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Theodore Sorensen's spare but sprightly volume focuses on a much narrower question: What now for the presidency? In the wry, graceful prose that lent class to the speeches of President Kennedy, Sorensen clings unfashionably to the liberal yearning for strong Presidents. Yet he admits that Kennedy, too, was error-prone and hobbled by the federal bureaucracy and congressional fief. Because "the power to do great harm is also the power to do great good," Sorensen would have his President strongly accountable to an aroused press, Congress, the courts and above all the people. On the grounds that the qualities now necessary to win elections are less and less likely to produce a good President, Sorensen also includes some criteria for judging a presidential candidate in mid-campaign. Among them: a sense of humor and delight in the give and take of politics, an ability to take criticism, admit mistakes and choose campaign aides who are more or less open in dealing with the press.
Politically Doomed. John Osborne and Frank Mankiewicz approach the story from a different point of view. Osborne is a veteran independent journalist, and his book consists mainly of reprints from his fine "Nixon Watch" columns in the New Republic. They demonstrate once again how perceptive Osborne was in sensing ahead of the rest of the press that the President was politically doomed and that Nixon's psychological stability was doubtful. Osborne's most memorable material is a discussion of the almost Queeg-like attention to petty detail that characterized Nixon's White House work habits long before Watergate. (He ordered log books to be kept on which White House paintings drew praise from visitors, and spent hours poring over inventories of the hundreds of cuff links, ashtrays and copies of Six Crises that were given out.)
Frank Mankiewicz is a journalist and lawyer—as well as former campaign manager for George McGovern—and he makes an insistent point: it was not the press that brought Nixon down, but the law—respect for it and for the kind of step-by-step preparation and pursuit that due process requires. Mankiewicz is especially sharp at pointing out the lies and equivocations of Nixon's TV statements and press conferences.
Jimmy Breslin shows the bias of a clubhouse politician who understands the fast fix and the low squeeze; still he has nothing but disdain for any high flyer who thinks he can corrupt and deceive a whole nation. Last summer Breslin had the productive and pleasant idea of guzzling and gabbing regularly with a savvy fellow Irishman: Democratic House Leader Thomas P. ("Tip") O'Neill (TIME cover, Feb. 4, 1974). It is Breslin's theory that those Washington politicians who create around them the "illusion of power" (like "beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors") often end up by acquiring real power and making things happen. O'Neill, whose duties as majority leader carry no defined authority, knew this. According to Breslin, he craftily manipulated mirrors and wafted subtle smoke on Capitol Hill to set the congressional impeachment bureaucacy into uncheckable motion.