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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (July 25, 1973)
---Commentary Watching Americans watch Watergate By KENNETH CRAWFORD WASHINGTON— From Washington, the thumb of Michigan — a principally rural and small-town area jutting into Lake Huron — seems remote. From the thumb of Michigan, Washington — the center of American government — seems equally remote. Yet the residents of both areas see the same national television programs, read the same syndicated news paper columns and subscribe to some of the same periodicals. Considering that they share their primary sources of current information, the difference in their reactions to the Watergate affair and related scandals is remarkable. This difference cannot be accounted for, though it often is, by the assumption that Washington’s political sophistication is unmatched in the hin terland. Politics and its practioners are as well understood in county seats as in the federal seat — maybe better. It is my impression after six weeks in Harbor Beach, Mich., that most of its inhabitants think, as do most Washingtonians, that President Nixon, while he may not have had prior knowledge of the Watergate burglary and other dirty tricks of the 1972 campaign, knew about and may have participated in the cover-up. But it is taken for granted in this town, to a degree that it is not in Washington, that President Nixon will finish out his second term, still in com mand of the nation’s destinies. I am not surprised that Gallup finds 71 per cent of Americans unconvinced that Nixon is wholly innocent of guilty knowledge, if not guilty conduct, in the Watergate scandal and nevertheless that only 18 per cent think he should resign or be subjected to impeachment. If I judge the attitude of The Thumb anywhere near right, this Gallup outcome reflects it. In this, the thumb represents the norm and Washington the eccentric. The Eighth Congressional District of Michigan, which embraces the thumb, is traditionally Republican. It gave Nixon an overwhelming majority in 1972 and returned its Republican congressman, James Harvey, an almost two-to-one vote. But this is not the whole explanation for its tolerance of President Nixon, guilty or not. The collateral fact that there are no pre conditioned Nixon-haters among Republicans and not many even among Democrats in the district is more im portant. Most of my Michigan neighbors have either never heard of Alger Hiss or Helen Gahagan Douglas or have long since forgotten such characters in the Nixon saga. To them, Nixon is still the clearly preferable alternative to Sen. George McGovern. Another, even more important fact, is that the people of the Eighth District are doing very well. Unemployment is low. Employment at good wages is high. Even with prices where they are, there is little grumbling in the supermarkets, probably because the farmers are sharing in the take. The gasoline shortage is one of several irritants, but irritants are tolerable when there is money in the stock market. There is no disposition in my Michigan neighborhood, as there seems to be in Washington, to regard the succession of Watergate witnesses before the Ervin Committee as a parade of scoundrels. To the contrary, television has given some of them matinee-idol status. John Dean was a hit, I was told, at the beauty parlor. He reminded some of the older ladies of the late Leslie Howard — clean-cut, regular featured, soft-spoken, the kind of fellow a woman would want her son to be or a girl her beau. (The hearings were winning some of the audience away from the soap operas, even when rotation of coverage by the networks permitted a choice.) Almost all the witnesses up to John Mitchell (his time came after I had returned to Washington) made good im pressions. Their stories, however con tradictory of each other, were individually plausible. To suggest that Dean’s con science didn’t quicken until he was caught and on the hunt for a way out at the ex pense of former associates was to start an argument. Hugh Sloan, Jeb Stuart Magruder and even James McCord won sympathy. There is something hypnotic about that electronic box. It used to be said that it was so revealing of character that it would automatically sort the good from the bad politicans. Now it seems more likely that almost anyone of decent appearance, having a consistent story to tell and suf ficient exposure, can be a TV hero. Members of the Ervin Committee have struck a public relations bonanza. Hie chairman himself, however favorably known to his colleagues and to his con stituents, was unknown nationally until now. Almost overnight, he has become the country’s symbol of wit and wisdom, in tegrity and perseverance. Co-chairman Howard Baker comes out of the tube so personably that he inspires presidential talk. The country has discovered Herman Talmadge. It must be said that the committee has earned its good image. Unlike some previous senatorial investigating panels, it has not cast itself as the heavy by bullying witnesses and indulging in temper tan trums. It has pursued its serious purpose courteously and with becoming restraint. Any of its members and even some of its witnesses would do well running for office in the thumb of Michigan though not, probably, against Jim Harvey. Kenneth Crawford is a writer for the Washington Post C. 1973, The Washington Post Outrider The last indefensible gap By GARRY WILLS They keep coming, the crazy ones, praying in the White House for those who die, every day, by order of that mansion’s ruler. Twenty-five were arrested in one week, going on the White House tour, then kneeling in non-violence until police wagons took them away. Their crime is to disturb the tourists. Not that they break up the tours, or do anything unseemly. The crime is to remind people that our “peace with honor” has meant heavier bombing at a single stretch than we ever carried out before the “peace.” Americans do not want to remember that, and we are very successful amnesiacs; until, in our sleepwalking, we stumble across kneeling people — nuisances who put us to the trouble and expense of booking and arraigning them. (The charge is “illegal entry,” an odd one for people taking an authorized tour — it would look silly to book people for praying.) Why should anyone care now that the cut-off time has been negotiated between President and Congress? (The Cam bodians get no say in the matter.) It will soon be over, we are told — as we have been told for years. But even if that is true, the senselessness of the killing is just underscored and the moral objections are increased — for anyone still interested in moral issues, as these people obviously are. In the past, the government could distract us from the moral argument with legal arguments or tactical con siderations. Shifting back and forth from one of these stands to another, the case for the war reeled and staggered without ever collapsing entirely. But now it has literally no leg to stand on. Nixon himself used to say that a cut-off date destroyed his tactical advantage. Thus when he submitted to a cut-off date five weeks away, he destroyed his own case for bombing even five minutes more. The “enemy” knows it only has to last out those few weeks, no matter how punishing our bombers may be. Then why bomb on? That would be a mystery to anyone not familiar with the weird justifications of our bellicosity. We are supposed to be tough and never back down, even when there is no clear defined goal or measurable objective to our unyielding stance. Toughness is its own reward. Show you are not tough, and all the bullies will kick sand in your face. Besides Nixon is not only fighting Asians now, but Congress. (The war has always been a civil war — a fight against kids and professors and the press, more than one waged on Hanoi.) Without the justification of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, Nixon is waging an unconstitutional war. The Congress, which alone has authority to declare such a war, has shown its will to oppose it. By a technicality, the House could not muster the extra majority to override-a veto on the bill that displayed that will. But the will itself is a con stitutional fact making technicalities irrelevant. Nixon, caught in his unconstitutional position, cannot back down, cannot admit (in effect) that he has violated his oath to protect the document he now mocks. So he flexes a last few ripples of B-52 muscle, to show he is not contrite. The Asians under that fiery carpeting of efficient death must die to prop up his flimsy concept of executive privilege. These human lives are lambs sacrificed to the prerogatives of the White House — which brings us back where we started. To a house badly in need of prayer. C., 1973, Universal Press Syndicate 'NOW, IN PHASE FIVE . .
