Monday, Jul. 02, 1973

Big John Drops Out

His jutting jaw, broad shoulders and close-cropped hair conveying an unmistakable aura of power, John Connally strode into the White House briefing room last week to hold a press conference. But appearances were somewhat deceiving. The tall Texan was there to confess to a loss of power at the White House. After a mere six weeks as President Nixon's adviser, he announced he was planning to resign some time in the summer and go off on a long-deferred trip around the world.

Entertaining the White House press corps with humor and relative candor, he admitted that his usefulness had ended. "I think I have given about all the advice I have to give. Obviously, I am not being fully utilized in an advisory capacity. I am catching up on reading."

For the record, he continued to defend the President. One of the reasons Nixon got into trouble, said Connally, was "his enormous delegation of authority and responsibility. That has been his style of operation. You have to take him for what he is, as you do any President, because he is a human being."

Sandbagged. Connally denied press reports that he was quitting because he had not been given a staff or had not been consulted enough. From most accounts, however, he had been unhappy in his job. At the outset, he was sandbagged by a politician even more cunning than himself. He had turned down Nixon's offer of the Defense Department or a top job on the White House staff. He preferred to serve as a low-keyed, part-time adviser so that he could come and go as he pleased.

He took his new job seriously; he gave the President unvarnished advice. He urged him to come clean on Watergate. He told Ron Ziegler that he had lost all credibility as press secretary. "If I were in your shoes," said Connally, "I wouldn't stay around here." Before long, Connally's phone stopped ringing; he found that he was not first among equals in the White House but just one adviser among many. At the state dinner for Leonid Brezhnev last week, he told reporters: "You can give advice, but you can't make 'em take it. I'm like the old man who said, 'I can teach it to you, but I can't learn it for you.' " As a Connally friend put it: "He Dutch-uncled on Watergate, and Nixon just didn't want to hear that."

Connally had come aboard a dangerously listing ship with the expectation of helping to save it, only to find out the captain did not want his kind of help. Now Connally is abandoning it with less of a reputation than when he boarded. His presidential aspirations have suffered a setback, but he plans to rebuild by campaigning for Republican candidates in 1974. From now on, he will have to search for power in corridors outside the White House.

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