So Long to Old Herb Klein

By Hugh Sidey

He is really not that old (55) nor is he vanishing from view. He is leaving the White House as Communications Director for a job in television, which will keep him in public matters.

But for 27 years he has been a considerable chunk of Richard Nixon's better nature. And that role is coming to an end.

His is a rather remarkable story. He was, these last years, abused and downgraded and ignored by Nixon and his supermen and yet he has stayed loyal, kept his honor, and goes off as one of the President's few remaining displays of decency and good humor.

He wasn't as efficient as the iron man H.R. Haldeman. Herb Klein kept his files in his coat pocket or somewhere, and like most ex-reporters he ignored flow charts and organization tables. What he had was an understanding that democracy and its government are untidy and considerably inefficient, and there isn't a hell of a lot you can do about that without destroying their soul.

Old Herb would listen to conflicting views, now and then admit mistakes had been made and take phone calls from critics as well as friends. He always figured it was a big wide world out there and a lot of people had something to say. The know-it-alls like John Ehrlichman found that sort of notion close to heresy.

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When they finally pushed him farther and farther from the Oval Office he hardly complained. He took to the road supporting Nixon in the editorial offices and the newsrooms around the country. He brushed up against a lot of people in those journeys, and he made a lot of friends. Now when one travels and comes across these men and women, whether in the big metropolitan dailies or those dusty one-horse shops where the editor can be found feeding the presses, they ask with some concern if Herb got caught in Watergate. When they are told no, they almost always smile and say quietly, "I didn't think so. I like Herb."

He was no saint. Nor was he the best White House aide in all history. But he was an oasis of consideration and sympathy in a Teutonic desert of heel clicks and "Yes, sirs."

There are not many men on the beat here who haven't had a thoughtful moment or two and a few good laughs with Herb. Up in Alaska campaigning with Richard Nixon in 1958, he joined in a little dogsled race and ended up in the snow, much to everybody's delight. In 1960 he knew that most of the men he had to deal with were a lot more sympathetic to John Kennedy than to Richard Nixon. He took it with good grace and for the most part kept his temper as he tried to get a fair shake on the front pages.

Once he sent out letters of complaint about the treatment Candidate Nixon was getting, and then he had second thoughts and called them back. At the Waldorf Astoria bar he bought the drinks for all those offended and went back to his old rut of being decent to people.

Once when Lyndon Johnson was doing a little campaigning out in California and had stopped at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station to send more troops off to Viet Nam, Herb showed up in the stands just to look over the President, the likely opposition for Nixon, who was gearing up to go again. Herb wrangled a handshake with L.B.J. like any tickled tourist, wished the President good luck and went off with a smile.

He has peddled the old Nixon propaganda with a straight face and given some of the dullest speeches on record, but he has always been there to listen when people, small as well as big, needed somebody to talk to when the rest of the White House was buttoned up, which was most of the time.

Herb still has some political mileage in him. But he probably has seen the pinnacles. Last year some of us were standing in the magnificent Hall of St. George in the Kremlin on the final day of Nixon's Moscow summit. All Russia's elite were there, cosmonauts and marshals, diplomats and artists, the Politburo and the KGB agents.

They played The Star-Spangled Banner, and then Nixon and his Soviet hosts walked down the length of the huge hall. It was a splendid moment.

As the President passed, there in view across the room was Herb Klein. He looked like he had slept in his suit, or maybe hadn't slept at all in those frantic days. But his face had the same kindly look, and there was a smile and a lot of pride and warmth beneath the surface. The thought occurred to us then, and again last week, that here was one of the few men around Nixon who gave more than he took.

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