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EDITORIAL
TV Suggestion . ..
Common Cause, the nation-wide citizens’ lobby,
has offered a plan to bridge the gap between those
who would impeach the President only on legal
grounds, and those who would impeach Mr. Nixon
for political wrong doing. The latter, of course, is
backed by a feeling of morals and ethics.
The new CC plan would bridge the gap by
televising the impeachment proceedings and
following a five-point policy on the conduct of an
impeachment trial. The Common Cause policy
statement bears consideration:
--The Senate, in event of a triai, should aim at
insulating senators from expressions of political
pressure from organized groups or their lobbyists
while not precluding reasoned discussion or con-
sultation by senators with citizens on an individual
basis.
--Senators should be required to maintain a pub-
lic daily log of all contacts with them or their staffs
and to maintain a public file of correspondence re-
garding impeachment. The log should also include
all contacts with the President or his representa-
tives in the White House or executive branch on any
subject, and what was discussed.
congressmen, the President, and their respective
staffs should be prohibited from making any direct
or indirect informal contacts with any senators on
the subject of impeachment.
--Live televised coverage of the Senate trial
should be permitted.
--Senators should refrain from publicly com-
menting on the evidence until they have voted.
Some of these suggestions seem prudent to both
citizens and constitutional scholars alike. More
importantly, the legal as well as the political
considerations would be better understood by the
electorate if the public’s business on this important
issue were performed before television cameras
and newspaper reporters rather than in the back
rooms around Capitol Hill.
The gold fish bowl approach is sometimes un-
comfortable for those who choose to conduct the
public’s business in secret, but the impeachment
§
ss
Richard Nixon was asking for public support
Monday night in offering a compromise to the
House Judiciary Committee. His proposal is to
provide edited versions of transcripts rather than
his elusive tapes. That’s probably not good enough
for committee members or the general public. The
defendant in any other case would be considered
guilty of obstructing justice if he withheld any
scrap of evidence a grand jury deems applicable.
The point is that Mr. Nixon has not been open and
candid on Watergate and other matters in the past.
It’s too late now. His credibility couldn’t be lower.
He asked for his version of Watergate to be ac-
cepted over that of John Dean, a self-confessed
felon. And nowhere in all this has Mr. Nixon
assured the nation that he is so clean as to be above
the scandals. Quite the contrary, he recently was
brought to exclaim, ‘I’m not a crook,” just as
Americans learned he owed more than $400,000 in
income taxes.
As Water Lippmann once observed, the great
issues of life and politics in a prosperous nation are
not material but spiritual. It’s in this area Mr.
Nixon has failed.
In his later years, Mr. Lippmann wrote: ‘‘Those
in high places are more than the administrators of
government bureaus. They are more than the
writers of laws. They are the custodians of the
nation’s ideals, of the beliefs it cherishes, of its
permanent hopes, of the faith which makes a nation
out of a mere aggregation of individuals. They are
unfaithful to that trust when by word and example
they promote a spirit that is complacent, evasive
and acquisitive...
‘The people are looking for men,’”’ Mr. Lippmann
‘wrote, ‘‘who are truthful, and resolute and eloquent
in the conviction that the American destiny is to be
free and magnanimous...who will talk to the people
about their duty, and about the sacrifices they must
make, and about the discipline they must impose
upon themselves and their leaders...about all those
things which make a people self respecting, serene,
and confident.’
Mr. Nixon is not a man who can succeed in any of
these areas, no matter the scandals, and it is within
this concept that historians will judge him. It is also
an area that he obviously does not understand.
--J.R. Freeman
In the current issue of National Review,
C. Dickerman Williams advances a hopeful
thought. Perhaps, he suggests, Mr. Nixon
could be talked into taking the Twenty-Fifth.
The venerable Mr. Williams, a distin-
guished New York lawyer, advances upon
this idea as cautiously as if he were raising a
periscope. He is wary of the unseen hazard;
he is feeling his way. His expedition into some
unexplored shoals of the Constitution is. part
of the curious undersea warfare that absorbs
us here. Other scouts, and other cruisers, are
all over town.
Warfare ordinarily is waged for some de-
finable purpose, but warfare often attracts
strange allies. Their purposes, as we long ago
learned at Berlin, may be generally but not
precisely identical. Here the aggressors’ pur-
pose, to put it bluntly, is to sink Mr. Nixon.
And Mr. Nixon’s purpose, by the same token,
is not to be sunk. He proposes to tough it out. I
still incline to the minority view that the Pre-
sident will win.
Some of the opposing forces, identified
with conservative Sen. James L. Buckley of
New York, would like to see the war ended
with Mr. Nixon’s resignation. Liberal foes
would prefer to see the President impeached
by the House, tried by the Senate, and re-
moved from office on conviction. It is the
difference between surrendering and sinking.
The President has shown no disposition to-
ward resignation, and for all the blustery talk
from Capitol Hill, the votes cannot yet be
counted solidly for impeachment, let alone for
conviction.
What Mr. Williams is suggesting is a
kind of truce. If the House should in
fact vote to impeach (only a majority
vote is required), he proposes
that Mr. Nixon will find refuge in Section
3 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. The sec-
tion provides that a President may transmit
to Congress ‘his written declaration that he is
unable to discharge the powers and duties of
his office.’’ In such an event, until a President
transmits a further declaration to the con-
trary, ‘‘such powers and duties shall be dis-
charged by the Vice President as Acting Pre-
sident.”
The idea has advantages. An impeached
President would be a crippled President. His
trial might take 10 to 12 months. During such
an ordeal, Mr. Nixon’s primary attentions
understandably would be concentrated upon
his own defense—upon his own survival.
Domestic and foreign concerns unavoidably
would take a subordinate place. By transfer-
[TRB
from Washington
Jar 2a pian iby Richard Strout
President Nixon is a gambler who bets for
high stakes; he gambled that his income tax
returns would not be questioned and they
made him, briefly, a millionaire. He lost. His
foray into the Michigan 8th District was also a
gamble: the area has been Republican for 40
years. He lost that one, too.
Other gambles lie ahead. Surely his des-
perate luck will turn in time. He gambled tha.
the House Judiciary Committee and special
prosecutor Leon Jaworski wouldn’t issue sub-
poenas. They did. On the Judiciary Com-
mittee Mr. Nixon’s own Republicans turned
against him, with a 33 to 3 vote and chairman
Peter Rodino once more adroitly preserved
bipartisanship. Mr. Nixon will take another
gamble shortly; he goes to Moscow sometime
in June; his popularity rises abroad when he
is the symbol of the nation. He is a wounded
President seeking foreign triumphs and the
Russians will help him, up to a point.
At some time not too distant a delelega-
tion of Republicans is likely to call on Mr.
Nixon and tell him that he ought to consider
stepping down. There is nothing but disaster
ahead as things are going. The party has lost
four out of five recent elections, including
areas that haven't been Democratic for
generations. Another contest is coming up—
California's 6th District, which, like the
others has been a safe GOP seat. Consider the
prospect of a ‘‘veto-proof’’ Democratic Con-
gress this Fall, consider Jerry Ford in 1976;
yes, consider the country, too. It would be the
easy thing for Mr. Nixon to stay, they may
say grimly, but the courageous thing would be
Capitol Notes
by William Ecenbarger
At the risk of offending Mrs. Holzwarth’s
third grade class at the Highland Park
Elementary School in Upper Darby, some-
thing further needs to be said about the new
firefly law.
Last month, you'll recall, Gov. Milton
Shapp signed into law legislation making the
firefly the official state insect. The idea
originated with the third graders at the
Delaware County school.
The event was widely, hailed by legis-
lators as an opportunity for the pupils to
“gain a lasting insight into the legislative
process’’— a claim that was repeated by the
governor at the bill-signing ceremonies.
Letters expressing readers’ views
are welcome, and will appear on the
opposite editorial page. They must bear
the signature and address of the writer,
be in good taste, and are subject to
condensation. Anonymous letters will
be discarded. All letters become the
property of the newspaper, and are not
subject to individual acknowledge-
ment. :
ring his official powers and duties to Mr.
Ford, so the theory goes, Mr. Nixon would
benefit his country, his party and his own de-
fense.
But the idea has drawbacks also. It is like
the recipe for rabbit stew: First catch the
rabbit. Mr. Nixon would have to be persuaded
to buy this novel proposition, and this would
take some persuasion. A President stripped of
his powers and duties lies anesthetized upon
the table. He is not operating; he is being
operated upon. Never mind the duties: He
could let those go. It is the power that makes
the job worth having—the power to com-
mand, the power to decide, the power to veto,
the power to appoint, the power to hire and
fire. Would Mr. Nixon relinquish such
powers? 5
What about Vice President Ford?
In the supposed circumstances, he would
be serving as a kind of trustee in bank-
ruptcy. Such a trusteeship works well
enough if the object is to save a failing
business. Would it work to save a failing
presidency? Mr. Ford already has told the
New Republic’s John Osborne, in an un-
guarded moment, that if he ever got to be
President, he would begin by firing Ron Zieg-
ler. Some persons would see that as a happy
prospect. In the thorny gardens of the Wash-
ington press corps. Ford-for-President but-
tons would blossom like roses. But it is not a
happy prospect for Mr. Nixon.
If the President, facing Senate trial, were
to take the Twenty-fifth, no conditions could
be attached. He could not reserve the power,
for example, to retain Mr. Ziegler and to
make Supreme Court nominations. Once he
declares himself ‘‘unable to discharge the
powers and duties of his office,”’ that ends it.
Presumably Mr. Nixon would continue to
draw his $200,000 salary, and perhaps he
could board and room at Blair House across
the street, but his trustee in bankruptey would
have the office and the assets.
I doubt the war will go this way. Mr.
Nixon has picked up five points in the polls. It
is not much, but it is something. Contrary to
the jubilant predictions of Wilbur Mills,
chairman of the House Ways and Means, re-
cent revelations of the President’s tax trou-
bles failed to blow Mr. Nixon out of the water.
The President is still afloat. He is still gamely
making headway. He still has steam. Damn
the torpedoes, says Mr. Nixon, half-speed
ahead.
My own morose thought is that the war
will not resolve itself any time soon. It will
only sputter on. The House Judiciary Com-
mittee will not surface until it can count a
floor majority for impeachmeid. Such a
majority is not yet clearly in sigit. It comes
and goes. The time may arrive when Mr.
Nixon will want to think of taking refu >in a
neutral port, safe but helpless in Sectio.: 3, but
that time is yet a long way off.
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Will Mr. Nixon heed? We doubt it; not at
first anyway. Later, perhaps. A Washington
reporter meanwhile constantly asks himself
in these strange days how our government
manages to function. Here is Mr. Agnew,
who, if he hadn’t been vice president, would
now probably be in jail. Here is Mr. Nixon
who, if he weren’t President, would likely be
indicted by the same grand jury that indicted
his many aides. Here is a Republican Party in
shambles, and a sullen, venomous mood in
the nation at large expressed in the Harris
poll that reports for the first time that a
plurality, 43 percent to 41 percent, wants Mr.
course, President Truman’s Gallup rating at
one time sank to 23 percent (1951); and that
sturdy little man wasn’t impeached.
It is rather inspiring, in a negative sort of
way, that the country is getting on as well as it
is. Fifty million people paid their income
taxes last week much the same as always
though many must have malevolently thought
of Mr. Nixon's returns as they gummed the
envelope. Some benefits accrue: the Nixon
tax case has jolted chairman Wilbur Mills
into a new effort at tax reform legislation this
June; Congress might pass it, with another
Watergate dividend, a law to curb big cam-
paign bribe-contributions.
It is a special virtue of America, we think,
that instead of lapsing into paralyzed cyni-
cism over such outrages the man-in-the-
streets demands reform and still believes
enough in his government and his country to
expect to get it. Sometimes it is touch-and-go.
An authoritative new. study by Joseph Pech-
man and Benjamin Okner at Brookings, (Who
Bears the Tax Burden?) shows that the tax
bite is much the same proportionately for
nine of 10 Americans, what with loopholes and
escape hatches for the well-to-do. Obviously,
in such circumstances, the gap between rich
and poor will never grow smaller despite the
illusion of ‘‘progressive’’ taxes. A sardonic
New Yorker cartoon recently showed a hum-
ble clerk standing before the desk of his boss,
who is telling him succinctly, “I'm afraid a
raise is quite out of the question, Hopkins, but
perhaps one of our lawyers can suggest some
tax loopholes for you.” That gives the mood.
Government goes on in Washington but
there is also the constant feeling of neglect.
Any sensible man knows that the energy
shortage is still here and that the President
should be urging the public to keep on saving
as they did in the oil embargo. But that would
require some expenditure of Mr. Nixon's
hoarded moral authority. He is in no mood to
give it. He could be leading the drive, too, to
alert the country to the impending world food
shortage and probable famine. Do-gooders
plead with him: Paul and Arthur Simon in
their book The Politics of World Hunger (Har-
per) say, ‘‘It is time to face an ugly truth. The
United States is not seriously trying to help
the human race overcome hunger and
poverty.”
Mr. Nixon has not shown much zeal about
hunger at home. let alone abroad, and he has
troubles of his own to think about.
We try not to be unfair. In August 1969 he
staggered many of us by proposing a far-
To be sure, there was some educational
value in the experience for the children. But a
little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and
learning that 2 & 2 equal 4 does not give one an
understanding of mathematics.
The only really typical aspect of the firefly
bill was that it emanated from outside the
Legislature. Creativity is not the lawmakers’
long suit.
The main ingredient missing from the
standard legislative stew was opposition. No
group was pushing for the praying mantis, in-
stead, while simultaneously denouncing the
firefly as a loathsome, useless creature.
Don’t laugh at the possibility. Twenty
years ago a group of adults decided that the
Great Dane ought to be the official state dog,
but they didn’t get their proposition through
the General Assembly until 1965. Reason:
Another group of adults was lobbying for the
beagle.
In addition to the lack of opposition, the
flight of the firefly through the legislative
halls was atypical because no special interest
stood to gain or lose from the action, and it
didn’t cost the state any money.
Moreover, the firefly lobbyists didn’t
have to wine and dine any committee chair-
men to ‘educate’ them on their cause, and
presumably none of their parents had to make
a campaign contribution to the bill's spon-
sors. Probably none of the young lobbyists
will be asked to buy tickets to a rubber
chicken fund-raising dinner this fall.
Perhaps the most conspicuous achievement
of the firefly bill was that it served as a balm
against 17 months of seeing the legislature
fumble the ball on so many important issues.
It was a dash of poetry in the stark prose of
the Pennsylvania General Assembly.
If the third graders really want to see the
slegislature in action, there are ways to do so.
Mrs. Holzwarth, it appears, is a dedicated
and competent teacher. But the odds are that,
as they progress through the grades of the
public school system, these pupils will run
ait halo w Bont d =i
reaching Family, Assistance Program
“(FAP) which was the brain child of Daniel
Patrick Moynihan: In his next State of the
Union message he boasted thge it was ‘‘a
basic income floor under every#/amily with
children in this nation’ and he exhaulted in
the New American Revolution—'' a revolu-
tion as profound, as far-reaching, as exciting.
as that first revolution almost 2(@vears ago.”
That wasn’t just hyperbole, it Wes a radical
plan. It remains one of the strangest and most
mysterious episodes of this strange Adminis-
tration. Last month a rash of news stories ap-
peared that Mr. Nixon is going to revive the
idea. Well, a man who can take a chance in
the Michigan 8th District might take another
whirl at improving his welfare image.
The Nixon FAP was a variant of the nega-
tive income tax, with a guaranteed $1600 for a
family of four, plus food stamps. It twice
passed the House. Whatever happened to it?
killed it by coming out in 1972 for his own plan
to federalize welfare and establish a guaran-
teed income of $4000 for a family of four,
financed by tax reform. That did it so far as
Mr. Nixon was concerned. He rejected any
Senate compromise that would have helped
pass his program and thereupon scoffed at
the McGovern scheme. By the time the GOP
convention came he had got so far away that,
as MIT professor Lester Thurow wonderingly
wrote, ‘‘the Republican platfo declared
that it was unalterably opposed $Jhe guaran-
teed income in any form, despite the fact that
this was exactly what the President’s family
assistance plan had promised.
into a few incompetent teachers.
There's not really too much that can be
done to avoid this because of a state tenure
law that protects the able and the unable with
equal vigor. 9
Were the youngsters to propose that the
teacher tenure law be repealed so they might
be spared the possibility of coming into the
hands of a poor teacher, they would im-
mediately incur the wrath of the teachers’
lobby in Harrisburg, which knows how to
handle such radical ideas in the legislature.
They'd get a real insight into the legislative
process.
Unfortunately, it takes more than a fire-
fly to illuminate the legislative process.
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