Awaiting the Next Resolution

By Hugh Sidey

This is the time of the aftershock.

Events of the Agnew magnitude produce momentary political paralysis and anguish. Then comes the time of reflection and clarification; and then the aftershock, when people see they have been right or wrong and decide how they feel.

Richard Nixon stands nearer his own resignation or impeachment than ever before. How near is the unanswerable question. But the sense of the men in the White House that they have now resolved part of their tortuous problem is false. It is one of those singular illusions that result from their isolation.

The country has been morally ravaged. The realization of that is being registered now in Congress and in almost every public opinion survey. In American schools, from college to junior high, Watergate has become a negative civics and government lesson, focusing thought that some academicians believe will have an impact far beyond just those students in the seminars and lectures.

sb Events may intervene in undetermined ways or for an unpredictable time. A worsening and continuing Middle East situation could help Nixon back from the precipice on which he now stands. A brightening of the economic picture or some other unforeseen natural or human event could give him surer footing.

But the massive emotional and political forces already pushing against him could be strengthened. Even before the Agnew confession there was overwhelming evidence of a new and deeper national souring on Nixon, the result of people pondering at the summer's end the meanings in the Watergate hearings and the economic poundings and seeing this nation rushing toward scarcity while a helpless and indifferent Administration is absorbed in its own salvation.

Now, despite the preponderance of evidence against Agnew, Nixon's natural allies on the right feel betrayed by the President and at least for the moment some are inclined to take out their anger on Nixon, who they feel executed Agnew. Egil Krogh, another of Nixon's White House aides from the days of infamy, was indicted last week, a harbinger that Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox's vast apparatus is beginning to gather momentum in the courts. The Hughes money given to Bebe Rebozo for the Nixon campaign has an ominous ring. Is this the end of a dirty shirttail that will show one of the world's richest men to be involved in the scandals of this Administration?

Those White House team players, big and little, have pulled apart and formed their own defenses, tried to reorder their shattered worlds. To some of them, it is now clear that Nixon was their nemesis. In private, they wonder just how long Mitchell, Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Agnew--maybe Rebozo--and their tortured wives and children can cling to their professions of presidential innocence, can display faulty memories and live behind legal gimmicks. Will one break?

There is, too, the tapes decision. Of course, Nixon could win in the Supreme Court, or he could comply with an order to produce his tapes and papers, which might prove inconclusive. But what if the high court upholds the two lower courts, asks the President to turn the material over, and he refuses? The reluctant dragons on the Hill now are saying that would be grounds for impeachment.

And Agnew? In the long run he becomes a confirmation of many dark thoughts about the Nixon morality. If Agnew, the Administration's avenging angel for so long, is a criminal, what voice in that discredited jungle can be believed? Had Agnew winked from his pulpit, shown a sense of humor and an understanding of his own flaws, his fall would have had less impact. But he was ungiving and unyielding. Agnew is a part of Nixon, despite the desperate efforts of detachment.

Events have taken charge in this city. There is no man who can now control them. They may be influenced or delayed, but the rush of them suggests that this Government is severely damaged. What matters most now is how everything comes together in the national mind-scandal, war, economics, people--and how that in turn is communicated to the Congress and the courts and the President.

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