Wars of Watergate

Quotes

Book One

Chapter 1

[In the 1964 campaign,] Johnson had a veritable monopoly on the peace corner. Speaking in Eufaula, Oklahoma, on September 25, he could not resist gilding the lily: "There are those that say you ought to go North and drop bombs, to try to wipe out supply lines, and they think that would escalate the war. We don't want our American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys. We don't want to get involved... with 700 million people and get tied down in a land war in Asia." In the meantime, Barry Goldwater was the candidate who reputedly wanted to "lob one into the men's room in the Kremlin."

In retrospect, Johnson complained that "that bitch of a war" took him away from "the woman I really loved" - his Great Society. The war ruptured the nation, sparking unprecedented anger and resistance to government policies.

Clark Clifford, one of the few men Johnson held in awe, warned in July 1965 that the war was futile. "I don't believe we can win in South Vietnam," he said. "If we send in 100,000 more men, the North Vietnamese will meet us. If North Vietnam runs out of men, the Chinese will send in volunteers. Russia and China don't intend for us to win the war." Clifford urged that we get out "honorably." Otherwise, he warned, "I can't see anything but catastrophe for my country."

"There will be some Nervous Nellies and some who will become frustrated and break ranks under the strain," the President remarked. There would be those who would "turn on their leaders and on their country and on our fighting men. There will be times of trial and tensions in the days ahead that will exact the best that is in all of us."

Johnson's patriotic homilies were inadequate. George Washington, at Valley Forge in 1778, warned that whoever built upon patriotism as a sufficient basis for conducting a long and bloody war "will find themselves deceived in the end." Such a war, Washington insisted, could never be sustained by patriotism alone. "It must be aided by a prospect of Interest or some reward. For a time, it may, of itself push Men to action; ...but it will not endure unassisted by Interest." Nevertheless, Johnson and his advisers "wrapped themselves in the flag," decrying the "Nervous Nellies" who opposed the war. Deception and self-delusion alike pervaded the Johnson Administration's conduct of the war.

Johnson was described by a contemporary as "king of the river and a stranger to the sea." He was a clever navigator of the congressional stream, paddling deftly through its pools and eddies, ever alert for the occasional sandbar. But in the open sea of foreign policy, with its shifting, almost imperceptible currents, its swells and tempests - there he was out of his depth. He could not be the master he wished to be, and this only embittered and frustrated him more. What he knew best did not apply in these unpredictable waters. International politics was not domestic politics writ large.

The history of presidential power is a history of aggrandizement; the transformation of the office in the twentieth century alone has been remarkable. Economic dislocation, global wars, and the assumption of world leadership have focused power in the presidency, and with it the rapt attention of a fascinated, often adoring, public.

Chapter 2

"Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."

- Wallace Newman, Nixon's football coach at Whittier

More tellingly and more cuttingly, [Adlai] Stevenson derided Nixon as a comic figure, describing him as the "kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation."

"He worked like a horse and learned the law," [Leonard] Garment recalled, comparing Nixon's effort to starting "athletic life by doing the Olympic decathlon."

Chapter 3

The important, sustained revolution came from within the ranks of what had been the dominant political coalition. The "risen" middle class, the blue- and white-collar workers, and ethnics who had nourished the growth of the Democratic majority, now found themselves unhappy with the young protesters who were the new cohabitants of its political home. The protesters' challenges to cherished views of the American way of life, the criticisms of what was wrong with America, left the "old-fashioned Democrats" confused, shaken, and above all frightened, especially as events took a violent turn. Whatever their own disenchantment with the Vietnam war, they hardly identified themselves with the public expressions of outrage by disaffected groups. A political alliance between protesters and conventional Democrats simply was improbable. The latter had little sympathy fo the blacks and dispossessed who, in their minds, had not worked to achieve the American Dream. Their disdain, even contempt, for the alienated young campus radicals was as powerful. After all, these were the spoiled, pampered, comfortable children of those above - or even their own ungrateful offspring.

"Things have come to some pass when a Republican candidate for President has to take counsel with his advisers about whether he should attend the funeral of a Nobel Prize winner."

- Leonard Garmet, Nixon's law partner, 1968

Perhaps there was no New Nixon - just new perceptions. Howard Phillips, a militant conservative who had idolized Nixon since his teen years, believed that the man never really changed. Speaking in the last days of the Nixon Administration in 1974, as he issued a "conservative manifesto" calling for the President's resignation, and at a time when talk of a New Nixon had faded and the Old Nixon appeared very much restored, Phillips said: "Throughout his public career, Mr. Nixon has always tried to please his audience, seeking their confidence and admiration by becoming the man he thinks they want him to be. The changing perceptions of Nixon - the New Nixon, the Old Nixon, the statesman, the strategist - do not reflect a change in the man but in the audience to which he is at any moment appealing."

Book Two

Chapter 4

"It was all warm and friendly until... Bob Haldeman arrived."

- Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's personal secretary since 1951

Compartmentalization ensured fragmentation of power, precisely what Nixon desired. (Of course, the technique was not new; Franklin D. Roosevelt was a past master at such administrative dealings.)

"I've always thought this country could run itself domestically without a President," Nixon said in 1967. "All you need is a competent Cabinet to run the country at home. You need a President for foreign policy; no Secretary of State is really important; the President makes foreign policy." This oft-repeated mark implied that Nixon really had little interest in domestic affairs and was prepared to allow a "competent Cabinet" to run its own course. Nothing was further from the truth. In his eyes, the Cabinet was only an extension of Richard Nixon and the Oval Office; he well realized how domestic affairs intersected with political and public-relations considerations which in turn vitally affected his public standing.

John F. Kennedy's aide and biographer, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., recalled many instances of his and Kennedy's frustration in getting the bureaucracy to respond to policy directives... "the President use to divert himself with the dream of establishing a secret office of thirty people or so to run foreign policy while maintaining the State Department as a facade in which people might contentedly carry papers from bureau to bureau." (Ironically, that was precisely the system that Nixon and Kissinger installed.)

Chapter 5

Haldeman selected a number of people on various lists for IRS audits and other forms of harassment. Washington Post lawyer Edward Bennett Williams was targeted. Williams at first regarded the attention as a "badge of honor"; on more sober reflection, he realized how dangerous it was to have the "President of the United States obsessed with the idea of wreaking some kind of revenge against me." The IRS audited him for three consecutive years.

Significantly, the Court decisively rejected Solicitor General Erwin Griswold's argument that the release of the papers would affect lives, the recovery of Vietnam prisoners of war, and the peace process. Those considerations, he argued, had "such an effect on the security of the United States that [they] ought to be the basis of an injunction in this case." The Justices thought not, but their surface unanimity masked deep feelings. Some, like Justice Hugo Black, in what proved to be his final judicial opinion, bitterly assailed the Administration and the courts for permitting even a temporary injunction. Chief Justice Warren Burger dutifully defended the Administration, however, and Justice Byron White expressed biting contempt for Ellsberg's action and urged that the government prosecute him under the ordinary criminal statutes.