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The House Judiciary Committee now has no choice but to recommend to the U.S. House of Representatives the impeachment of President Nixon.
. . . It is disheartening in the extreme to read the transcripts in detail and to gain the unavoidable impression that the President and his advisers were so unconcerned about the United States and its people.
President Nixon and his staff worried about saving themselves instead of showing concern about the preservation of the free American system.
President Nixon has gone too far. The transcripts of White House conversations clearly involve him in a cover-up attempt to say the least. That and his refusal to comply with the subpoenas of the Watergate Special Prosecutor and the House Judiciary Committee have virtually assured that the impeachment of President Nixon will become a reality.
MIAMI HERALD
. . . Mr. Nixon cast his die with release of the White House edited transcripts of the Watergate tapes. It was a reckless maneuver, for the documents have appalled the country by and large.
Here was more than buddy-buddy talk of political cronies. Here we believe was conniving to cover up a crime. Here was instruction in how to evade the loss. Here was a submission of the nation's interest to a personal interest and greed. Here was a partial record and error that ruined lives, damaged the great profession of the law and confronted the nation with a crisis of leadership unknown in a century . . .
Impeachment is indeed traumatic, but it has a precedent and it is part of the organic law. It is legal. It is orderly. It is decisive in joining the issue at a trial. Surely the nation is strong enough to stand the functioning of any part of its Constitution.
PROVIDENCE JOURNAL
Reading the transcripts is an emetic experience. Slogging through them leaves the reader drained . . . from the spiritual stress of peering in on mean and self-serving men thrashing about for their own salvation.
One comes away feeling unclean, not by the barracks language hidden behind bracketed verbal fig leaves, but by the picture of the President keeping company with a squirming group of amateur political opportunists-barnstorming ways to help them beat the rap or pin it onto someone else . . .
The transcripts may not show Mr. Nixon guilty of any indictable offense, but they display a shocking contempt—contempt not only of the courts and of Congress but of the people and the office Mr. Nixon holds in their name.
KANSAS CITY TIMES
The American Constitution . . . is reflective of the hopes and ideals of mankind for justice and truth and a good life. It transcends the mere patriotism of geographical boundaries.
Can such values really be reconciled with the sleazy dialogue now emerging in the White House transcripts? Can the end product of the men who gathered nearly two centuries ago to frame the Constitution be a band of knaves who talk of advantage, revenge and adroit maneuver and never of what is right or wrong, or what is good for the country?