Fair Game
GOODMAN, WALTER
Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Keeping Cool It's important to live like a Spartan. . . . I find to handle crises the most important qualities one needs are balance, objectivity, an ability to act...
...Everyone, even Dolphin fans, would admire me...
...Still, sometimes I do feel that it might be nice to get a breath of air again...
...Now I'm cool...
...Keeping Cooler So you can see why I am so suspicious of those people who went to North Vietnam and looked at the bomb damage done there...
...Not that I'm complaining...
...Who can fail to come out of it with a clear mind...
...I wouldn't do an extreme thing like that...
...President Richard M. Nixon -from an AP interview, January 13, 1973 My Fellow Americans: I write to you from the Cool Room of the White House...
...It would be pleasant to pass the hours in sober conversation with George McGovern or light-hearted banter with Elliot Richardson, or to pop up to Cambridge to horse around with the kids there...
...If I permitted myself to see the unpleasant circumstances under which a relative handful of Americans exist, could I put a stop to housing subsidies...
...Now, I do confess that I let Pat Moynihan talk me into some sort of welfare plan early in my first term we all make mistakes...
...I have just received my daily news summary, slipped under the cast-iron door along with a dry biscuit and a facsimile of Ronald Ziegler, and it says there, in the daily news summary, that I am being criticized for not showing myself in public...
...Haldeman and Ehrlichman have promised me a padded wall for next season...
...I have trained myself to be that...
...I'm definitely cool, you understand...
...I find to handle crises the most important qualities one needs are balance, objectivity, an ability to act coolly...
...I don't mean this to be self-serving, but nothing disturbs a man's objectivity so much as the sight of people, particularly poor people...
...Those people on the East and West coasts should have seen me then...
...In a way I am...
...I get my news from the news summary the staff prepares every day and it's great...
...So my television expert is proposing a balanced nationwide TV schedule of Sesame Street in the mornings, Search for Tomorrow in the afternoons...
...Ask Billy Graham...
...Try to imagine me watching the Redskins-Dolphins Superbowl last month...
...I promise that from now on your President will remain strong and unyielding in the face of need...
...I was jumping up and down in terrific excitement in the second half, tearing my hair, scratching my beard...
...It will, of course, give all sides...
...I am suspicious of that sort of criticism, especially when it comes from people who can't stand the sight of me...
...The American people, not all of whom even in this bountiful land can afford to purchase or rent a Cool Room, deserve to be protected from the sort of elitist liberal who makes a crater out of every mole hole...
...If I allowed myself to come in contact with children who will never learn to read or add well enough for a decent job, could I cut back on aid to education...
...I'm sending Moynihan to India, and the plane has been equipped with the most advanced anti-high-jacking devices...
...Even so, I have decided to explain why I now live down here in the Cool Room, in the hope that it may help others who aspire to my condition of objectivity...
...Well, I recovered pretty quickly...
...if only one didn't run the risk of meeting people...
...Beside me is good old Rogers, as loyal a water boy as they come...
...Actually, I have a reputation for being the coolest person in the room...
...I have thought about this issue calmly and objectively and have concluded that the President has the power to stamp himself top secret...
...Maybe then I wouldn't need to live down here in the Cool Room like this...
...It goes to prove their inexperience...
...No newspapers, no television, no pictures on the wall to set the mind racing in risky directions, no mirrors to remind me of my own face...
...I remember somebody once telling me, in the days when people could still get close enough to tell me things, that Edward I, a late king of England I believe, finalized his conquest of Wales by putting all of its bards, or poets, to death...
...Maybe years ago, when I was an excitable young Congressman, but not now, definitely not as a first step...
...That's because I don t want decisions influenced by personal emotional reactions...
...I think of that very often...
...I see myself there on the field, making the swift cool decision, unflappable, deaf to the howls of criticism from the uncool, pounding forward past all interference to that big touchdownAnd then being called up and congratulated by the President of the United States...
...According to my daily news summary, some people on the East and West coasts speak of me as not being humane...
...The great decisions in this office require calm...
...And as for the people who say I'm a cold fish . . . actually, I am full of passion, when appropriate...
...Still, the only sure way to avoid being driven up the wall by TV commentators is for the commentators not to be there...
...But I have chosen the harder course of objectivity, and for that it's important to live like a Spartan...
...Once they gel a foot in the door...
...I probably am more objective And I don't mean this as self-serving than most leaders...
...Keeping Coolest Sometimes, my fellow Americans, as I pace here in the Cool Room, cooling and contemplating my objectivity, I imagine myself to be coach of a professional football team...
...I'm here alone, no danger of going to pieces, keeping a grip on myself, keeping the mind clear, the psyche uncluttered, calm, objective, absolutely a-okay, absolutely, really great, Spartan, unflappable, hardly sweating at all, no anxiety, not going to pieces, pulse steady, unemotional, ready for crisis, strong, balanced, experienced, no personal emotional reactions, really calm, calm you understand, I'm calm...
...Because how can a man or a woman expect to maintain his or her objectivity about bombing after seeing a burned-out hospital...
...I scared the Secret Service agents...
...I'm cool down here in the Cool Room...
...I find it doesn't require rubbing shoulders with or looking at or talking to other people to make humane decisions...
...Not only was I climbing the wall, I was banging my head against it...
...Out there is Quarterback Kissinger, a flashy character but useful...
...Oh, it would be easy enough for me to stroll the streets of Bedford Stuyvesant and kiss those colored infants for the sake of a transient popularity...
...I don't flap easily...
...I'm the coolest person in the room...
...If I were a winning coach, then nobody would despise me...
...No more compromises with poverty...
...I never watch TV commentators or the news shows when they are about me...
...And while we are on the subject of the bombing, those news stories...
...For example, all 1 had to do was see the cold figures on the dairymen's contributions to the Republican party to appreciate that those men were in need of higher milk prices...
...I don't...
...Coach Charles de Gaulle of the Quaker Bombers...
...Actually, I did not personally read thembut I can imagine the way the incident was exploited...
...I have trained myself to be that...
...More important, I do not believe that the President of the United States has any obligation to show himself to anybody...
...The major weakness of inexperienced people is that they take things personally, especially in politics . . . now when I walk into this office I am cool and calm...
...Honestly, I'd love nothing better...
...An individual tends to go to pieces when he's inexperienced...
...Those news stories are making them go to pieces...
...For this reason, my newspaper expert whatshisname is proposing that the country's newspapers, which now engage in wasteful duplication, be merged into a brief news summary, prepared by our highly competent staff under the direction of the Pentagon...
...As I have so often said, no sacrifice that I have made for you over the years is too great...
...I don't mean this as self-serving, but I have always been objective enough to confess my mistakes And that one taught me a lesson: Do not associate with fast-talking Irishmen who have big ideas about little people...
...The major weakness of inexperienced people is that they take things personally...
...it gives all sides...
...It took experience to bring together a bunch iike that...
...Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States...
...Americans will thus learn their letters, shed a tear at life's tribulations, have a healthy laugh, and share in our tradition of sportsmanship...
...Bob Hope in the evenings, and football all weekend...
...Highly suspicious...
...As a strict constitutionalist, I am appalled by any invasion of privacy, whether it be of the President or of the Watergate Seven, and I have reason to believe that the Justice Department will back me up on that...
...I don't want decisions influenced by personal emotional reactions...
...Now and then, I take out everybody and put in a whole new team, to show that I'm the coach...
...It's no wonder that people have such worried looks on their faces when they see me these days...
...And don't forget pass receiver Weinberger, famed for his cut and dodge...
...I could go up the wall watching TV commentators...
...WellAnd I don't mean this as self-serving they are wrong...
...A look at my latest Cabinet, moreover, will show that in no case have I allowed myself to be influenced by an appointee's personal attributes or qualifications...
Vol. 56 • February 1973 • No. 4
