Optimists argue that Watergate has ended the national trance under which American Presidents acquired something close to the divine right of kings. According to this view, the fall of the House of Nixon—toppled by the force of truth and a diligent press—proves that the U.S. democratic “system” is stronger than mere Presidents. Once again, the chief executive is accountable to the people. Three cheers for the Watergate disaster.
All this assumes that the courts actually will convict various Nixon courtiers for crimes allegedly committed in behalf of his reelection. But that requires unassailable proof of guilt, a task of exquisite difficulty in these unprecedented cases. Even more improbable is the notion of a majority vote in the House to impeach Mr. Nixon and a two-thirds vote in the Senate to remove him from office. As Taylor Branch suggests in this issue, the Senate is unlikely to surmount its ingrained prudence—not when removing Mr. Nixon would create a President Agnew, to say nothing of incalculable damage to U.S. prestige abroad. Such consequences do not attract Senators seeking reelection.
That leaves the Ervin hearings as a signal to Mr. Nixon that he had best start heeding Congress or even abandon his office. But so far he insists on his innocence and retreats into the dark corners of his sullen piety. Perhaps he believes that all the fuss eventually will bore the public and mobilize assorted defenders of Presidential sanctity, some of whom yearn to “preserve the office” in order to occupy it. Meantime Mr. Nixon, having managed to become the lamest-duck President in history, will spend the next three and a half years fitfully playing his favorite role of global peace (and war) maker everywhere but in the United States. Where this will leave the economy and other domestic problems is anybody’s guess. Mr. Nixon’s renewed reliance on his unofficial (and unaccountable) adviser John Connally evokes no confidence except in the oil industry.
Beyond all the melodramatic intrigue, the real Watergate issue is whether the American Presidency is worth preserving in its present form. The dollar cost alone is immense, starting with over $400 million for the last election. More important, the constant growth of Presidential power, mostly caused by wars and economic crises, has weakened Congress and virtually nullified the constitutional intention of checks and balances. As a result, Americans now delegate sole responsibility for the fate of the nation to one man—and he is quite possibly the man furthest removed from reality in the United States.
Why be surprised? Having rejected a parliamentary system, we offer the equivalent of an eight-year sovereignty to the candidate who makes the slickest deals with special interests for the most campaign cash. And the winner takes all; even a minority President like Nixon in 1968 need not respect the desires and diversities of more than half the electorate, who voted against him. The winner’s ambition for historical greatness makes reelection his first priority—and that wish, often blocked in domestic affairs by’ a naysaying Congress, invariably finds its most satisfactory expression in foreign affairs. Hence more foreign adventures draining the country’s blood and treasure. The patriotic myth holds that politics stops at the water’s edge; it is a notion that almost always guarantees a second term.
Watergate is the culmination of a long trend that has enveloped Presidents with personal assistants devoted to protecting the boss, not the nation’s interests. Going back to Roosevelt, those fierce young men have unwittingly converted democracy into monarchy, with all its blinding effects on the ruler. When a man surrounds himself with courtiers who tell him only what he wants to hear, when he is understandably convinced that he has a mandate from heaven, when he leads the “free world” and commands the most awesome military power on earth, then that man exposes himself to hallucinations. The Presidency is likely to exaggerate the incumbent’s worst character traits. And he risks losing all perspective.
That is the root of the Watergate disaster: an astounding lack of realism by those charged above all with being realistic. How could Watergate’s masterminds ever imagine that a veteran politician like Larry O’Brien would keep incriminating documents in his desk? That Daniel Ellsberg was a homosexual blackmailed by Hanoi into publicizing the Pentagon Papers? That all the chicanery would never be traced to the highest White House officials? Rarely have sinister actions arisen from more naïve perceptions.
The flaws of the Presidency will not vanish with a satisfactory resolution, if any, of the Watergate cases, or with the eventual retirement of Mr. Nixon. Indeed, the next President may well compensate for Watergate by walling himself behind a facade of extreme rectitude protected by a new palace guard that will differ only in style from Mr. Nixon’s Hessians. Moreover, if the successor has reason to fear assassination, the result may worsen the central Presidential danger—total responsibility, total unreality.
All of which suggests that the long-term solution is to decrease one-man Presidential power—for example, by establishing a multiple-person Executive elected as a team with a rotating chairman. Too inefficient? But what is less efficient than giving one man the impossible job of running the infinitely complex U.S. government? That way lies a potential era of coups d’etat. Surely we must now consider some form of government more in line with the British parliamentary system, with its virtues of flexibility and responsiveness. Anything that would at least limit the current opportunities for aggrandizement of power, isolation, and self-deception. Of course, any change would require a constitutional amendment and perhaps years of political bargaining. Still, the person who pioneered such a reform would be assured an unparalleled place in American history. In fact, the man in the best position to do so would be none other than an incumbent President. Is Richard Nixon listening?
