Weighing the Rising Odds Against Nixon

By Hugh Sidey

There is a growing conviction among many responsible men of both parties that Richard Nixon will not finish his term.

This conviction is based not only on the arguments now in progress about his guilt or innocence on specific charges but also on a sense of the nation. There is a deep current running against him, both in the affair called Watergate and in the conditions of American life.

It is a curious time, rife with opportunity that might lift a President to greatness if he seized the moment, but paralyzing for a leader who appears to have something to hide or cannot find his way beyond his own interests to the hearts of the people.

Some time before Spiro Agnew quit, the political seer Richard Scammon was asked what was going to happen to the Vice President. "If he is guilty, he will hang," was Scammon's simple answer. That response contained a great deal of wisdom, experience and faith in the American sense of morality. It applies to Nixon too. If the anguish of Watergate has proved anything, it is that there is still a feeling for right and wrong in this country, and that a pretty good case can still be made that men who have committed crimes are detected. The crimes touch too many lives, leave too many clues, to be covered forever in an open society. Speaking of where the guilt lies, one former campaign aide who played a bit part in the Watergate drama says: "It is Nixon. He is the one. How Ehrlichman, Haldeman and Mitchell go on with this charade is incredible."

The path ahead for the President in Watergate appears to be filled with uncertainties. Beyond that is the growing perception of the incompetence and malfeasance of the Nixon Administration. The best that can be said about the President's Watergate defense is that it was a bungle. The dimensions of crimes committed under the Nixon banner are now known and understood in some way by almost all Americans. --The history of this nation suggests that when profound moral issues like this one settle in the national soul, nothing will deny a final, convulsive resolution. Certainly the Civil War was such an issue. No fancy legal footwork or geographic compromises or maneuvers by politicians could prevent the final act of war. Perhaps the civil rights upheavals of the 1960s were similar outpourings that would not be denied. If we have not passed the point of no return on the resignation or impeachment of Richard Nixon, we are very near to it.

Events are exploding in the spiritual and confidence vacuum left by Watergate. The economic and energy crises are producing fear and anger out of proportion to their threat to our way of life. In particular, as the economy turns down and jobs are lost in the months ahead, this anger is likely to be directed against Nixon.

The truckers who blocked the highways are the most recent and visible protesters. Airline pilots, upset by job cutbacks, threaten a Christmas boycott. Wherever one travels, there is a feeling of disillusion among the groups now being touched by crisis and material shortage. Bankers and finance men in Western cities ride along the raw edges of panic with their Wall Street colleagues. Many in the resort trade are petrified. The trade conventions of men in the petrochemical industry are held under a cloud of doubt. The immense plastics industry is nearing a slowdown.

While bankers and manufacturers, truck drivers and jet pilots understand that Nixon did not bring on the Arab oil embargo, they also understand that the leadership in the energy crisis has been dismal to nonexistent until now. Ironically, nobody has insisted on presidential sovereignty in crisis management more than Nixon. He will reap the credit-and the blame. --Then there are the Republican Senators and Congressmen who are up for re-election next fall. Many of them are far more frightened and pessimistic about their own chances than they were even a month ago. Suddenly it has been discerned that a lot of anger is directed selectively at Republicans. Senators like Maryland's liberal Charles Mathias and Colorado's conservative Peter Dominick, who put some distance between themselves and Nixon a while ago, appear to be gaining ground. But there is still some doubt about their reelection, and larger doubts about those who, like Bob Dole of Kansas, are still counted in the Nixon tent. Most reporters in this city have lost count of the number of Senators and Congressmen who have said how much better off they think the country would be if Nixon would just resign.

The comforting presence of strong, decent, sensible Vice President Gerald Ford weighs against Nixon. So now, in a remote way, does Nelson Rockefeller, who has resigned as Governor of New York. Rockefeller will head the National Commission on Critical Choices for America, which cannot help focusing on the inadequacies of Nixon's domestic and political leadership.

Nixon's White House operation is like an albatross around his neck. While good men are trying to get on with the nation's business, they are often as not ignored, and Nixon turns to inexperienced, frightened aides for the little counsel that he accepts in his splendid state of isolation. The White House now faces a new parade of departures, headed by sound men like Melvin Laird and Bryce Harlow.

We are watching the assembly of a giant national mosaic. Many of the parts we can discern, and we can see how they fit together. Many other events and personalities are still only vaguely defined, and the pattern of the past suggests that there is much to come which we cannot even imagine.

If Nixon is a guilty man and if evidence or testimony linking him directly with crimes is about to come out, he probably will resign. Or if the mathematics of the House is such that impeachment seems inevitable, then the threat of unlimited subpoena powers to get any document and talk to any witness may be more than he can or will want to withstand.

We are in a kind of pause now. We are waiting to see how serious the energy crisis will become in our lives. Christmas, as always, has mellowed the nation and turned attention from our anguish to the hope in Christ's call to humanity. But the question of what to do about Richard Nixon lies at the heart of almost every other question before us. It is now quite apparent that we must resolve that before we can move on.

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