Fair Game

...Was he instrumental in forcing his Vice President out, or can it be that he kept hands off, in accord with the warning of the Surgeon General that, given the conditions of those hands, any other policy could only deepen the infection...

...Even when what he said was reasonable, his saying it brought chuckles...

...While he went around dazzling the multitudes by throwing alliterations at TV commentators and the "parasites of passion" who organized peace demonstrations, he was reaching for a much fancier audience by citing Commentary magazine as his source book and taking issue with I. F. Stone's Weekly...

...Justice has, in fact, rarely been less ferocious than in the disposition of his case...

...To comfort those of us who were inconsolable at his departure, he used words delivered on the occasion of the death of Lincoln—"Fellow citizens, God reigns and the Government in Washington still lives...

...Into the Drink From the beginning of his troubles, we could be certain that whatever turn his case took, the Vice President would give it the flavor of farce...

...Did Nixon actually order Justice Department minions to leak stories to the press...

...Just admit that you are fighting for your life...

...This very Agnew came forward and delivered, with indignation yet, a sermon on civil rights...

...If the rights of one person are violated, the rights of all are lessened...

...It is the primary function of our system of justice to insure that those rights are protected...

...From the moment in 1968 when he had his greatness thrust upon him, I was sure that the man would before long vanish into the maw that history reserves for politicians of his stature —the stature, say, of Gerald Ford...

...The soul strives toward Commentary...

...But, no, he had to clown his way out with a hilarious reference to "the national interest," and the advice that we close campaign-financing loopholes...

...In the end, the Vice President must have felt badly served by the Administration on whose behalf he had played the bully and the clown for four years, going on five...

...And then, in his final address, he evoked the death of Abraham Lincoln...

...at the end, could fail to detect the sincerity in his whine at the "ferocity of the assault [on] the system of justice," at the "cruel form of kangaroo trial in the media...

...But it was not any assault on any "system of justice" that upset him...

...For all his efforts to improve his public image, Agnew's problem from the beginning was that he could never persuade anyone but the GOP faithful to take him seriously...

...Agnew must have his Sinatra...

...His whole career was incongruity piled upon absurdity—yet who could fail to see that Spiro Agnew took himself seriously...

...But where once he had striven to climb the ladder from regional meetings of appliance salesmen to the uptown cocktail and seminar circuit, now he was puffing to turn a most common sort of felony into the stuff of high debate and weighty import, and to turn himself into a large-spirited victim of ambitious prosecutors, lying witnesses and vindictive reporters, a man of suffering and sacrifice...

...Nixon has his Rebozo...

...No, merely in behalf of Spiro Agnew, who took kickbacks from Maryland contractors...

...This Agnew, remember, was Vice President for 57 months in an Administration that made a habit of vindictive prosecutions of persons declared to be enemies of the White House, an Administration whose coat of arms would have to feature the bug and the tap...

...Having flopped so conspicuously in the alleged Watergate investigation, where prosecutors like Henry Petersen permitted themselves to be pushed around by Administration strongarm types (for the first time?, one wonders), Justice found itself happily transformed into the scourge of Spiro Agnew...

...He fooled me...

...He promised bitterly not to resign if indicted—and then resigned bitterly to avoid indictment...

...the body takes its ease in Palm Springs...

...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Agnew Agonistes Forty months ago, when Spiro Agnew was in his ascendance, or at any rate above water, I suggested in The New Leader, citadel of effete Eastern elitedom, that the Vice President craved deep down to be taken seriously by the very people he was then programmed to attack...

...And, when you finally spoke out, was it in the name of political dissent...

...There was talk of a fund being set up in the man's behalf, akin to that for the Ellsberg defense, and there was Agnew on the front page, disporting himself with Frank Sinatra at the latter's million-dollar digs...

...I doubt that he knows—yet as much could be said of about half the Congress...

...Nobody out there, in what is supposed to be the natural habitat of the Agnew, had ever heard of either publication...

...Well, we won't have Ted Agnew to kick around any more...

...Thus, civil liberties become the last resort of the tinhorn...

...Did you speak for the radical priest, the Commie, the black militant...

...The most comical turn in the President's game of hide-and-seek with those tapes came after the dismissal of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, when it was announced that Watergate and all that would once again be entrusted to un-special prosecutor Henry Petersen...

...Even those of us who never put much value on your career have to grant you the right to do the best you can with your sorry craft in a stormy hour...

...The fellow must have been a closet civil libertarian all the time...

...Forty months ago, he sought to associate himself with the literati lather than the Chicago Tribune...

...As his lawyers scrambled about making a deal that would spare their client the discomfort of a cell, he loudly affirmed his utter innocence and denied any deal was in the making...

...Out of the Closet To set aside whatever Spiro Agnew did or did not do that was different from what other Maryland officeholders have done from time immemorial, he had good reason to believe that the handling of his case was compounded by the condition of the Justice Department in the wake of John Mitchell...

...But even when he was in the right...

...What set him apart from his cronies in the Baltimores throughout the country was his need to play a role beyond that consigned to him by nature and the politics of his party and state...

...He was our Malvolio, full of self-love, and never more ridiculous than when he was most passionate One wished to buttonhole the man and say: "Spiro, come off it...

...Though zeal in the pursuit of an Agnew cannot make up for tired blood when confronted with a Watergate, weak men desirous of being taken as strong men do often give way to excess when a victim presents himself, and there was probably more than a little to Agnew's contention that he was being publicly abused in an effort to repair the reputation of the stricken department...

...Here is what he told a band of Republican ladies gathered in Los Angeles while he was still protesting that he would never, never resign: "The civil rights of the individual are of paramount concern, for only if man is allowed to exercise those rights can he remain free...

...Indeed, the President's part in his treatment raises questions not unlike those raised by Watergate...

...If you had only emerged from your closet in 1969 to speak out for all those parasites of passion against whom you stirred up Middle America at the command of an Administration whose use for you was limited to the insults you were willing to utter...

...Though he could never make the West Side scene, Spiro Agnew has after all found that special place in history he so tirelessly strove for and so richly earned...

...Thanks, Ted, we needed that...

...Last month, it was Thomas Jefferson rather than Boss Tweed: "I would foresake the principles of the Founding Fathers if I abandoned this fight"—certain notice to the nation that he was about to abandon it...

...where were you yesterday...

...it was the investigation of Spiro Agnew for taking favors...

...Everyone can understand that...

...Did he smile or only nod upon the leakers...

...Agnew made it impossible for anyone who had followed his career to take hint seriously...

...We can look ahead to a time when there will be nobody left in the Department of Justice but Henry Petersen, and Richard Nixon will be able to get a good night's sleep...

...Last month, as he completed the awkward business of drowning or being drowned in public, our former Vice President was still working hard to elevate his status...

...I confess I don't have an inkling of what Spiro Agnew really believed about anything...