Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 47

Chicago Tribune. Sunday. May 12, 1974 Section 2 5 Perspective James Reston Frank Starr Stayskal I The President blows his cover Poor judgment in White House 4 WASHINGTON The Presidency of Richard Nixon will never be the same. It has been stripped of its protective covering, of its majesty, its mystery, its magic. It has been deprived of what actors call aesthetic distance.

It is a powerful psychological shock, akin to seeing the Pope shooting craps. But it is more than psychological What has happened has created a very real change in the balance of the President's strength, a change that requires new restraint among his now more numerous critics. THE PRESIDENT himself Is responsible for the change. It was caused by the release of the transcripts, done by the President himself altho, to be sure, under duress. It may well prove fatal.

In that single act the President was removed from the special position of honor and respect he commands and, under normal circumstances, needs and deserves. It is important to the nation that its chief executive officer receive such recognition. But it was the President himself who first revealed that, like the character in the Hans Christian Andersen tale, the emperor had no clothes. There he stood, Just like any other man, vulnerable to the same criticisms, deserving of the same benefit of the doubt, but no qc 4m "Easy, Dick Maybe it's just a skywriter." Wayne Stayskal's cartoons appear weekdays In Chicago Today. more, subject to the same temptations, motivations, excesses, and weaknesses.

The man proved to be no biaw Uian most, no more noble than most and less than some. So it was natural that as the portrait of the man became whole, being on the same level with the rest of us as he now was, he would be dealt with on that level. It would never again be possible to return to that special level reserved for Presidents. That is no cause for sorrow. It is rather a source of strength.

If there is a question about Presidential scheming to control the result of the judicial processes; if there is a question about the legality of methods used by the White House in dealing with its political enemies; if there is a question about the degree to which concern for the republic motivated Presidential actions; if there is a question about the role of morality in Presidential decision-making; if there is a question about what the President said he was doing in the Watergate affair and what he actually was douig and judging from the President's transcripts there are such questions then there is a very serious question about whether the President should receive the protection of aesthetic distance. The histories of government leaders who have had both immoral motives and methods as well as the tacit protection afforded by the assumption of purity connected with the office are tragic. They are marked, for example, by confusion of the needs of the office with the needs of its occupant or the needs of the nation with the needs of its leader. It is a phenomenon that is not uncommon and one that demands the kind of close scrutiny that our Constitution was intended to provide. To deny that scrutiny, to defend the man in the face of such questions about this conduct is tantamount to forfeiting the constitutional safeguards.

BUT THOSE safeguards also demand greater responsibility. With exposure of the President to closer scrutiny comes the temptation to excesses of criticism, also to be avoided. As the needs of the President are not to be confused with the needs of the Presidency, neither is the damage to the President to be confused with the damage to the Presidency. Because Richard Nixon has been deprived of the Presidential pedestal, one needn't assume his successor is, too. broken his own rule against releasing confidential documents, the President is now insisting that he alone must decide what other evidence the House needs to meet its constitutional responsibilities, who shall be permitted to hear the tapes to assure that a "full and complete disclosure" has been made, and what is relevant or irrelevant to the House's investigation.

Nixon has insisted that his lawyer be allowed to sit in on the private and public deliberations of the Judiciary Committee and interrogate witnesses, and this request has been granted, but he rejects the suggestion that the committee's electronics experts and lawyers be allowed to check the tapes against the transcripts for accuracy. Thus, he has not ended the clamor for more information or silenced the doubts about the accuracy of his disclosures, or protected his privacy by releasing the edited White House conversations, but increased the demand for more information, raised even more suspicions than before, provoked an outcry among his own leaders on Capitol Hill even a demand by the Chicago Tribune for his resignation or dismissal and challenged the House and his own special prosecutor to a constitutional crisis in the Supreme Court. This is very risky business. A long constitutional crisis in the Senate would prolong the agony he says he wants to end. ALL THIS raises serious moral and legal questions, but leaving these aside for the moment, it also raises stark and troubling questions about the President's judgment of men and events, even of his judgment about how to defend himself.

How could he have picked this cast of characters and given them such power? How could he have installed this electronic listening system, bugged his own men and even visiting heads of government without their knowledge, and then talked the way he did, knowing the tapes were running? His appointments to the Supreme Court and some of his appointments to the Justice Department, his approval of a secret investigating ring in the White House, his efforts to involve the FBI and the CIA in the coverup, his mis-judgment of Agnew, Cox, and Richardson, his misleading accounts of the scandals which he then exposed by releasing the transcripts all this and much more raise doubts about the confidence in his judgment the White House in the next two and a half years. And the feeling here, as he backs and fills on handing, over the evidence the Congress wants, and even trots out a resident priest in the White House to defend his character, indicates that his judgment, under pressure, is not getting better but worse. Nw York Tlnwj Nw StrvlCf Between the lines WASHINGTON-In the Congressional Globe for June 4, 1842, the official stenographer in the House of Representatives reports John Quincy Adams as follows: "Mr. Adams said Why, what mockery it would be for the Constitution of the United States to say that the House should have the power of impeachment, extending even to the President of the United States himself, and yet to say that the House had not the power to obtain the evidence and proofs on which their impeachment was based. It appeared to him Adams equivalent to a self-evident principle, that the power of Impeachment gives to the House necessarily the power to call for persons and papers." Congressional Globe, 27th Congress, 2d Session, page 580, Nevertheless, 132 years later this is precisely the principle President Nixon' is challenging in the Watergate case.

He has refused to turn over the additional "evidence and proofs" requested by the House Judiciary Committee and Special Prosecutor Leon Ja-worski, and his lawyer, James D. St. Clair, has threatened to fight the case all the way thru the Supreme Court if necessary. IT WAS probably inevitable that this conflict between the President's claims to "confidentiality" and the House's power to call for "persons and papers" in an impeachment proceeding should be submitted to the highest court for judicial review. But again what is odd about the President's defense is that he has chosen to risk this confrontation in the Supreme Court at the worst possible time for himself.

He had the option of sticking to his original position: that demands for private Presidential documents were an invasion of the "confidentiality" of the Presidency, which he would oppose by invoking his "executive privilege." As the U.S. Court of Appeals stated in Nixon vs. Sirica, "wholesale public access to executive deliberations and documents would cripple the executive as a coequal branch." It is a hard case to argue in an impeachment inquiry into possible criminal action by the President and his aides, but it might have been sustained by the Supreme Court. What the President has done, however, is to weaken his own argument for the "confidentiality" of his documents by releasing more than 1,000 pages of the most damaging executive conversations ever made public by a chief executive. As his lawyer said in submitting edited transcripts of the White House tapes to the Congress, "The President does recognize that the House committee on the Judiciary has constitutional responsibilities to examine fully into his conduct and therefore the President has provided the annexed transcripts of all or portions of the subpenaed conversations that were recorded.

But having conceded this point and In Mexico and the Southern U. unexpected alternatives to costly beef are being championed. Down South, the name of the new game is catfish; south of the border it's frog. There already are 50,000 acres of waters being worked by catfish farmers In a new, multimillion-dollar business. In Mexico, the scale is even grander: The government's goal is "to fill all the Irrigation canals and lakes with frogs." Claims to boost catfish and frogs are Identical: They're high in protein, low in carbohydrates, better for you than red meat.

And catfish and frog promoters face the same stumbling block: Convincing everyone they really don't prefer beef. 1 In China, the name of the favorite meat game is the same as always: hog. At the end of 1973, China's hog population was 200 million vs. 65 million in the U. S.

and a vital force In nutrition primary meat, agriculture cheapest fertilizer, and foreign trade bristles, Chinese hogs make their mark on American life via the bristles In paint brushes as well as in hair and toothbrushes. The hog is so important to China that a traditional children's rhyme that ranks the Importance of animals was officially revised. The old order: Horse, cow, Iamb, chicken, dog, pig. The new: Hog, ox, sheep, horse, poultry, dog. Poor bosiy.

sfj "-f II Nick Thimmcsch Nixon becomes lame-duck President early James Reston's column appears weekdays In Chicago Today. Vernon Jarrett The President transmogrified gram; a new concept in housing and community development; and a compre-hensive revenue-sharing program which would deliver effective impact on the problems of mass transit, education, health, and the environment at the local level. To put this lamentable situation in perspective, it must be pointed out that the Kennedy administration accomplished few goals, largely due to the tragic assassination of President Kennedy; and the Great Society program of President Lyndon Johnson was all but wrecked in the ordeal of Viet Nam. For Nixon, it was Watergate and impeachment which brought his domestic program down. The Nixon administration's foreign policy achievements will very likely hold.

There is no good reason why detente should be ruined. The "evenhanded" approach in the Middle East, designed to stabilize that troubled area and bring peace to Israel and Arab states alike, has good acceptance from the affected nations and the Soviets. Even a President-elect Henry M. Jackson, coming into office in 1976, with a bit of 6aber rattling and pro-Zionist utterances in the background, Our military is in a new role, and our presence in the world is of a lower profile. On the domestic front, the administration has: introduced the concept and a limited program of revenue sharing; ended the draft; established and activated an Environmental Protection Agency; created an Energy Research and Development Administration to deal with energy problems; initiated a sweeping reform of the executive branch, with an emphasis on decentralization; shepherded legislation which for the first time allows highway funds to be used for mass transportation; and provided a whopping, geometric increase in funding programs in the humanities and arts.

The record is actually a good one. What's said, tho, is that so much more could have been done, in view of Nixon's mandate in the 1972 election when he won by a record majority. Left undone, however, and left glaring for all in the administration and Congress to view, are the administration's hopes for welfare reform; a new trade bill, with most favored nation designation for the Soviet Union; a comprehensive health insurance pro- WASHINGTON Thrre is good reason to conclude that the Nixon administration will be unable to accomplish further creative objectives in foreign and domestic policy. Thus Richard Nixon, regardless of the outcome of the impeachment process, is a lame-duck President. This should not be construed as a startling conclusion because every second-term President faces this downhill situation in the last two years of his term.

But in Nixon's case, the process has been greatly accelerated by the trauma of Watergate and impeachment. Nor does this conclusion mean the government is coming apart or that all is lost for the republic or the world. The burocracy functions, no matter what. Social Security checks go out. Sturdy career officials strive to make our government machinery more efficient, both at home and in our far-flung collection of diplomatic and military bases around the world.

MOREOVER, THE Nixon administration has many accomplishments to its credit. The new set of relationships with the Communist world, particularly with the Soviet Union, are foremost. would bo very reluctant to disturb a stabilized situation in the Middle East-one which Nixon and Dr. Kissinger have worked very hard for. IF NIXON survives the impeachment process, his lame-duck status will be changed little.

And if Vice President Ford becomes President this year, he would also have a difficult time in 1975-76 because he would undoubtedly: 1 face a vetoproof Democratic Congress after the 1974 elections; 2 be forced to contend with a whole batch of Democratic Presidential contenders in the Congress in 1975-76 who would try to diminish his own chances of being elected. This is not a doomsday column. We have had caretaker administrations before and the state of the republic isn't really that bad. Sometimes, and this is a wry observation, people are better off when they are left alone by government anyway. The vital problem of our relationships with the Communist world has been well tended to by Nixon and Kissinger.

Events could surprise me, and I could be. proven dead-wrong in this early assessment. But I'm willing to take bets. Loi AngelM Times Syndlcalt 3 Michael Kilian NIXON LIVES! He is alive again. Reborn! Be of good cheer, all ye of heavy hearts.

Despite the plethora of obituaries tendered in advance of the President's official political demise, just remember that it may be possible for the soul of the dead to appear again In the body of another person. Last Thursday in Chicago Vice President Gerald Ford made it clear that his body is available as the new home of President Nixon's ghost. In fact, he came on like the reincarnation of the Nixon who ran for reelection in 1972. THURSDAY NIGHT he addressed the 25th anniversary of the Skokie Valley Industrial Association and virtually announced his candidacy for the Presidency in 1976. A highlight of his speech was a Nixon-like section on school busing.

One would assume from his remarks that busing for desegregation purposes is one of the most critical issues facing America. And candidate Ford was in full voice when he reminded white America that he had fought the busing of their children thruout his congressional career. At the same time, he skillfully pointed out that the Democrat who replaced him in February, Rep. Richard Vander Veen, already had voted in favor of busing. Ford knows-as Nixon knew that there is a frame of mind in this nation that will make certain frightened individuals give carte blanche support to any cagey politician who can convince them that he will do the better job in negating the U.

S. Supreme Court's jchool desegregation decision of 1954. Moreover, Ford has a congressional voting record to prove that he not only is a true champion of antibusing, but that he doesn't believe in spending a lot of money on education generally, and on those "give away" programs designed to help the poor, Ford can point to his record to prove that he can be trusted with the chopping ax. Earlier Thursday, Ford showed other flashes of the old Nixon when he appeared before the National Association of Black Manufacturers. He spoke of the progress in civil rights legislation just as tho he were one of the crusaders.

Like President Nixon, he kept a perfectly straight face when bragging about the G. O. "black capitalism" program Ford stood erect as he announced that "the Nixon administration has made more money and brought about more progress for minorities than any other President in the history of the United States." Evidently he was effective with many in the audience, as was Nixon with several nationally known black celebrities and prominent businessmen. It is evident that while the Republican hierarchy is ready to jettison Nixon, Ford made it clear in another speech that the party is not about to free itself from Nixonism the essential Nixon outlook. Earlier Thursday at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Ford advised fellow Republicans: "Don't let your moralistic attitude about C.

R. E. E. P. the Committee to Reelect the President undercut your belief in a specific philosophy." Thruout President Nixon's 1972 campaign one could see a clear strategy built around the sum of all fears harbored by Americans who felt that "things had gotten out of hand" and those who longed for the America of yesteryear.

HE TLAYED on antibusing for all its emotional worth. When Nixon campaigned in Michigan, Ford's home state, where angry whites had set fire to school buses, the President, who has smeared numerous individuals as "soft on Communism," found it convenient to become soft on bus-burners. But those who see the spirit of the old Nixon riding back to the White House via a Ford may be underrating the American public. And Ford knows it, as he indicated in Charleston when he observed: "We'l take care of the people who violated the law in C. R.

E. E. P. and elsewhere, but it's very hard to overcome an adverse decision on philosophy." State legislators find luxury to their liking were open to the House floor, and thus were constantly thronged with whispering, clutching lobbyists. Blair has walled off the aisles with bulletproof glass and covered the glass with thick drapes.

This prevents sunlight from reaching the floor and thus keeps th lawmakers in a more natural environment. It has not put the lobbyists out of business, tho, thanks to a new system I call "Dial-a-Vote." Every representative now has a telephone at his desk. A lobbyist has merely to call a representative's secretary and a light lights up on the representative's desk. Ho picks up his phone and is in instant communication with his mentor. Should a legislator need more immediate advice, he can bypass his secretary and "Dial-a-Lobbyist" direct.

Variations of this Include "Dial-a-Bookle" and, on cold Springfield nights, "Dlal-a- Bimbo." Blair raised tho side galleries some seven feet, making it impossible for the lawmakers to indulge in one of their favorite pastimes watching young, female spectators take their scats. No longer wjll they be distracted from the people's business, but then, no longer will they be able to stay awake. The old public address system employed large speakers set in the coiling. Blair replaced them with tiny, little speakers set in each desk. The only way a legislator can hear what is going on is to put his head down on his desk next to the little speaker.

If he should fall asleep or pass out he can always say he was only trying to follow the debate. This is difficult to do, anyway; the speakers are so small everyone sounds like Donald Duck. Blair's original plan was to move the press into a glassed-in press box up in the gallery, such as they use at race tracks. Instead, he was persuaded to SPRINGFIELD, III. I have good news for Illinois taxpayers.

House Speaker W. Robert Blair's House chambers rehabilitation project, on which ho lavished $838,000 of your money, is now complete. This means he will no longer be lavishing your money, at least not on the House chambers. The motif of the new chambers is best described as imperial splendor. Indeed, if Czar Nicholas could see what majesty democracy could produce, he might have come out for it.

THE NEW draperies, carpets, and soft leather chairs run to a luxurious hue of baby blue, which is the color of Blair's eyes and also his favorite color. Some legislators were Irritated about this, but others were happy that Blair's favorite color was not mauve. Some legislators do have mauve eyes, especially in the mornings. In the old chambers, the side aisles leave the old press boxes where they were, but he lowered them by some two feet. This has not only sunk the Springfield press corps to a new low, but allows Chicago reporters, for example, to observe only Democrats.

BLAIR EXPANDED the square-footage of the floor by carving out some space beneath the rear gallery. Among those he has exiled to this shadowy cave is his chief Republican rival, State Rep. Henry Hyde, who is detectable in tho darkness only by the glowering gleam in his eyes. There is one innovation the taxpayers should welcome. To get out of the new chambers, the legislators have to descend some steep carpeted steps to a pit that leads to the chamber door.

As only tho most sober can negotiate these steps without accident, tho taxpayers should find their wildest dreams coming true long before the next elea'ion..