Fair Game
GOODMAN, WALTER
Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN A Letter to Lenny Garment DEAR LENNY: We're worried about you. What can you be up to at the White House, bustling through corridors full of ghosts? Where is that old...
...Is your office closer to the Oval Office than it used to be...
...Give a friendly interview and the fellow doesn't notice the dirt under your finger nails...
...Does it bother you that if you quit, the slander machine will get to work and your associates Buzhardt and Ziegler will spread the word that you drink too much and have a letch for Archibald Cox...
...Nobody, practically, had a bad word to say...
...Do you really believe that the dairy industry deal and the ITT deal and the other deals, known and suspected, were on the up and up...
...Remember those swell days, Lenny...
...Do you really believe there is nothing fishy about your chief's money and property arrangements and his relationship with Bebe...
...Richard Nixon will have no trouble hiring Buzhardts to go through the obfuscatory forms...
...Do you have more typists to transcribe your tapes now...
...Lenny, that the Administration in its present condition is capable of doing its job in an effective manner and must on that account be preserved...
...There are other loyalties to be considered, Lenny, to the law perhaps, or merely to the proprieties...
...Can it be the power, or at least the touching distance of power that's gotten to you...
...J. Fred Buzhardt can write briefs, but who trusts J. Fred Buzhardt...
...Billy Graham was the chaplain to the bigwigs...
...The things that you weren't could win you a Nobel Prize...
...Does he smile at you and tell you jokes...
...Why, delegations of this minority and that came to visit and went away feeling a little better for the talk...
...Do they let you use a limousine...
...What is it with you...
...You and your cohort are laboring now not to save the ship but merely to save Captain Queeg...
...Some trophy...
...you're the good-guy front man...
...Hey, Lenny, can it be that you were the President's man all along, and not much but the President's man...
...Does Elliot Richardson have more gumption than you, Lenny...
...About this General Haig now, we can understand...
...They say you felt comfortable talking with representatives of minority groups, and conveyed a sense that you were listening and would do what you could...
...John Mitchell could talk to John Dean, but could he talk to blacks...
...Is that your considered opinion...
...The finer points of the process are not in his line...
...If you run into trouble, you can always ask that Abplanalp for a $625,000 loan on no security, or find a drug manufacturer to set up a trust fund for one of your children...
...Think of it—a Buzhardt being criticized by a Ziegler...
...You must know that every one of the Administration's goons will find a comfortable place in some corporation before the memory of Watergate fades...
...Lenny, Don't Worry NOW, IT CAN'T be that you are worried about getting another job...
...It's the old private enterprise Social Security system for the pols and bureaucrats of last year who still have chums in Washington this year—both parties may apply...
...At least we think there are...
...We fear, Lenny, that you are being used now as you have been throughout this Administration...
...What do the two of you talk about . . . and anyway, what is a Buzhardt...
...There he sits, clean shaven, very nice posture, chief of staff to the Commander in Chief...
...But surely, Lenny, you can find better use for your talents than going through the motions of defending the indefensible...
...By the way, what did you say those talents were exactly...
...Is it your opinion...
...And, Lenny, with all deference, it isn't covering much...
...He's expendable...
...Or is it loyalty...
...As for that Ron Ziegler, one of the last living top advisers to the President, what could such a fellow do if he didn't have Richard Nixon to kick him around any more...
...Lenny, those legalistic strategems and back-pedalings and nit-pickings...
...Ah, J. Fred Buzhardt Jr...
...One moves from the Agriculture Department to the grain merchants, from Defense to the arms makers, from Commerce to almost anywhere...
...No, to remain in this Administration, which has shown such an aversion to integrity in its officials, such a horror of independence in its underlings, such an antipathy to distinction in its counselors, must call into question one's own intelligence and honesty...
...But if it is worthy of you, then, be warned, we may have to transfer our trust to Gerry Ford...
...Peripheral America...
...So that can't be why you're allowing the name Garment to serve as a cloak for the morally deformed...
...We never figured out exactly what it was you were doing for those people, but we all appreciated that you weren't a Haldenstern or an Ehrlichcrantz...
...can you feel comfortable now consorting with this Buzhardt...
...Protected by that ignorance of life and politics to which our military men are strictly bred, he knows how to take orders and to give them...
...But now . . . what are you up to now, Lenny, in that disaster area where the Buzhardts hover...
...Or do you wake up in the early hours and lie there wondering what in God's name you are doing...
...lighted on you and made you into something of their own desiring...
...Now, please don't start up about the rats and the sinking ship...
...that you would never make a speech inciting to riot against boys with long hair...
...You weren't a compiler of enemies lists...
...Is the Garment center at ease...
...This one insults the mind and offends the nostrils...
...Sure, every defendant deserves an attorney, but not every attorney has to feel comfortable with every defendant...
...If that is so...
...Can it be that reporters, in search of somebody down there who was not a Haldencrantz or an Ehr-lichstern...
...Were we mistaken...
...Maybe the truth is that the house liberal was all along more house than liberal...
...True, we didn't know exactly what was keeping you busy at the White House, what accomplishments you were accomplishing there, but what the heck, you weren't hurting anybody...
...Somebody even gave Spiro Agnew a job...
...You could always tell yourself, and us, that you were the intermediary for everybody who didn't vote for him...
...Have you looked around...
...Even Ron Ziegler criticizes him in public...
...You're staying up all hours devising phony arguments to save a phony client...
...Helping the Indians...
...Does he pat your cheek...
...Doing something about the oil shortage...
...Do you go home these nights with a sense of satisfaction, a feeling of contributing, the old job-well-done feeling...
...Where is that old gang of yours...
...Lenny, Start Worrying EVEN IF THAT is so, Lenny, bear with us as we try to save you from yourself...
...What values do you believe this President stands for and symbolizes to the nation...
...Even such a President...
...Yours nervously, The Leonard Garment Fan Club...
...They'll come volunteering from the classiest law firms...
...After all, when the President calls, a citizen answers, right...
...It was also to your credit that you didn't get an invitation to the wedding of the President's daughter, that you were never caught boating with Bebe, that you never had a drink with John and Martha or recited fibs to newspapermen...
...You didn't bomb Cambodia...
...Do you really believe, this minute, that Rose Mary Woods is double jointed or dimwitted...
...But you must know there's a kind of honor these days to being the subject of nasty leaks from the White House...
...You weren't a campaign treasurer...
...You didn't sell grain to the Russians...
...Many rats have been driven from this ship by those who want nothing more than to keep it afloat...
...You weren't a plumber...
...Lenny, what does it take to disgust you...
...What more could a soldier ask...
...Especially such a President...
...Who's left for a bit of intellectual discourse...
...To the office which has been demeaned or to the man who has demeaned it...
...Blacks and people like that...
...Loyalty to what...
...Battling inflation...
...If only John Mitchell were capable of smiling, he could've won Walter Cronkite's heart...
...It's kid stuff, okay for a Buzhardt—but we had the idea that you were a different sort of counselor...
...There are worthier battles for you to fight, Lenny...
...Does the man let you come to the big functions, and bring the wife...
...that you did not blame the people in slums for living there...
...You were one of the few good kids in a classroom full of rowdies, and how could you know that the teacher was on their side...
...With everybody else gone, do you at last have the President's ear...
...Reporters have a way of doing that...
...We think, we hope, your job isn't worthy of you...
...that as your colleagues went about perverting and destroying programs for the poor, you would always be available to give the underdog a pat...
...Who could begrudge you a title, a desk and a bugged telephone...
...Lenny, we understood why you took the job in the first place...
...We understood, Lenny, sure we understood...
...you were the chaplain to the littlewigs...
...But, wait, maybe we are assuming too much...
...Maybe you can get yourself shipped far away, like Pat Moynihan did, that smart Irishman...
...Can you make all the visiting days...
...Lenny, you're being used in a cause that cannot, we hope, be truly your own...
Vol. 57 • January 1974 • No. 1
