while at the same time discouraging further inquiry into, or speculation about, his own role...
...During the night the sample begins to grow...
...The strategy and the confusion have been fueled in the United States by Hanoi's academic bagmen (as the British would put it) and assorted, native-grown muddleheads who have produced an AntiVietnam History Lesson and sold it as the standard text for media as well as college use...
...For all these reasons, Congress too has begun to praise the System...
...we have ignored it only because we are too caught up in our rhetorical strategies to see or acknowledge it...
...The question, of course, is: Does Watergate really vindicate the System as thoroughly as everybody is claiming...
...Domestic Liberation finds oppressive...
...The whole matter is obviously crats...
...And what of President Johnson's against our POW's are inexplicable Republican National Chairman epigones Bobby Baker and Billie Sol to me...
...Just fill out the following coupon to order as many JuneSeptember Alternatives as you can use...
...and on and on the myths run...
...The Public Discourse i i i I ~ " ~ I I I II I IIII ! II II I Toward a Political Science of Watergate Everybody knows that old science fiction cliche, the Giant Amoeboid from Outer Space...
...Some have explained it in terms of Nixon's personality, which is not entirely wrong, but which leaves unanswered a further and absolutely crucial question: if Nixon's personality is what accounts for his willingness to hire and rely on amateurs, then what is it that accounts for the fact that Nixon, with this personality and this preference, was able to successfully negotiate the cruel Darwinian gauntlet that is our presidential selection system...
...There are many reasons for this position, some of them entirely honorable, others less so...
...Then Turner's devastating analysis reveals it all for hokum, and clearly illuminates the myths as, in his words, "a collection of historical and factual inaccuracies and half-trutlas...
...Presidential politics are now almost entirely separate from the political party...
...Is this also the lesson of Watergate...
...they invade the cities, wreaking destruction and death...
...The Watergate story does vindicate the press to some extent, the investigative and pro secutorial systems to some extent, and the courts and grand juries to a very great extent...
...In any event, pol9it ics cannot and probably should not be prevented from exercising a marginal influence over our public institutions...
...The underlying idea here is that if you talk to the Blob as if it has already been done in by the System, you may thereby persuade it that this has in fact happened...
...But as we have also seen, this arrangement also seems to create a maximum probability of Watergates...
...This latter is a particularly live possibility...
...Another pathology to which it is prone is the nomination of the unelectable candidate, as happened to the.GOP in 1964 and to the Democrats in 1972...
...Certainly it is a useful rhetoric are concerned most with occupational strength...
...Without explicitly championing for the President, who, after months of problems, not just with discrimination this woman, Decter has affirmed the denying any White House involvement in but with the general ordeal of perfor- value of the commitments Women's Watergate, has now told us that there mance and advancement...
...When politicians wink at to The Bootblack Stand, c/o The Estab- flated into a hugh scandal...
...issues of the June-September, 1973 Alternative...
...That is, Nixon can be described as the underlying cause" of Watergate...
...The mobilization of women to more diverse expectations now requires concrete steps to eliminate constraints...
...For the Watergate story is nowhere near its end...
...Only an amateur, one without political experience, one who does not make politics his career, one not socialized into the craft of politics, one defined not as a craftsman but as an ideologue or a courtier- only such a person could have undertaken Watergate...
...Such men have a tendency to turn the White House staff and the administration as a whole into a personal court where personal loyalty is the prime consideration...
...So in these respects, then, Watergate is indeed something to which we could point with a degree of justifiable pride...
...She seems was such involvement, but that he arrangements with men are the second to think that a kick in the pants will do neither authorized nor knew of it...
...Today they are sodden in affluence...
...and there is reason to hope that the huge investigative, judicial, and legislative machinery that has been set in motion will eventually grind out the appropriate results with minimum damage to innocent persons and institutions...
...They do so because this rhetoric, in addition to being partially true, is also extremely useful- useful to all of them collectively, and useful as well to each group separately...
...Clearly one of the likeliest legislative outcomes of Watergate is further reform of campaign finance --a long-time Democratic objective, inasmuch as Republicans generally have much more money than Democrats for presidential campaigns...
...Increasing numbers of politicians have joined the chorus in praise of the System and in appreciation of its efficacy in responding to Watergate...
...Decter has refuted arguments that bear a limited relationship to the real problems of women, but apparently her purpose is to eliminate the overkill...
...If I may be pardoned the metaphor, the Blob at this point has only just burst out of the laboratory and begun to ravage the landscape...
...Consider DemoIndiana 47401, Continental U.S.A...
...Plunkitt" Gordon Liddy, Jeb Magruder, or John pects to earn ten million dollars from I hate to bother you twice in one Dean a parking ticket...
...It is hard to say what should be done to shore up this absolutely crucial political institution and to reintroduce its beneficent influences into our system of presidential parties, but it is clear that campaign finance reform won't even begin to do the whole job...
...Certainly there are some who have begun to insist that it is...
...they don't have to be in touch with all the different sectors of their party...
...Reforming campaign financewhich will turn out to be much harder to do without creating new and equally serious defects than might at first glance seem- will almost certainly have little or no effect on the incidence of Watergatetype abuses in the future...
...Address...
...Single Copy...
...What Madame Fonda is forward-looking bit of political symreally up to when she calls our POW's bolism are legitimate idealists...
...There is a system, and it has by no means completely failed us in this case...
...likely to vary only in details from a traditional household...
...Then, in the nick of time, one of two things happens...
...sales of his new book, he has agreed to month, but I am terribly concerned I suppose that I should add that continue to advise public figures through about a little indecorum out here in I found this whole affair profoundly this column...
...Plunkitt ex- Dear Mr...
...Is all this talk of the System good political science, or is it more nearly in the category of science fiction...
...Now clearly there is much to be said for this view...
...It may not be much consolation, but it is something, and it should help us preserve an appropriate modicum of self-respect...
...She acknowledges up opportunities or fail to create them...
...Underlying the President's rhetoric is, of course, his determination to remain in office and to exonerate himself and his Administration...
...For one thing, you could go to j a i l - which would mean that your life's work as a professional politician would be instantly and forever ended...
...The personal following and the amateur club have replaced the local party organization...
...The result is that presidents don't have to be pros to be elected or even nominated...
...cratic Congressman Dowdy or Democratic Senator Brewster...
...And to this extent, it is true that Water gate is already a success story...
...The only difference between the congressional and the presidential use of this rhetoric is that the President hopes that it will help to exonerate him, while Congress calculates that it will not...
...By contrast, if the President were impeached, Mr...
...Each day brings news of yet another person or institution being consumed...
...A scientist, or somebody (often a Teenager), goes to inspect the crater and brings back a small sample, which he deposits in his neighborhood laboratory...
...Address all correspondence Washington which the press has in- distasteful...
...nothing is certain...
...If we do that, and if we learn and act on its lessons, only then will there be a real possibility that this disgraceful episode will be transformed into an enduring triumph of the American democracy, and of the System which helps to define it...
...So what we need to do now is to put aside the science fiction of our manipulative, self-aggrandizing rhetoric about Watergate as a Triumph of the System, and to turn instead to the task of developing a proper political science of Watergate...
...Indeed, Turner's 55 p .s and 200 footnotes describe a case study of the muse of history being ravished...
...To be sure, political motivations were operating behind the scenes even in these institutions, but they cut in both directions (if the Justice Department was a bit slow and reluctant to come to the obvious conclusion, the press'and Congress were, especially at first, a bit quick) and so cancelled each other out...
...complexity is on a par, say, with the The brave men involved in this amoeba...
...Why did Nixon manage to make it all the way to the White House...
...For Watergate was very much an outgrowth of our current system of presidential selection and of the entire character of presidential politics in the present age...
...She obviously nauts and POW's are the real heroes thinks that if she continues uttering of our day...
...Such men may find that this arrangement gives them maximum room for maneuvering, maximum time to think and study, and maximum opportunity to exert presidential power and presidential preferences over the bureaucracy...
...Clearly it used to weed out amateurs and persons who relied on amateurs- Nixons, in short, on the above, only partly valid theory of Nixon's personality and skills...
...Both boredom and spiritual anarchy can be power ful engines for catastrophe --especially amongst people who gorge their enthusiasms...
...Robert F. Turner, a Vietnamese affairs specialist on the staff of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, catalogues and examines this received wisdom under the rubric of Myths of the Vietnam War...
...or the Blobs suddenly die by themselves as a result of not being immune to the bacteria and suchlike of Earth...
...Mail to: The Alternative, Bulk Subscription Dept., Room 473, R.R...
...It is useful to all of them collectively because it defines a strategy for regaining control over events by means of a self-fulfilling prophecy...
...R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...that the United States first broke the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and refused to allow free elections in 1956...
...The President said as much in his May 1 speech, which praised the press, the courts, a courageous judge," and the Congress...
...The Committee for the Re-election of the President could have had- for all I know it did have- millions upon millions of dollars of such dirty money and still not have done the deeds which we group under the rubric of Watergate- dirty tricks, the EUsberg burglary, the White House coverup, and the rest...
...quite the contrary on both counts...
...and he insists, I hope truthPatricia Kavanagh fully, on his own innocence...
...Irresolute women, women afraid of upsetting a real or hoped-for domestic attachment, pass dered everyone to cooperate with the investigation...
...What is not so widely acknowledged is the reason why Nixon was surrounded by amateurs in 1972...
...II, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401 Watergate is likely to implicate congressmen, either directly or as a result of counter-investigations launched from the Executive Branch...
...The real objective of Revolutionary Warfare is to achieve victory on the main battlefield which is neither military nor in Vietnam but political and in the U.S...
...indeed, it helps their image in the media if they are amateurs...
...And third, there is the fact that, if it does come down to impeaching President Nixon, Congress would prefer this to be seen as an action taken by the System in behalf of the values and preservation of the Systemnot as a political act by political men...
...All these stem, in one way or another, from the same political source: the erosion, in some areas to the point of devastation, of the political party...
...w Edward C. Banfield Jlllll I I II I III In several other crucial respects, however, the Watergate episode stands as an indictment of the System because, when properly understood, it must be seen as a pathological outgrowth of some of the most central characteristics of the System...
...it -- in no time you should have the Plunkitt's book is about the importance of --GWP whole affair so confused that the altruism in politics and it is titled What's courts will not even be able to give in It for Me...
...In the long view, though it entertains me vastly, I can see very little good coming from this passion for taking everyone so seriously...
...The movie ends, the lights go up, and everyone leaves the theater reassured that, as God is in Heaven, so is there a System on Earth, which, with the help of a few courageous individuals, will triumph over any dangers or evils visited upon it from an alien world...
...Therefore they redouble their praise of the System, so that for the next three years Nixon will stand as the man personally responsible for what happened, a political being who is alien to the System and who, together with his political heirs, ought to be rejected by the people at the next electoral opportunity...
...While unequal treatment exists, and while the overall economic condition of women is not on a par with men, perhaps the greatest constraint to success lies within women's personalities...
...Clearly the press has also played a role in the weakerring of political parties...
...This is obviously there will be no need ever to bug her just another instance of the brutish Dr...
...a ~ientist comes up with an ingenious device or method for killing Blobs, and it works...
...For if she wins the nomination, as soon as possible...
...All Americans will be American people trying to impose prize-winning political analyst, is cele- instantly aware of the most fleeting their biased legal system upon visionbrating the publication of his new book, thought to gambol and lurch through aries and defenders of a higher virtue...
...Rather, the serious problem reposes in the certainty that when a nation's citizens take themselves seriously, the nation takes itself seriously...
...do you suppose we should handle it...
...I have the suspicion that these interviews always take place in the purlieus of an insane asylum or of a large university...
...or, to put it the other way around, our political party organizations have become weaker and weaker over the past decades, to the point where they exercise shockingly little influence over the selection of presidential candidates and presidents...
...George Washington Plunkitt, our headquarters...
...A small meteor, or something, lands on Earth in a flash of flame and smoke...
...What else can ation movement but to the particular her latent ambitions and drives, they do when all the usual weapons have proved useless...
...Plunkitt" Sincerely, nor Kerner, or Judge Kerner if you preThe recent outbursts of Jane Fonda George Bush fer...
...that American leaders utterly mistook the communism of the nationalist Vietnamese for the monolithic, expansionist communism of Lenin and Stalin...
...the Watergate variety is incomparably the most virulent...
...For its efforts, the Washington Post has already received an apology from the White House and a Pulitzer Prize from Columbia University...
...At this point, the only thing that can be said for sure is that the end is not yet in sight, that the stakes have become very high, and that the final outcome could cut either way, or both ways...
...well, to shorten a long and increasingly obvious analysis . .. the demand to be taken seriously wafts very much of hubris...
...I can see little good in it, because it rests on an untrue proposition -- the average man's view of complex problems is generally benighted, and rarely useful to any analysis...
...the jet plane, the fat cat, and the media specialists have replaced the traditional party-based election campaign...
...For Congress, it threatens the later political consequences of impeachment, which certainly include, as one possible scenario, intense popular backlash against the Democratic Congress, the election of a Republican in 1976, and God only knows what foreign or domestic chaos in the interim...
...As for these latter, there is, first of all, the fact that keeping Nixon in office for the next three years with his moral authority gravely impaired is a first-rate way of improving the chances that a Democrat will be elected President in 1976...
...Yet a third pathology is the increasing lack of coherence in the parties of Congress, and indeed the growing budgetary irresponsibility of Congress...
...That system selects a very special sort of person with very special skills and characteristics...
...The connection is not at all obscure...
...In the meanwhile, if you will send Sincerely, another episode in symbolic politics -- me a stamped, self-addressed envelGeorge Bush and Republican sachems are to be ope, I shall send you my pamphlet, Republican National Chairman congratulated rather than persecuted Politics and Untaxable Personal for their panache...
...I am refer- the laws they are supposed to make lishment, R.R...
...by morning it has become a huge, seething, repulsive Blob that sets out across the landscape, gobbling everything in sight and multiplying faster than a third-generation computer...
...These deserve close scrutiny and probably merit some kind of reform, but I am impressed by how independent of Watergate most of the Vesco-type abuses are...
...Incidentally, Watergate-type behavior is not the only pathological consequence of our increasingly party-less presidential politics...
...How money, not lose money...
...Second, there is the fact that at some point continued probing of Introduce Your Friends to The Alternative We have found that the best way to get subscribers is to give someone a sample copy of The Alternative, allow them to read it, and then urge them to subscribe...
...I do not know what she is up Estes...
...tanks and rockets prove powerless to stop them...
...They don't need to be skilled in dealing with a variety of different local organizations and interests...
...On the whole Congress also prefers to keep the President in office and hopes not to have to consider the question of impeachment...
...How glad I am that you have writ- start by taking lessons from the Demoten me...
...It and its progeny get bigger and bigger...
...Nobody knows who will be next, or what it will all finally lead to...
...and the result is that we end up selecting men for president who lack not only the skills of the pro, but also his habits and methods and preferences in aides...
Vol. 6 • June 1973 • No. 9
