Watergate
Sunny side up
Louis Claiborne
No American can escape Watergate — not even an expatriate hidden in the wilds of Essex. True, those of us who left Washington in good time, and who always disliked and distrusted Richard Nixon, can indulge a fleeting smile of self-congratulation: it is rewarding sometimes to be right and to be able to boast "I told you so." But that pleasure does not sustain. At the end of the day, doubt and sadness prevail. After all, Watergate, its preamble and its aftermath, seem to have unmasked the American political system — which has claimed so much for itself — as a fraud, corrupt even at the very top.
The embarrassment is all the more acute for an American in Britain, surrounded by the barely restrained grins of. Englishmen who have never rejected any evidence of their own superiority. It did not help to hear that the American President was only goaded into action by Peregrine Worsthorne, writing in the Sunday Telegraph. But the worst ignominy was the President's own speech to the nation on Monday night, which Worsthorne, painfully let down, rightly labelled "appalling." So, quite naturally, I look — a little desperately perhaps — for the sunny side of Watergate.
The task is not easy. One cannot dismiss recent events as revealing only a limited and temporary aberration. The disease is much more serious than the petty and personal corruption of a few officials — with deep freezes in Truman's day, vicuna coats in Eisenhower's. First, there has been an unparalleled distortion of the electoral process.Bad enough that the techniques of Madison Avenue have been used in 'selling ' the President to the voters, with cosmetic appearances, contrived
publicity, planted questions, rigged audiences, and all the fakery that goes into high-powered merchandising. Now we have bogus newspaper testimonials and phony congratulatory telegrams to give a false image of citizen support for the President's more controversial policies, spies in the opposition's inner councils, manufactured evidence to discredit other candidates, and finally, burglary and bugging of the other party's headquarters. And all this is financed by huge sums, obtained from people with important favours to ask, channelled very deviously, and, in at least one case, received illegally. Nor are these the isolated acts of a few misdirected zealots; they form a consistent pattern of conduct, involving scores of people, including, in some degree, former Cabinet officers, the most senior officials of the White House, the President's lawyers, official and personal, and at least one of his own brothers.
All this, alas, is but the half of it, The corrupt deception — wholly unnecessary to the President's victory — does not end with his re-election. On the contrary, in the months of cover-up since then, there has been an orgy of lying, cheating, destruction of files, payment of ' hush money,' and god knows what more. And assuming one credits his disclaimer of prior knowledge of the shabby doing in his service, it is less easy to believe that, for nine months, the President knew nothing whatever of these high level efforts to hide the truth. So, his speech notwithstanding, the honesty, the integrity, of the President himself remain seriously in doubt.
The predicament is extreme. Yet, I venture to see a silver lining to these dark clouds. Even if the President is discredited, the nation will survive. More: the American constitutional system will have proved itself in one of its cruellest tests. Certainly, the Presidency will have suffered a crippling blow. And that is not a small thing. But that defeat has its compensations.
As Nixon himself said (not the best authority, to be sure), in some sense, it will be a triumph for the press, the people, and the Constitution.
There is no need to expatiate upon the role of the press in the Watergate affair. The dogged persistence of the Washington Post, with more occasional support from other papers, is plainly to be commended. More important, however, is the demonstration that the American press is truly free, wholly beyond the power of any government to suppress, censor or intimidate. Even in the western world, that is a rare circumstance today. Also remarkable is the independence of papers normally committed to supporting the President. It is a healthy sign when the Washington Star-News forthrightly condemns the Presi-. dent it helped elect.
The press fully merits its reward. But some credit, too, must go to the readers. For what matters, in the end, is whether the people shrug off the revelations of corruption as "just politics," or react. Alas, the American public, for a long time now, seemed almost wholly passive — content to be deceived and defrauded in their politics. But, at length, the people have been aroused. What they dismissed yesterday with a knowing smile, now angers. Watergate and its attempted cover-up have finally shocked the nation. Ironically, the exposure of the low morality of government is upgrading the moral standard of the citizenry. The people will now demand more of their leaders and excuse less. That is certainly an important plus.
Finally, the Watergate affair has shown that the American system works. Despite the enormous power concentrated in the White House these days, it has not been able to overcome the system of checks and balances which the American constitution establishes to contain the abuse of power. The Executive has been stopped by the courts and by the Congress, and by some dedicated civil servants and ordinary citizens serving on grand juries. And, as one commentator (David Broder) has noted, it was done by very ordinary men — Judge Sirica, Senator Byrd, Senator Erwin, and still more anonymous judges and politicians of both political parties. Whatever happens, the Presidency will have been restored to its true position — one of three co-equal branches, not the autocrat it was becoming. And, incidentally, within the Executive Branch itself, the exaggerated power of the politically ignorant and irres ponsible White House staff is broken — fa good, one hopes. These are significant gains.
Of course, it were better if America had not shamed itself before the world to prove its resilience. British readers will remain content with the knowledge that "it could not happen here" at all. Perhaps. But do not be churlish. We Americans are humbled enough just now. Do not deny us a little pride that, having brought calamity upon ourselves, we at least learned something from the experience. And emerged sobered, but wiser and stronger — readier for the next crisis.
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