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Maintaining that same detachment from the reality of the crisis, Nixon picked up a two-year-old speech invitation from Florida Technological University — to the astonishment of officials of that 6,600-student Orlando institution. He delivered a bland and conventional commencement address without mentioning Watergate or the crisis in Government even once. Instead, he repeated his familiar 1972 campaign theme. "There is somewhat of a tendency to have our television sets in undated with what is wrong with America," he complained. "I think it perhaps would be well to start with the proposition about what is right about this country. In the whole history of the world, there has never been a time I would rather be a graduate than in the year 1973 in the United States of America." The audience, hoping to hear of more topical matters, reacted with only mild applause.
While this degree of optimism seemed strained, the Laird appointment was a concrete and commendable step. It gives the Administration at least a chance to stem the continuing deterioration in its relations with influential politicians of various stripes. As Laird explained to TIME Correspondent Bonnie Angelo, the pressure on him to serve in this Government crisis kept building for weeks and came from Democrats as well as Republicans. "I had planned not to be here—but then I decided that I kind of had to do it," he said. "It was people like Mike Mansfield and Carl Albert and Hugh Scott and Jerry Ford. The Vice President too, and Henry Kissinger and Ed Muskie and my Wisconsin friends, Bill Proxmire and Gaylord Nelson—the damn thing kept accumulating. Last weekend I was with the President at Camp David. Kissinger called me there. I told the President I thought I should do it."
Laird's perspective on his new role is a refreshing one for a Nixon aide. "My major responsibility will be first to be frank and to communicate regularly with the President," he said. "I expect to see him daily. It won't bother me at all to tell him something is a bad idea. I'm not around this town to win games. I've criticized the phony people who monkey around with status games."
Laird conceded that he does not expect to win every intra-White House debate. "I've been in the minority on many issues. You have to decide the position where you can compromise—that's what Government is all about." Not so subtly criticizing past White House operations, Laird stressed the need to cooperate with Congress. "If you just want to fix blame, that's one thing," he said. "But if you want solutions to problems, there's got to be rapport."
That kind of conciliatory talk is overdue at the beleaguered White House, although it may well be too late for one such sensible voice to mend much of the damage. Last week the criticism of Nixon's evasive and still unsatisfactory explanation of his role in the Watergate affair continued to mount. Some of it was coming from the political right, partly because Vice President Spiro Agnew would be an acceptable alternative for such thinkers.