THE ADMINISTRATION: Nixon's Nightmare: Fighting to Be Believed

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trial, with witnesses, cross-examination and court rules. The President could appear or be represented by attorneys. After all witnesses had been questioned, the Senate would vote on each charge. A two-thirds vote against the President on any charge would result in his removal and disqualification for any other federal office. The Vice President would become President.

Any such action would, as one Congressman describes it, "rock the world." Practically no one expects it to happen. There is in fact a nightmarish quality to all such speculation. How could a "third-rate burglary" grow to these monstrous proportions?

From the beginning, Watergate has been, of course, a far more serious matter than that. All of the political and official spying and deception that preceded it, as well as the lying and shredding of evidence that followed it, represent to a fearsome degree lawlessness at the highest levels of Government. Whatever may yet be revealed about Richard Nixon's complicity, in a sense, he already stands impeached, by a growing consensus, for an appalling failure of responsibility. He selected the men, set the standards, and more than anyone else allowed Watergate's muddy waters to engulf his Administration.