Can Public Confidence Be Restored?

Under the solemn oak trees of Camp David, a profoundly troubled man spent much of the weekend walking on quiet paths, looking out over the Catoctin Mountains, and thinking about what to say to a disturbed nation. Observed an aide: "I don't know what he's going to say, or how he is going to say it, soft or hard, pleadingly or abrasively."

For nearly three months, Richard M. Nixon had been battered by the Watergate testimony, charging his Administration with a dismal assortment of misdeeds. He had kept his silence, for the most part, letting it be known that he would have an answer to give once the TV lights were turned off and the Ervin committee went into recess.

There was no sure way of assessing the rise and fall in Nixon's fortunes. Earlier, some aides had decided that the worst was over--but then came the story of how Nixon had bugged the White House, and his refusal to release the tapes badly undermined what was left of his credibility. Last week a number of Washington observers again felt that he had weathered the worst accusations against him, and that the recess would bring him time for recovery. As one of his aides remarked: "If you keep a fire under a boiler long enough, pretty soon you boil all the water out, and finally you burn even the bottom of the boiler. I sense that's what has happened with Watergate."

But just as the President seemed about to be given some respite, a new scandal exploded. Vice President Agnew, who had hitherto escaped the taint of Watergate, was officially informed that he was under investigation for allegedly taking kickbacks from contractors. With a mixture of shock and disbelief, many Americans wondered: "Who else? What next?" It was an unprecedented crisis of American leadership, and no one could say whether or when trust in that leadership could ever be restored. It seemed incredible that only a little over a year had passed since Nixon and Agnew had stood at Miami, waving acknowledgment of their renomination, and only a little over six months since they were sworn in for a second term after a triumphant election.

Russian Novel. At first glance, it looked to some as if the new scandal might help Nixon by diverting public attention from Watergate, but that was a short-sighted view. "Watergate is like a Russian novel," commented a top Administration official. "There were too many names. Nobody took any money and people didn't really understand it. Agnew's difficulties are different. Those are charges that people understand." Chances are that people in fact understand Watergate much better than the White House hopes; at any rate, it was now clear to all that wrong had been done in high office, and that the general atmosphere of suspicion included the Vice President.

Nor was scandal the only burden that weighed on the President. The mood of the country appeared quizzical, skeptical, disenchanted with a government that did not seem to be functioning properly. The economy, in particular, looked hopelessly out of control. Food prices continued to soar beyond expectations of the White House; grain and corn prices reached record highs. The meat shortage was a shock, and with crop shortages predicted into the indefinite future, vegetables, canned fruits, and beans were disappearing from grocery shelves. All this seemed to imply, perhaps unfairly, a massive mismanagement of the nation's energies and resources. If the solutions to the nation's problems were somehow entangled in the mysteries of Watergate, then people seemed to want above all that Nixon end those mysteries, tell all he knew, once and for all.

Glue Unstuck. "There's still some scapegoatism around, people who still make excuses for it all and say everybody's doing it anyway," noted a G.O.P. leader in Massachusetts. "But most Republicans want the President to speak out." Mrs. Cassie Marsh, a secretary for the Detroit public schools, agreed. "Even if it is bad, we want to know. He's going to have to be more reassuring than he has been because there are still going to be a good many people who feel he's trying to cover up."

In a speech to the American Bar Association meeting in Washington, D.C., last week, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun warned his fellow lawyers of a growing laxness in public life that threatens the survival of the nation. The "pall of Watergate," he said, "with all its revelations of misplaced loyalties, of strange measures of the ethical, of unusual doings in high places, and by lawyer after lawyer after lawyer, is upon us. The very glue of our ship of state seems about to become unstuck. There is a resultant fear of consequent grave damage to the democratic process of which we have been so proud, and in which we firmly have believed and which we have proclaimed to the world. Seemingly, there is an environment of diffuse but broad taint and corruption in our public life."

Elaborate scenarios of impeachment or resignation were widely discussed. One theory held that Agnew might be forced to resign because of a criminal indictment. Under the provisions of the 25th Amendment, Nixon would then pick a successor, to be approved by a majority in both houses of Congress. The Vice President could be a Republican acceptable to the country at large--a Nelson Rockefeller, perhaps, or a John Connally or even, some admirers think, a Howard Baker. If a new Vice President were installed, Nixon himself would be under greater pressure to resign so that the country could put Watergate behind it and get down to business again.

But the majority of people still shied away from talk of removing the President from office. "Impeachment is the political equivalent of capital punishment," said a leading Democrat, "and so far the American people don't favor capital punishment for the President." The Boston Globe editorialized: "It may be that Mr. Nixon is banking on what social psychologists call the threshold beyond which the body politic cannot go in thinking ill of its leadership or itself. It may be that a 'He's-the-only-President-we've-got' syndrome is beginning to develop."

Whether Nixon would seize the occasion of his speech to reassure the country and rebuild confidence was unpredictable. Some of his top advisers have urged him to make a dramatic change of course. Instead of striking out at his accusers, as the instincts of an old political gutfighter told him to do, they proposed that he shoulder his share of blame for Watergate, ask for absolution, and promise to do better in the future. They were heartened by the fact that Raymond Price accompanied the President on an evening cruise on the Potomac last week and then followed him to Camp David. The ablest of the President's speechwriters, Price is known to favor a conciliatory approach.

But the hard-lining Nixon also emerged last week, when he took his toughest stand to date on the question of releasing the Watergate tapes. In a brief filed with the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., he announced that he might not give up the tapes even if the court ordered him to do so. "The President," the brief declared, "is answerable to the Nation but not to the courts."

More withdrawn than at any other time since he became President, Nixon has been keeping his intentions to himself. Though the President's legal advisers--J. Fred Buzhardt and Leonard Garment--were instructed to prepare a White Paper rebutting the serious charges made against the President in the Senate hearings, they did not know when Nixon planned to release it or under what circumstances. The precise format for the President's speech this week on nationwide television was also undecided. While Nixon had promised a press conference in the near future, the date for that too was a matter of speculation, even though it has been five months since his last one.

The President clearly needs to make the political speech of his life this week. Possibly, he may be guided by Agnew's performance. Rather than take refuge in silence and aloofness as Nixon has done on Watergate, the Vice President met the attack against him headon. The President has a still greater opportunity to restore confidence in himself and in the U.S. Government.

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