Presidency taped
Larry Adler
The Imperial Presidency Arthur Schlesinger, Jr (Andre Deutsch £4.95) Nothing in the history of United States government has brought the White House as low as the Watergate mentality of Richard Milhous Nixon. As Schlesinger writes, "Nixon, in short, created the Nixon White House." And he very nearly got away with everything that he was trying to do. The most dangerous argument is "everybody does it Nixon was unlucky enough to get caught." But no, damrnit, everyone does not do it. No President has ever tried to subvert so many governmental departments to his own purpose, which was simply to maintain himself in power and to destroy the term is not far-fetchedhis opponents. And it occurs to me that had he the magnetic personality of an attractive roistering villain like Huey Long of Louisiana, a dictator in his own state and with power spreading nationally until his assassination, he could well have gotten away with it. Or, lacking charm and no one could ever accuse Nixon of having charm if he had the ability to select first-class men around him instead of shabby graduates of J. Walter Thompson and Disneyland no, why pursue that? If he could have selected first-class men he would himself have been a first-class man and, far from that, he was perhaps the quintessential second-rater. I remember, in the election of '68, being interviewed I had worked for Hubert Humphrey and when the results were in I said, ever the good sportsman, "Well, America now has the president it deserves which is an awful thing to say about America."
The Harding Teapot Dome scandals of 1923 were hardly more than small-town graft blown up by the power of the Presidency and the amount of money involved. The people concerned were old-fashioned crooks who knew they were crooks and there was no Reverend Davidson-type moralising about it. The Watergate mafia was something else; they were above the law because Nixon, their cap) di tutti capi was above the law. The end, and what a shabby ,end, justified the means, and what sordid means! Schlesinger quotes Sam Ervin: "What they were seeking to steal was not the jewels, money or other property of American citizens, but something much more valuable their most precious heritage, the right to vote in a free election." And again, as Schlesinger carefully demonstrates, it was touch and go. Now that it's over there's a lot of self-congratulation. "The system works." But does it? Would it have worked if Frank Wills (and why doesn't a grateful Ford administration give this man a life pension?) had not noticed that the Watergate doors had been opened? And even after the burglary was discovered, what them? It was "the Watergate caper." Remember that? A prank, a joke, a silly dirty trick that misfired. Who gave a damn, anyway? McGovern could make speech after speech to try to warn the electorate of what had happened, but he was baying at the moon.
And what if Woodward and Bernstein had been scared off, as they nearly were? And what if Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post, had been a bit deficient in guts, what then? And what if Katherine Graham, owner of the Washington Post, had lacked the will or the courage or-and this is important, too the money to back her staff, despite the outright declaration of war against her by the Nixon administration, which moved to try to cancel the television licences held by the Post. If that entire chain, from the serendipitous coincidence of Wills's discovery, to the integrity of Judge Sirica and the old-fashioned morality of such as Sam Ervin and Archibald Cox, had not held at each unexpected link, would the system have worked then? No it would not have worked, you'd better believe it. There is a moment, gleefully reported by Schlesinger, that I would like to have preserved in amber, or may be a time capsule. That was when Dean asked his White House sportsmen "How can we maximise the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration?" Then, in a positively endearing switch from jargon to demi-hip, "Stated a bit more bluntly how we can use the available Federal machinery to screw our political enemies?" It reminds me of a time when 1 sat with Damon Runyon at the Stork Club in New York. A man joined our table for a drink. When he left, Damon said, "He just got out of Sing Sing. Murdered his wife, his mother-in-law and their two children." He paused and then said, almost reverently, "You just got to go along with a guy like that."
I tend to feel that way about Dean.
You will find in The Imperial Presidency a full list of the dangerous, illegal and unprecedented things that Nixon either did or tried to do. One of, the worst was Nixon's implementation Christ, they've got me talking their way of the Huston report. Schlesinger writes: The interagency committee subsequently came with a set of recommendations, some of which T. (-• Huston . . . warned the President were illegal. Nevertheless Nixon in July 1970 instructed the intelligence community in a formai Decision Memorandum that surreptitious entry breaking and entering was now presidentially authorised ('use of this technique is clearly illegal; it amounts to burglary . . . However, it is also the most fruitful tool' Huston); that undercover agents were to be planted in the universities;'that the CIA was to spy 00 students and other itinerant Americans abroad; that the electronic surveillance of Americans 'who pose a major threat to the internal security' as well as of foreign embassies in Washington was to be intensified; that the National Security Agency was to listen in on Americans making international phone calls; and that restrictions were to be removed on legal mail coverage that is, opening and copying letters and relaxed on covert coverage (Illegal . . . however, the advantages . . . outweigh the risk' Huston)" Obviously a book called The Imperial Presidency isn't only about Nixon, but, just as obviously, the pressure of events makes that the most interesting and exciting part of the book. Schlesinger has a lot of first hand knowledge about how the White House works and he has done prodigious reading as well. found his report of the presidency really gripping from the time of Roosevelt on, because that's my time. Roosevelt, who was careful to consult Congress, to Nixon, who ignored it. Truman, who by-passed Congress to take the US armed forces into Korea, Eisenhower whO said, "Leave me out of it" to too many major problems, and who was the first to claim "executive privilege", Johnson who tricked the Senate into passing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, and who made Credibility Gap virtually a nickname for his Texas home, Kennedy who invoked "national security" to keep the truth about the Bay of Pigs not only from the public but even from his own Ambassador at the UN, Adlai Stevenson.
Let me end by contradicting myself. I insist that no President save Nixon was an out-andcrook but I must admit that when it comes to secrecy, whether in the name of executive privilege or national security; . they a' do't they a' do't The grit as weel's the sma' do't, Frae crowned king
To creeping thing 'Tis just the same they a' do't!
Larry Adler, the American musician, is now resident in London and writes regularly for The Spectator
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