Letter from a Whig
Slemp, C. Bascom
"Letter from a Whig" telling the American people every day since March that the President is a criminal. There is literally no proof that he is, but that becomes an irrelevancy as the enemies of Nixon control all...
...At another time, in different circumstances, the Virginia Republican's revelation might have brought a rallying battle cry--but not now...
...ran 80 to 1 against Nixon...
...How could he have hidden his essential criminality for so long...
...This would have resulted in a net vote for Johnson of 23.3 million, and we conclude that a true index of his popularity might be 23.3/70.2 or 33 percent rather than the 61 percent attributed to him...
...Ain't What But How The efforts to impeach Nixon, throughout, have had a highly ideological and partisan tone, but more recently even supporters of the Administration have favored impeachment proceedings as the quickest way for the President to clear himself...
...But unfortunately Republicans just do not have their [the Democrats'] experience at this sort of thing...
...Even daughter Trish did not recognize her father from the description...
...even the mail received by Senator Goldwater (R-Ariz...
...The all-important chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Edward Hebert (D-La...
...White House officials quickly lay to rest the speculation that Nixon might resign, citing his fighting spirit and cool nature...
...The veto which Congress overrode by thirteen votes in the Senate (75-18) and by four votes in the House (284-185) prompted Senator John Tower (R-Texas) to state: "I realize this is a time when everyone can with impunity kick the President...
...Richard Nixon, because of his corny belief in the Constitution, will not be the one to take that step, but it will become inevitable for someone...
...Let's say that 75 percent of his voters were really voting for him and 25 percent were voting against Johnson...
...Some of the characteristics of this plan are interesting...
...Under the new system the voter will be allowed to vote for candidate A, or for B, or against A or B. The net vote for A will then be the difference of the number of votes for him and the ones against him...
...Then if voting under the new system had been permitted, Johnson's net vote would have been those votes forhim (0.7 • 43.0) minus the number who voted for Goldwater because of a dislike for Johnson (0.25 • 27.2...
...But the issue has reportedly produced more than 1,000,000 pieces of mail for Capitol Hill...
...Critics of the legislation also felt that the arbitrary language of the resolution would seriously diminish the deterrent value of our armed forces and that it would undermine our national interest, as well as any incentive on the part of a potential adversary to reach an early settlement...
...As far as I'm concerned, the working relationship between the Republican Party and this Administration has been tenuous at best for some time...
...And finally comes the moment of exhilaration when Nixon's enemies make the same discovery that the killers of Charles I made...
...According to the Harris Poll the Democrats have a lead of 53 percent to 31 percent in voter preference for the 1974 congressional races...
...Behold the Irony But if the Administration's strength still seems to be waning with congressional GOPs, leading southern Democrats have begun rallying around Nixon...
...This represents a drop of 8 percent from last spring and it compares poorly to the 56 percent to 44 percent in favor of the Democrats in 1964, the year of the Johnson landslide and the stunning defeat for congressional Republicans...
...Thus Republicans like Crane, Bafalis, Ashbrook, Rousellot, Armstrong, and others, who normally can be counted upon by the Administration, felt that the constitutional issues at stake far outweighed any possible public relations damage to the Administration...
...We may formalize this development by defining confidence factors kl and k2 for the two candidates...
...However, until formal charges are levied against Nixon no one really expects the Administration to give this argument any serious thought...
...Senator William Scott (a freshman Republican from Virginia) and an ardent Administration supporter received over 1,000 letters urging the resignation or impeachment of Nixon...
...Another provision in the legislation (which some critics argue make the resolution unconstitutional) gives Congress the power to order an end to American involvement by passing a concurrent resolution with a simple majority that does not have to be submitted to the president to become effective...
...They will stop at nothing until they see the object of their scorn reduced to nothing and themselves confirmed in their new power...
...Going back to the congressional elections of 1970, there has been little willingness on the part of the Administration to cooperate with Republican Party leaders, let alone seek their advice...
...Johnson's net vote, T~, would be T~ = kN1 - (1 - k2)V2 where the first term, k~V~, represents those voters (70 percent of 43 million) who voted for Johnson because they liked and trusted him, and the second term, (1 - k2)V2, represents those voters (25 percent of 27.2 million) who voted for Goldwater because they disliked Johnson...
...Frankly, I am damned mad about it...
...If they continue to act without responsibility except to themselves and continue to have complete control over public opinion, no government will be able to function...
...I propose here a slight modification of our voting system that can remove this speculative element from future elections and give us all a better estimate of the true popularity of a newly-elected president and his programs...
...Nixon's alleged criminality becomes proof of his incompetence...
...He's at low ebb...
...They have it in their power to kill a king...
...Likewise, if 75 percent had confidence in Goldwater, k2 would be 0.75...
...Talk, Talk, Talk The most hotly-debated topic in Washington in recent weeks has been whether Nixon should resign or be impeached...
...Today, it is not only Nixon who is at the brink...
...Senator Peter Deminick (R-Colo...
...the Special Prosecutor's office received 10,000 telegrams (during the same period) and only a handful were favorable to the President...
...It is the whole future of a free society basing its political decisions upon some measure of truth and implementing them through constitutionally prescribed means...
...One liberal Republican, when told about the increasing Democratic support accruing to Nixon, quipped: "I have said all along the problem with this Administration is that it has behaved as if it were a Democratic one...
...Harold Mott The Case for Negative Votes In 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson was elected president in a landslide over Barry Goldwater, getting 61 percent of the popular vote, and yet, four years later, so many of his supporters were deserting that his reelection seemed doubtful...
...If we let the number of votes for a candidate be P (for positive) and those against him be N (for negative), his net vote, T, is T = P - N. Then it is appropriate to speak of his popularity as the ratio of T to the total votes cast in the election...
...Never mind that Nixon is not a criminal...
...The Senator had his staff take a 15 percent sample poll of the anti-Nixon mail and he reported that 77 percent of those who had written calling for impeachment or resignation had voted for George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election...
...Letter from a Whig "Few Die and None Resign" (WASHINGTON)--President Nixon was dealt his first defeat by Congress, after eight earlier attempts to override presidential vetoes had failed...
...recently called Nixon "the strongest President of our time" and fellow Louisiana Democrat, Otto Passman, lashed out at the '~radical segment of the news media" and praised Nixon's integrity as "unimpeachable" and his "greatness" as long "established...
...In the scheme of Nixon's enemies, Nixon's seeming sanity despite his proved criminality is a measure of the cunning of the diseased mind of the man...
...There is literally no proof that he is, but that becomes an irrelevancy as the enemies of Nixon control all input to the American people...
...There was also concern that the resolution could erode the stature and consistency of American foreign policy, which they argue is necessary if the United States is to remain a credible power...
...Western Union alone, by October 28, had processed more than 250,000 telegrams to congressional and Senate offices after Nixon fired Special Watergate Prosecutor, Archibald Cox...
...One is tempted to speculate that Johnson never had the support of 61 percent of the electorate and that many voted for him only to insure the defeat of Barry Goldwater, the Mad Bomber...
...Constitution...
...Congress Reasserts Itself Had the prestige of the Administration not been so low pitched, the White House could have undoubtedly jawboned three more House members into voting to sustain the veto...
...It requires the president to come before Congress within forty-eight hours after American troops have been committed to combat overseas and it compels him to cease operations after sixty days unless Congress has approved his action...
...The same thing could be said about Goldwater's voters...
...Although our overall goals and policies will probably continue to coincide with those of the Administration, I believe the Republican Party would be well advised to follow a more independent course from here on...
...As a result, many Republicans are urging their colleagues to declare their independence of the White House...
...Such a system might have been cumbersome in the days of paper ballots, but can be handled with ease by slightly redesigned voting machines...
...Perhaps if Johnson had considered carefully the significance of such a popularity index, he might have avoided some of the disillusionments of his last years in office...
...In an effort to rejuvenate his support among congressional Republicans Nixon spent the first days in November meeting with Republican congressmen and senators, and leading Democrats, but many remained skeptical...
...in a speech before the Denver Bar Association said, "There can be no more deals and no more technical arguments about evidence...
...Keep in mind the warning that this is sheer speculation...
...Nixon still ignores his experienced politicoes Harlow and Laird, and instead turns to Haig and Ziegler, political novices who still have not learned that it ain't what ya do but how ya do it...
...In our example, the equa16 The Alternative January 1974...
...GOP sinking with Nixon...
...Unfortunately, these thoughts will remain forever unproven...
...If 70 percent of the voters voted for Johnson because of their confidence in him, kl would be 70 percent or 0.7...
...At that point, and we are in it now, Nixon's enemies disregard every other consideration...
...Using the same reasoning, the net vote for Goldwater would be given by T2 = k2V2 - (1 - kJV...
...House Joint Resolution 542, the War Powers Resolution, now becomes law without the president's signature...
...This skepticism is in no small part the result of yet another recent public opinion poll taken by Harris at the end of October...
...The lies become so widespread that they are their own truth...
...Now many people believe him to be a criminal and that is the proof that he is incompetent...
...This system puts into practice the expressed wishes of multitudes of voters who seem forever to be choosing the lesser of two evils...
...Nothing short of complete disclosure will be adequate to restore the confidence of the American people...
...It requires only a little imagination to believe that Nixon had, in fact, as many people for him as did Johnson four years previously and that the 1968 race was close only because Humphrey had fewer people against him than did Goldwater...
...In the strongest terms since Bob Dole (R-Kansas) left the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, dominick went on to say, "The fact that I am devoted to my Party is sufficient reason to speak out...
...Of those who voted for Johnson, perhaps 70 percent were really for him and 30 percent were against Goldwater and would have voted that way if given an opportunity...
...I think Republicans have more reason to be upset about the current state of affairs than anyone else...
...But if anyone can create the environment conducive to impeachment it is this Administration, and not the left wing of the Democratic Party...
...Of the 8,000 telegrams received by the Senate Watergate Committee (by the end of October) only 10 were in support of the President...
...In 1968 Richard Nixon was narrowly elected over Hubert H. Humphrey and George C. Wallace, receiving 44 percent of the popular vote, but in 1972 he in turn won a thumping victory over George McGovern, with 61 percent of the vote...
...But this legislation came at a particularly inopportune time...
...Although no breakdown is available for all the correspondence received on Capitol Hill, a sample from different offices indicated that those who chose to write were overwhelmingly in favor of resignation or impeachment...
...Gradually the sum of innumerable unsubstantiated charges and contemptuous tones becomes a fact itself---although severed from all connection with the truth...
...All of the fury which they have felt at being frustrated by Nixon for so long on real issues, on his having succeeded with the electorate and with problem-solving despite their opposition, reaches a boiling point...
...Why did Johnson's voters desert him, and where did Nixon's troops come from...
...In that election the vote for Johnson (in millions) was V~ = 43.0, and for Goldwater, V2 = 27.2...
...I think a good place to start would be for the Republican Party to take the leadership in resolving the crisis of confidence in our government...
...Nonfact becomes fact and then supports an endless chain of consequential nonfacts which become facts...
...The majority of the American public still does not think Nixon should The Alternative January 1974 15 resign or be impeached (according to a November Gallup Poll the American public opposed removing Nixon from office 54 to 37 percent), and more cautious editorials, including those in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, have argued that talk of impeachment and resignation is still premature, smacking more of the capricious whim of popularity h la Fourth Republic France, rather than the U.S...
...And surely some future government will decide that if the choice is between government by the president and Congress and government by a self-selecting elite of media barons and baronesses, it is the greatly abused freedom of the press which must go to the wall...
...With this definition of popularity in mind, let us reconsider the 1964 election to see if 61 percent of the voters were with Johnson...
...The Administration has pursued its independent course to this juncture...
...This can probably be explained by the fact that Nixon, even after Watergate, still outpolls George McGovern with ease, in some congressional districts by a margin of more than two to one...
...The Republican Party did not get us into this mess...
...Although Nixon's enemies in the media do not see it, they are also on the precipice...
...The effect of America's world position, the future of a state in which a totalitarian press rules without any responsibility to anyone, the psychic effect of destruction of a government, all melt into insignificance compared to the possibility of at last doing something they could never do legitimately--to confound the entire democratic process and to rm~ke themselves rulers in a way they could not do according to any rules of law or decency...
...No one can seriously claim that he has handled the real issues incompetently, so again, reference is make to the false Nixon created by the media...
...It was not so much a slap in Nixon's face as it was an attempt on the part of Congress to reassert itself...
...Because N'Lxon is a criminal, he is also incompetent...
Vol. 7 • January 1974 • No. 4
