(10 of 10)
Once again, Nixon retreated to his mountain redoubt on Camp David. It was just as well, since the protesters around the White House might have upset him. The drivers of roughly half of the cars that passed along Pennsylvania Avenue sounded their horns in response to the "Honk for Impeachment" campaign. The din rattled the windows of the White House. Adding insult, one protester's sign said: IF SPIRO WERE HERE, HE'D HONK.
Where does another bewildering week of seemingly uncontrollable events leave the President—and the nation? Certainly, Richard Nixon stands closer to impeachment or being forced out of office by his continued inability to govern effectively than ever before.
Moreover, there are multiple investigations still ahead, some of which almost certainly will further lessen the President's dwindling stature. With so many of Cox's investigators still at work and determined to protest any failure to pursue each known lead, no sustained cover-up of any new scandal seems likely. The Ervin committee is still digging—and apparently is getting tips from the Cox camp.
Nor has Nixon yet put to rest the possibility that Watergate itself, especially the efforts to conceal the real responsibility for the wiretapping of Democratic National Headquarters, can hurt him further. The words of Nixon's fired counsel, John Dean, should be, of course, on some of the tapes that apparently will eventually reach the Watergate grand jury: Nixon indicated in his press conference that delivery of the tapes will be worked out this week. While it is now commonplace to downgrade the tapes as not likely to prove decisive, many of the testimonial conflicts between Dean, Nixon and such other presidential associates as John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell and Bob Haldeman were sharply drawn. The tapes may well prove Dean either right or wrong.
As Cox pointed out last week, Dean was content to plead guilty to a single charge of obstruction of justice without bargaining for immunity against later potential perjury indictments—a strong indication of his own confidence in what those tapes will show. Then, too, as the other former aides face trial, a weakened President may appear a far less appealing figure to protect, if any of them have been doing that.
At times, the nation now seems leaderless. There have been so many switches in presidential policy, so many needless shocks and crises, that a weary public will not readily accept more of the same for three years. Perhaps the week's most reassuring development was the dramatic demonstration that individual Americans, when pushed too far, care enough to complain—and that their opinions can prove both perceptive and decisive. As Michigan's Republican Governor William Milliken observed sadly: "We cannot function without the confidence of the governed any more than we can function without the consent of the governed."