Who's Bored with Watergate?

It is suddenly fashionable for everyone to be bored with the Watergate hearings--everyone, that is, except perhaps the public. Richard Nixon wants to get back to the "people's business." Congressmen professed to find the folks back home ready to move on to other matters during August holiday soundings.

As the hearings resumed last week, even Senator Sam Ervin's investigating panel seemed to exhibit a certain distraction and ennui. To top it all off, after three days the major television networks, which had pooled their efforts on the live telecasts, voted 2 to 1 (CBS in the minority) to stop their gavel-to-gavel live coverage. Their explanation is that the hearings, now shifting into campaign ethics and funding, are becoming less newsworthy.

It is undoubtedly true that a portion of the public is wearying of the affair, since most of the vital revelations seem already to have been made. Still, the opinion polls indicate that public interest in Watergate remains high, and television ratings show that Watergate is continuing to outdraw other daytime shows. It is as if the critics and the players were to decide a piece of theater was fraying a bit after a long run, and never mind the audience.

The Watergate investigations, however, are not a bit of show business but a vital and necessary effort to probe the most serious abuse of power in the republic's history. The U.S. simply has no right to be bored with Watergate. It is just possible the American people now perceive that more clearly than some of their elected officials and some of the chroniclers.

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