Acting Roles in A Fellini Script

"This is a grim city," observed Senator Jacob Javits, the New York Republican. Indeed, the reaction to the tape transcripts and the opening of the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment proceedings imposed new standards of crisis measurement in Nixonian Washington. Pressure on the White House built to a new high that seemed intolerable, yet the prospect was for more of the same.

In emergencies, a standard Washington reflex is rumor. One rumor had the President suffering a stroke (disproved by his physical presence). Another had Attorney James St. Clair quitting the White House in disgust (denied by St. Clair, though he did acknowledge "wondering sometimes why I left Boston"). A third depicted Gerald Ford in full defection from the man who made him Vice President (an overstatement, but Ford was zigzagging). Among the more preposterous was the rumor that President and Mrs. Nixon were planning to divorce (a bit of gossip she passed on to her daughter Julie, who later reported amusedly. "She wanted me to help her think up an exciting third person"). Above all, there was the inevitable rumor that President Nixon would soon resign. The White House shouted no at every skeptical ear--Press Secretary Ron Ziegler even phoned the New York Times and fired off a denial--but the reports persisted, echoed and grew louder.

An air of unreality hung over the capital. A Senate staff man said: "You feel as if you are in a Fellini movie. It's in slow motion and it's disjointed." The bureaucracy slackened its pace. The notion that business goes on as usual was an illusion.

Republican Congresswoman Margaret Heckler of Massachusetts found herself wounded by one phrase in the White House transcripts. "Heckler was great," John Dean had said, referring to an effort to block an investigation of laundered campaign money. Fearing damage in her campaign for reelection, Heckler denied the implication that she had been a White House captive. She hastened to collect television clips of previous statements so that she could prove her independence to her constituents.

Another bit-player in the drama, White House Assistant Leonard Garment, appeared almost happy. In the transcripts, he was shown to be a man who had the right ideas at the right time. In April 1973, as the Watergate cover-up continued to crumble, Garment suggested that Nixon first dismiss H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, then give a full public explanation of the scandal. But the architects of Nixon's disaster belittled Garment and his proposals. Now, compared with the more influential presidential advisers, Garment seems sensible and prescient. Former Newsman Patrick Buchanan, a White House special consultant who has often ravaged the press, suddenly had some modest praise for journalists. Hearing him, a Washington correspondent insisted, "Pat, it sounds like you are looking for work."

The Council of Women's Republican Clubs was in session during the week. And most members were unhesitating supporters of the beleaguered President. Pat Nixon was given a warm welcome; questions from reporters about the transcripts elicited cold stares. A newsman making a random check found few members who would admit to having read even excerpts of the transcripts. But one woman denounced the impeachment investigation as a "plot to destroy the two-party system." Mrs. Nixon was reported to have read little if any of the conversation--but Julie and David Eisenhower ordered a full set on the day the papers were released.

At a party, a senior Nixon appointee caught himself in midsentence as he argued Nixon's case. "Why am I defending him?" he asked himself aloud. "I don't care if he is impeached." No such doubts afflicted Father John McLaughlin, a Jesuit who is a Nixon speechwriter. He is also an adroit Nixon apologist. McLaughlin explained Nixon's use of profanity as "a form of emotional drainage. The President is onstage so much that it becomes a form of release, almost therapy." McLaughlin went on television to predict that historians would judge Nixon "the greatest political leader of the last third of this century. He's going to be regarded as the greatest moral leader of the last third of this century." Which prompted AFL-CIO President George Meany, a devout Roman Catholic, to inquire with pointed skepticism about the broad-minded cleric: "I'd like to know where and when he holds confessions."

But Meany, like the rest of Washington, was not really in a joking mood. Decked out in a tuxedo to say goodbye to George Shultz, who was retiring as Secretary of the Treasury, the union chief summed up matters: "The American people have decided that Richard Nixon is not fit to be President."

A few Nixon men attempted to deflate that kind of talk. "Some of this suffocating moral outrage will diminish," said a White House adviser. "Our adversaries can hold that decibel level only for so long."

More typical of the Washington mood was the exchange about the President between a veteran newsman and an experienced capital lawyer. "He's Humpty Dumpty," said the reporter, remarking that the Nixon forces will not be able to muster a coherent defense. "No," the lawyer replied in a different metaphor. "He is a bull, maddened and racing ferociously around the arena, unable to shake the banderillas that pierce him everywhere. He still snorts and charges, but he is finished."

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