Fair Game
GOODMAN, WALTER
Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Legacy of Watergate A day after the convictions of John Mitchell, John Ehrlichman, H. R. Haldeman, and Robert Mar-dian, there came from the estate at San Clemente the...
...that's a compliment...
...And though it will not be long before their names recede in our memories and join those featured players in old movies, bits of trivia for party chatter, their like are bound to return...
...Control of Power Democracy offers no guarantees...
...In this impervious state, Nixon above all men should understand if his old associates lay their guilt on him...
...For good or ill, the power to confront them exists-not to solve them but to engage them...
...His domestic legacy to his successor was not a rich one...
...that if they had only known the whole truth they would have done something different, something superior...
...At the moment, Nixon sits in San Clemente, for all we know watching daytime television or playing solitaire or putting together jigsaw puzzles...
...The difficulty resides as much or more in the positions as in the men...
...he has lost his career...
...Meanwhile, our problems increase...
...A John Dean, who draws the line at survival, is a salubrious influence in Washington...
...But where public officials are concerned, one form of loyalty is not much better or less dangerous than another...
...Watergate, that fated, vindictive force has "touched" a score of lives, and the former President, also "touched," is now "anguished...
...To what extent can the CIA or the FBI or the Defense Department be controlled by our elected representatives...
...he has lost a part of his fortune...
...We still do not know who fiddled with the tapes...
...They show us our old acquaintance, Richard Nixon, brooding in his sanctuary upon the conditions that brought him down...
...His anguish, we may believe, quite dominates his waking hours and possibly his dreams...
...Our Executive is at once far too powerful, and not nearly powerful enough...
...Maybe he will be able to turn a dollar, like Spiro Agnew, by going to work for the Arabs...
...In these painful hours, too, there surely must be some comfort for them in the notion that they are large figures, Lears or at any rate Othellos, brought down by implacable Fate...
...After the verdict, affirming his innocence, Haldeman told reporters: "There's only one human being in the world who knows to an absolute moral certainty the truth of my innocence or guilt...
...Now they have convicted his retainers, liberated his Judases and given him a different place in history than the one on which he had set his heart...
...The words were uttered by an unidentified associate-Was it the devoted Ziegler or just one of the kids?-a disembodied voice speaking in behalf of a mute spirit, yet they seem authentic...
...As for Watergate, it has become a force in itself, with an existence apart from anything he and his closest aides ever did not contemplated doing...
...Nixon is secure...
...Now, this kind of statement, like much of the defense at the trial, need not be swallowed whole...
...philosophy is an effete word...
...he may lose his liberty...
...And he seems the sweeter for adversity...
...But do they really believe any of it...
...Were all the minions caught up in Watergate acting out of personal loyalty to Richard Nixon...
...It is true that as a group they appear to be somewhat less obnoxious in defeat...
...Perils of Loyalty The case is not over...
...After a while, even disgrace fades, and an older Nixon, a new Nixon, an elder-statesman Nixon will no doubt come among us again...
...it does make him sort of human, which is a step in the right direction...
...Or was it loyalty to the office he occupied...
...And so it has...
...But the time is not ripe...
...We have succumbed to a good deal of self-congratulation over how our institutions managed to bring down the scoundrels...
...He has lost his wife, who may yet become a cult figure...
...Had they only been Iagos, they might be free today...
...That does not make him a tragic hero...
...In part that condition is in accord with the training and character of Gerald Ford...
...If one is to take their defenses straight, they all believe they were misled by their former chief in the days before anguish set in, when the cover-up still seemed within the control of mortals...
...Certainly...
...They exercised power without comprehending its reach...
...guileful, unpredictable, spiteful gods, gods of the Eastern seaboard...
...introspection is not their cup of tea...
...Henry Kissinger's stock is in worse shape than the rest of the market...
...I suspect the worst...
...He can scarcely be any further damaged, and they may gain a little something...
...He is anguished...
...But we can look forward to a time when, his leg repaired, his spirits improved, he will venture forth again...
...Their visions were narrow, more narrow even than Richard Nixon's...
...Certainly he will be able to get lecture engagements, like Ronald Zieg-ler, the unspeakable spokesman who has already begun delivering edifying remarks around the country, and talk to well-to-do audiences about politics and morality...
...Yet Lear and Othello had flaws of character, and so far as is known, none of these four tough guys has ever admitted any personal flaw other than being loyal to a fault...
...It has the power to annihilate whole continents, to spy on countless citizens, but does it have the power to keep such powers in check...
...But they can't complain about the word "tragically...
...Still a resistance to acting decisively is a natural enough response to the kinds of actions subsumed under the name Watergate...
...his successor, so slow in other things, acted like lightning in granting him a status above the law...
...that they were seduced, misled, betrayed...
...How, we may wonder, do Ehrlichman and Haldeman, Mitchell and Mardian like being raised to the status of Greek warriors...
...If decent leaders do not use it reasonably soon, a nation become desperate may turn to those who will have no compunction about using this power-only about using it in moderation...
...They are tough guys who have spent their lives acting on the main chance, and if they have been betrayed, there lies the source of betrayal...
...The combination of loyalty and power in the likes of Haldeman and Ehrlichman can bring only distress to the nation...
...The tragedy lies in our recognition that we will live to see others like them in places of power, along with other John Deans, Herbert Kalmbachs and Jeb Stuart Magruders, concocting other Water-gates, possibly not so gloriously exposed...
...When that charge is brought, if it is brought, the accused will, we may be sure, declare that he or she was misled by loyalty, etc...
...To know one's soul is a rare gift, beyond the Haldemans and Ehrlichmans...
...Even his innovations in our foreign entanglements, on which he had been counting for his place in history, do not seem to have taken us very far or in exactly the right direction...
...John Mitchell, in particular, has improved his public conduct vastly...
...yet it was a chancy business after all?but for those tapes, would justice have triumphed...
...Having finally, inevitably, gotten the worst must give us pause...
...The nature of that loyalty deserves attention...
...Will they go to their cells or their graves in the conviction that they were pawns or puppets or small enchiladas...
...All we can be sure of is that different Nixons will gouge and oil their ways to the top and they will never be short of hangers-on...
...Ensconced in his subsidized hideaway, perhaps he is already thinking about his redemption, between bouts of anguish...
...Every President needs men around him he can trust- if he can trust them too far, the rest of us had better be nervous...
...nothing is more painful in these matters than self-examination...
...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Legacy of Watergate A day after the convictions of John Mitchell, John Ehrlichman, H. R. Haldeman, and Robert Mar-dian, there came from the estate at San Clemente the announcement that their former leader was "deeply anguished by Watergate, and that these men, who were among his closest aides, and their families, have suffered so much, and that their lives have been so tragically touched by Watergate...
...Better men than they are losing their jobs each week...
...The gods were at work...
...They did not understand, and do not appear to understand to this day, that there was anything untoward in using public institutions to harass and defame their chieftain's "enemies...
...I deduce he meant Nixon...
...Intellectuals, professors, students, subversives of every stripe, The Media-all were bent on kicking him around...
...Nothing comes easier than self-deception...
...his physical condition is too sad to permit him to sit in a witness box for a couple of hours...
...He learned early that out there, especially along the Eastern seaboard, certain elements were determined to pick on him, no matter what...
...Or was it merely loyalty to their own positions, their bright careers...
...As the powers of the White House have grown and grown, we have kept our fingers crossed and hoped for the best...
...If there is a tragic element in this whole matter, it has nothing to do with the fall of Haldeman and Ehrlichman...
...Brooding in San Clemente, Nixon must feel that Watergate was no more within his control than the Trojan War was in the control of Hector...
...Today, the Executive seems almost immobilized...
...The pattern was set long ago...
...That question is not easily answered, and we would be simple-minded to put our confidence in blue-ribbon commissions to answer it for us...
...self-pity has been at the center of the man's philosophy for 30 years...
...Still, the world moves, things change, memories dim...
Vol. 58 • February 1975 • No. 4
