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The scrappy touches in the Nixon speech suggested that the President might be getting ready to fight his critics harder from now on; indeed, one of his aides affirmed that Nixon was prepared, if necessary, "to get into a rough brawl." Even the physical setting for last week's speech seemed to provide an image of an austere Chief Executive. Gone were the bust of Lincoln and the photograph of the Nixon family that he had used as trappings for his April 30 address—and been ridiculed for. This time he was flanked only by an American flag and a presidential flag. Throughout the speech, he was restrained and businesslike. When it was over, he paused for just a moment to chat dutifully with the TV camera crew, then withdrew to his family quarters to receive congratulatory calls from supporters.
Much of the reaction to any presidential address is, of course, quite inevitable; the President's friends rally, his opponents attack. To California Governor Ronald Reagan, last week's message was "the voice of reason." Virginia Governor Linwood Holton, a moderate Republican, liked the speech ("I agree that we should get on with the public's business"), and so did New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thomson, who felt that "his analogy to the riots of the 1960s was excellent."
Another Rerun. Ohio Republican Congressman Clarence Brown was not wholly satisfied, but he believes that most people are indeed getting sick of Watergate. "The reaction I get from the people here," he says, "is, 'Aren't you all getting sort of seized up in the autopsy? Aren't there other things we ought to be doing?' " Some of the Democratic opposition was equally predictable. Senator Ervin, vacationing in North Carolina (see page 16), called the speech "a rehash, a solicitation of the public to make the committee quit working." He said that it reminded him of the old lawyer who advised a young colleague: "When the facts of law are against you, give somebody hell." Ohio Governor John J. Gilligan slyly noted that in Nixon's discussion of the confidentiality that exists between lawyer and client and between husband and wife, the President "stopped short of [mentioning] the relationship between psychiatrist and patient—which his top staff went out of their way to violate." Ralph Nader disliked the speech; so did the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the newly re-elected head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who, at a mass rally in Indianapolis, heatedly called for the President's arrest.
The President would hardly have expected the New York Times or the Washington Post to acclaim his speech, and neither did. "A sad, disappointing and wholly unconvincing performance," said the Times. To the Post it was a speech of "large silences and vague insinuations."