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EDITORIAL
Setting An Example
The town of New Milford has decided that it will
not turn on its decorative, Christmas street-lighting
this year. This is a small contribution toward the
conservation of energy and an example, which
townspeople hope will be followed by many other
communities and cities.
Their decision to forego the attractive, yet waste-
ful use of energy should serve as an example, not
only to communities, but to individuals.
This country uses massive amounts of energy
each day. For the most part, these massive
amounts are the sum of small amounts consumed
by millions of users. Energy, therefore, will best be
We have to think conservation, turning off un-
needed lights, turning down the heat three to five
degrees and wearing a sweater, driving the car
slower and less, walking to the corner store, etc.
We all have to do what little we can, as New Mil-
ford is doing, to get us through this period of burn-
ing up part of the world to keep the rest of the world
running, using up as little as possible, until we de-
vise a better, safer and wiser source of energy...the
sun, the oceans, the atom, or whatever.
Needed :A Compromise
Hardly a conversation begins anymore without
some mention of the President’s troubles. Where
the weather was once the password for pleasantries
And almost daily another event comes to light
surrounding the President that rocks the American
public back on its heels in disbelief.
The nation’s opinion-makers are hard pressed to
come up with workable solutions to Mr. Nixon's
Watergate dilemma. Acting Atty. Gen. Robert
Berk says'he has not been told by the President that
the new Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski will
not be fired like his predecessor, or that he carries
the independence from the White House he needs.
Mr. Jaworski, meanwhile, is being investigated re-
garding his involvement with laundered money
going through a Texas foundation and into former
Secretary of the Treasury John Connolly's
Democrats for Nixon, while Congress isn’t even
sure yet whether it will permit Nixon appointee
Jaworski to head the Watergate investigation. And
the public is far from believing that the White
House has turned over a new leaf and is candidly
attempting to get to the bottom of Watergate and
related scandals.
In the background lurks: the President’s involve-
ment in the ITT antitrust settlement; the mini-
White Houses with their $8 million price tag; and
the President’s payment of only $1,672.84 in income
taxes on a salary of $400,000.
In the House, impeachment proceedings are
gathering steam. In the Senate, the GOP is
beginning to pull away from Mr. Nixon while
considering a bill to authorize a federal court ap-
pointed Watergate prosecutor. Sen. Barry Gold-
water is calling for a period of constraint, while
Republican Sen. Peter Donimick is urging collea-
gues to burn their White House bridges behind
them. Republican Sen. Edward Brook, and scores
of news organizations across the country, are
advocating that the President resign.
~ The American people do not see Vice President
designate Gerald Ford as a dynamic leader. But he
offers a fresh face to carry the nation through a
crucial three years until election time. Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger, backed by respect from the
people, can handle the nation’s foreign and diplo-
matic policies.
As leaders of the Republican party begin to pull
away from the embittered President, so likewise do
the people. Next will come the President’s own
cabinet, if things don’t change, leaving Mr. Nixon
standing alone. This would surely bring about a
compromise—one where Mr. Nixon might be per-
mitted to lock away his tapes and papers in the Na-
tional Archives until well after the turn of the cen-
tury in return for his resignation.
-
Capitol Notes
by William Ecenbarger
Because conventional housing has soared
beyond the financial grasp of many low- and
middle-income families, nearly a million
Pennsylvanians now live in mobile homes.
Contrary to folklore, studies by Pennsyl-
vania State University show that these resi-
dents of houses-on-wheels are no more noma-
dic than the owners of stationary homes.
The principal motivation of mobile home
buyers is that they can get a fairly elaborate
dwelling for less that $15,000—a difficult feat
these days in the conventional home market.
In Pennsylvania as elsewhere, mobile
home sales have spurted in recent years—and
with the lightning growth have developed un-
foreseen and serious problems for the owners.
Although landlord-tenant relationships
are carefully regulated by state law in con-
ventional housing, mobile home owners have
few legal guarantees that their homes will be
their castles.
of mobile home living. Local zoning laws are
so restrictive in most areas of Pennsylvania
that mobile homes can only be placed in de-
signated mobile home parks. And the proprie-
tors of these parks—landlords, if you will—
are free to evict their tenants virtually at will.
A current set of rules and regulations for
a mobile home park near Harrisburg is in-
structive:
—““The management reserves the right to
refuse admittance and accomodations to any-
one, without stating the cause, and to decline
to accept further rental from any person or
persons not desired.”
—*‘‘We reserve the right to authorize or
reject any milkman, baker, etc.”
—“The management reserves the right to
change, without notice, the assigned spaces
allotted to tenants.”
Other parks charge stiff entrance fees
and require residents to purchase additional
equipment and plant shrubbery at their own
expense.
A more serious hardship is that most
TRB
from Washington
He was a small man, slight of stature, ‘no
bigger,” someone said, ‘‘than half a piece of
soap’’ and his friends called him Jemmy. In
June, 1789, Rep. James Madison of Virginia
rose on the floor of the House of Representa-
fles at breast and wrist, and made certain ob-
servations about impeachment.
The legislative body listened to him in-
tently, because the Constitution wasn’t a year
old' yet and this blue-eyed, quiet-voiced man
with the springy 'step knew more about it than
anybody else. They were days of magnifi-
cence fora bold little country, but at the same
time, everything was so new. Let’s listen to
Jemmy, who became the fourth President of
the United States:
Suppose in days to come, he said, ‘an un-
worthy president’ maintains in office an un-
worthy cabinet member. “Then the House of
Representatives can at any time impeach
him, and the Senate can remove him, whether
the President choses or not.”
Yes, he continued, but ‘‘the President can
displace from office a man whose merits re-
quire that he should be continued in it. That
was the other side of the coin, he explained,
and the modern reader will, of course, think
of President Nixon and Special Watergate
Prosecutor Archibald Cox. And what, Mr.
Madison asked, ‘‘will be the motives which
the President can feel for such abuse cf his
power, and the restraints that operate to pre-
vent it? In the first place he will be impeached
by this House, before the Senate, for such an
act of maladministration: for I contend that
the wanton removal of meritorious officers
would subject him to impeachment and remo-
parks require tenants to remove their mobile
homes from the park before they can sell
them. This, in effect, discourages sales and
only adds to Pennsylvania's already serious
housing shortage.
An important part of the overall problem
is that demand for sites is out-running supply.
Because of the difficulty in relocating, most
mobile home tenants swallow the despotic
rules of their landlords.
There is no state agency they can turn to,
and no law to support them. This has led. Sen.
Edward Howard (R—Bucks County) to intro-
duce legislation extending basic rights to mo-
bile home owners.
Sen. Howard’s bill prohibits require-
ments that materials be purchased from park
owners, allows tenants to sell their homes
without removing them from the park, sets a
maximum entrance fee of $125 and forbids
park owners to levy additional charges for
utility services. In drafting his bill, Sen. Ho-
ward drew on information compiled from
around the state by the Bucks County Legal
Aid Society.
The legislation has attracted little atten-
tion from ruling Democrats in the Senate, but
it has received a bipartisan boost from a
Shapp Administration cabinet official, Com-
“munity Affairs Secretary William H. Wilcox.
“With an ever increasing nymber of
people having to resort to mobile re living
for financial reasons, it has becomé“apparent
to this department that basic rights and stan-
dards must be established and maintained,”
Mr. Wilcox said.
pn
/
val from his own high trust.”
Rep. Madison’s voice was low and friends
often called to him to speak louder. Whether
his wife Dolly was in the audience I don’t
know; after all, he was merely giving a little
lecture on what the Constitution meant. He
had helped draft it. ‘But what can be the mo-
tives for displacing a worthy man?’’ he asked.
“It must be that he (the President) may fill
_the place with an unworthy character of his
own.. Can’ le accomplish’ this end? 'No,” he’
said. BI RIG0CER CIO ; ‘
Mr. Madison was talking about the office
of a possible “Secretary of the Department of
Foreign Affairs’’ (Secretary of State), requir-
ing Senate confirmation. But confirmation or
not, Mr. Madison’s words had equal rele-
vancy: “If he could fill the vacancy with the
man he might choose, I am sure that he would
have little inducement to make an improper
removal. Let us consider the consequences.
The injured man will be supported by the pop-
ular opinion: the community will take sides
with him against the President....To displace
aman of high merit, and who from his station
may be supposed a man of extensive in-
fluence, are considerations which will excite
serious reflections beforehand in the mind of
any man who may fill the Presidential chair.
The friends of those individuals and the public
sympathy will be against him.”
Mr. Madison went on with his methodical
logic: “If this should not produce impeach-
ment before the Senate, it will amount to an
impeachment before the country, who will
have the power of punishment, by refusing to
re-elect him.” ;
The 22nd Amendment has, of course,
The student government of Marshall Uni-
versity sponsored a debate the other night, as
part of a week-long study of ‘“The Presidency
in Crisis.”’ The question for debate was blunt
and to the point: Resolved, that President
Richard M. Nixon should be impeached.
Congressman Paul N. McCloskey, one of
the ablest and most articulate young Republi-
cans in the House, took the affirmative side.
Since early June, when his resentful collea-
- gues prevented him from making a formal
speech on the proposition, Rep. McCloskey
has been urging the House to begin at least an
inquiry into the impeachment issue. That
Sunday night, he went all the way and argued
flat-out that President Nixon should be re-
moved from office.
I had the negative side. To judge from the
applause, Rep. McCloskey won, but the reac-
tion of a largely student audience, even in an
area that went two-to-one for Mr. Nixon last
year, may not reflect sentiment in the House
or in the country as a whole; In answer to a
student’s question, Rep. McCloskey himself
acknowledged that impeachment is not a ser-
ious or realistic possibility yet. Nevertheless,
he argued the proposition in dead earnest.
Rep. McCloskey’s case rests largely on
two events: the President’s approval in July,
1970, of a secret plan for gathering intelli-
gence, and the burglary of the office of Daniel
Ellsburg’s psychiatrist in September, 1971.
He sees both events as clear violations of Mr.
Nixon's oath to ‘preserve, protect, and de-
fend the Constitution,” and he accuses the
President of three specific unlawful acts:
accessory after the fact, misprision of felony,
and obstruction of justice. He made a persua-
sive case.
But not a convincing case, in my opinion.
In considering impeachment, it ought to be
kept constantly in mind that impeachment of
a President is a criminal process. Every rele-
vant constitutional provision makes this
clear. A President can be removed only on
“impeachment for, and conviction of, trea-
son, bribery, or other high crimes and misde-
meanors.”’ The President is to be ‘“‘tried” by
the Senate, with the chief justice *‘presiding.”
In Article III, impeachment is specifically
tied to ‘‘the trial of all crimes.”
Neither of the two events cited by Mr.
McCloskey, in my own view, qualifies as a
criminal act on Mr. Nixon’s part. It is a mat--
ter of pure opinion, on which observers will
always be divided, whether a President is
“faithfully’’ executing the laws or is ‘‘pre-
serving, protecting and defending’ the Con-
stitution. The 1970 intelligence plan was res-
cinded five days after it was authorized. Mr.
Nixon has said—and no one privy to the inci-
dent has contradicted him— that while he or-
dered an investigation of Mr. Ellsberg, he had
no prior knowledge of the burglary commit-
ted by his own ‘‘plumbers.”” When he learned
of the break-in, he has said, hé promptly
directed that it be reported to the trial judge
in the Ellsberg case.
made Mr. Nixon ineligible for another elec-
tion, but his party is up for election one year
from now and it may want to disassociate it-
self from Watergate. Anyway, that’s the
guide James Madison gave us some 180 years
ago, as set down dutifully in the Annals of
Congress, Vol. 1, June 17, 1789. They hadn’t
coined the phrase Founding Father then, but
no better witness could be found of how mat-
ter-offactly people then approached the pro-
ceds of impeachment, which daunts us so
much today. >
A couple of months ago this fallible col-
umn reported that there wasn’t a chance of
impeachment. Things have changed. It has
been an agonizing process of watching Mr.
Nixon knock himself out. Always he makes
concessions and always too late. People who
didn’t mind ‘“‘the plumbers’ gasped to find
that a man with a salary of $200,000 was ap-
parently paying less tax money than they;
that a man who criticized welfare handouts
was getting $10 million in federal funds for his
Florida and California estates. Then came the
firing of Archibald Cox and the resignations
of Mr. Richardson and Mr. Ruckelshaus, and
the White House, too late, realized the awful
mistake it had made. Then came the Cox tele-
vised press conference on that sunny Satur-
day in October.
I have seen what I regard as three sup-
reme one-man political performances in my
life-time. First was FDR's ‘little dog Fala’
speech to the Teamsters here in Washington
in 1944. It was so funny and devastating that
Mr. Dewey, who had run his candidate’s spe-
cial train into a quiet siding to hear it, chang-
ed his whole campaign plan. It was the only
The case for Mr. Nixon's impeachment
fails on practical grounds as well. Public
opinion polls, I suspect, do not fully reflect the
depth and the passion of pro-Nixon sentiment
in this whole affair. Millions of Americans see
the assault on the President as a conspiracy
between partisan Democrats and a liberal
press. An effort at outright impeachment
would create political convulsions that would
polarize the electorate and tear our country
asunder.
If a majority of the House were to support
a resolution of impeachment, thus forcing a
trial by the Senate, both the legislative and
executive branches would be paralyzed for a
time. Every action of the President would be
time in my life where I saw men, exuberant
union leaders who had been fortifying them-
selves for the occasion, literally rolling in the
aisles.
Nixon’s ‘‘Checkers’’ speech in 1952. Ike was
ready toditch him at the revelation of his sec-
ret fund. (Secret fund!—it seems third grade
stuff today). The speech was maudlin and
politically superb. ‘Pat doesn’t have a mink
coat. But she does have a respectablggepub-
lican cloth coat.” It brought ty tele-
grams.
I put number three, Jack Kennedgat the
Rice Hotel in Houston at 8:30 p.m.,
1960, when he faced the sullen Greater Hous-
ton Ministerial Association. The Rev. Nor-
man Vincent Peale was on the loose, giving
respectable leadership to the ancient fears
that beat Al Smith. In a speech cooked up with
- Ted Sorenson (Unitarian) and followed by
believe in an America where the separation of
Church and State is absolute.” Before he
finished the audience cheered. He had opened
an era.
And now, I have to put down number
four—that press conference of Archy Cox on a
sunny Saturday last month. Maybe I exagger-
ate. But it seemed to me he suddenly trigger-
weeks. Here is a man of honor, theublic
said. Mr. Nixon had fired him, and hard-
+ son and Ruckelshaus had quit, too.
What was it Jemmy Madison said, ‘the
injured man will be supported by the popular
opinion’?
read in terms of its effect upon his jurors. The
most delicate decisions in domestic and for-
eign affairs would be thrust into a whirlpool of
bitterly partisan emotions. And throughout
the agonizing experience, the prospect of a
presidential successor would becloud judge-
ment. ¥
All this is not to condone or to excuse Mr.
Nixon’s blunders in office, especially his
wretched handling of the Watergate affair.
His blunders are monumental, but they are
not, in the constitutional sense, ‘‘highig@#imes
and misdemeanors.” A judgement on this
President must be left not to the Senate in a
tumultuous hour, but to history, and to the
ages.
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