The Country Lawyer and Friends

By Hugh Sidey

THE PRESIDENCY

A goodly portion of the nation's lawyers seem to be in considerable anguish over the way the Watergate panel is questioning the witnesses. The letters, calls and telegrams pour in to Committee Chairman Sam Ervin with suggestions for questions, psychological tactics, and denunciations for missing opportunities to bludgeon witnesses to pulp.

In Washington, where there may be more attorneys per square foot than in any other city, the conversations are dominated by legal despair. The lawyers believe Ervin is doing an awful job in crossexamination. Young barristers and law school professors, freshly steeped in their textbook cases, are sure of it and can give you a lecture on how it should have been done.

There is now a hint in the mail that some of the public may want in on the act. Wives and husbands are arguing about separation of powers, reporters are being forced to carry copies of the Constitution with them. And all those people who were reared on Perry Mason, whose steel-trap mind is always ahead of everybody else's, are wondering how come those fellows on the committee stammer, halt, fumble and they never get a witness to break down in tears and say "I did it. Take me away." I wonder.

I wonder if old Sam Ervin from Morganton, N.C., isn't a little wiser than all those kibitzers. Ervin is running an educational forum and not a court, and he knows it. The arguments are rooted in the Constitution, that is true, but now they transcend that. The big issue at this point is what each citizen thinks in his mind and feels in his heart about the President.

A big part of Ervin's job, as he sees it, is to bring all the President's men before the public, as well as the committee, and let anybody interested see them and hear them. He is resolute in his belief that there is something magic about truth. The folks after a while get some notion of who is lying and who is not. That emerges most often in small natural increments, not in blinding flashes of acrimony. The witnesses kind of do it themselves.

So old Sam runs a down-home operation with a bunch of good old boys on his committee. There's a war veteran with an arm missing and a camera bug and an Ivy Leaguer and a fellow who used to cure country hams. There is some courtliness, a little cussing beyond earshot, some poetry, and a lot of Bible.

The White House does not see it that way, however. Over there they have decided that Ervin is out to get the President, that behind the "sweet little ole country bumpkin" facade lies a monster. Memories are short in this town. The Ervin committee is about as gentle as they come.

Though Sam is sore because he believes that his Constitution and his Government have been violated, there is remarkably little personal bitterness. After the day's hearings, he will tell you that he still would like this cup to pass from him, to put it in his kind of language. Nothing would please him more than for Nixon to come there and drop all those documents and tape recordings on the committee table, exonerating himself. Or even, if not quite innocent, admit his errors openly and fully. Ervin gives the impression of a man willing to forgive a great deal if Nixon did that, and he thinks the country would be equally forgiving. Then Sam could go back to watching some of his favorite TV programs (Gunsmoke is one of them) and get a little time in the cool hills of his beloved North Carolina.

But so far the President will not yield on any front. So Sam goes on trying to open things up, goes on in his own way, which is not to press too hard, not to be overbearing or obnoxious--just kind of average American.

Something is happening out there. Almost all the polls are moving--against Nixon. There are no dramatic cave-ins, just steady erosion. Maybe that is what frightens the White House now. But Sam Ervin did not point the direction. Talking with him, one feels certain he would be about the same person if the polls were moving the other way--for Nixon. He is not after anybody. He is after something bigger--truth and honor.

If John Dean after a week of talking before the nation seems to be a threat to Nixon's professions of innocence, well, maybe that is the way it should be.

And if John Ehrlichman after four days before the unblinking camera eye comes across as Attila the Hun, perhaps that, too, is a step toward the truth.

Sam Ervin said it. Rather, he borrowed from the Bible. "For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Sam believes it.

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