American Letter

If it hadn't happened

Al Capp

What if the night watchman at the Watergate building had not noticed that the bit of tape' he had removed had been restored? And if Hunt and Liddy's lads had got away with the bugging? And if CREEP had learned that all it could learn from Larry O'Brien's and Oliver's conversations was how to lose elections, and disgustedly wrote the whole thing off as they did the attempt to burgle Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office? What if the nation had never found out about Watergate? Would we have been losers? Or winners?

Richard Nixon, in an overwhelming mandate, would have been a more effective president than in his first term, and possibly a more accepted one, even by those who are repelled by his haberdashery and syntax. Four years later, Teddy Kennedy would, beyond all hope and reason, have succeeded him. Nixon would have bequeathed him a nation that had, at long last, made its peace with the other nuclear powers, a prosperous nation (for this week, unemployment reached an historic low, prices began falling, and our balance of trade became healthy); the Camelot our romantics yearn for would have been restored, for President Teddy, whose aesthetic. tastes resemble John Wayne's more than John Betjeman's, would undoubtedly have got Leonard Bernstein to run cultural affairs at the White House.

President Nixon would have resolved our chief anxiety for President Teddy, our racial problem, by stubbornly continuing to give every member of every racial group everything he deserved, but not one bit more. This would, of course, have continued to frustrate the militants, but delight the achievers of both races, and that would have continued to reduce the infuriating cost of welfare and taken our cities out of the hands of the soft-headed, such as John Lindsay, and turned them over to the tough-minded. President Teddy, although he would have, no doubt, spent the last four years whining at President Nixon's lack of heart in dealing with the disadvantaged, would have accepted those policies with as little sense of the absurd, and as strong a sense of practicality, as he accepted everything George Wallace stood for. a few months ago, in Alabama. President Teddy would have inherited a national TV, our most influential opinion

making force, no longer restricted to three networks with one point of view he daren't challenge for fear of being destroyed, as were the two presidents before him, but a national TV broadened, by the Nixon administration's insistence on free enterprise, into offering Americans as many points of view as Detroit offers us models of cars. This would have assured him that any conservative move he might have made as President (for all their lip-service to liberalism, the Kennedys have, in the crunch, been true sons Of Old Joe) would get a fair hearing. He would have enjoyed a fine presidency and, if he didn't mess around with any of the sanities the despised Nixon had introduced, he might have gone down in history as the long-awaited Messiah.

But Watergate has happened. For the last week the President has been talking in a waY chillingly reminiscent of Spiro Agnew's last week. And the Kennedy people have long since been resigned to the fact that in a nation now demanding St Francis in the White House the Senator cannot be even remotelY considered. And there is no other way to use him in government. He is too important to be brushed off with an ambassadorship. He isn't bright enough to be Secretary of State. Even his most devoted followers must shudder at the thought of Teddy negotiating with Mao or Brezhnev. And so Watergate may have doomed him to a career as the nation's liveliest elder statesman, for he can remain senior Senator from Massachusetts as long as The Family wants to pay for it. (It occurs to me that the Kennedy narne crops up frequently in these dispatches. It is because its power, in academe and in the media has, if anything, increased since the passing of its two giants.

If Watergate hadn't happened, the nation would never have known that this White House staff, included as many dolts, wheeler. dealers and salivating sneaks as all previous White House staffs, although, after watching them testifying on TV, a fair man must come to the conclusion that they were a far brighter bunch than the Harry Vaughns and Sherman Adamses, the Bobby Bakers and Arthur Schlesingers, who were jewels of the Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson and Kennedy staffs. if Watergate hadn't happened we would never have known that our great airline companies, to whom we daily entrust our lives, couldn't be trusted not to bribe. We would have gone on, serene in the conviction that the Office makes the Man, and that any dubious poi, fuzzy general, or ambitious billionaire achieving that office is somehow magicallY transformed into the Father of His Country. , No immense corporations, in their eternal pursuit of an extra million here or an extra billion there, would have felt that there was no understanding of such problems in the ed. I White House, and possibly a helpful phone no I call from it to the right guy in the right place. at I On the other hand, no lunatic pressure group Would have felt that there was anything but ose I disdain in the White House, for their eternal ind I Pursuit of a few extra million for the bussing acI that everyone hates, or for a few extra billions

r, a for the public housing that becomes deserted debris before the paint is dry. Watergate has revealed that the Nixon administration has been relaxed, to say the least, in its efforts to bring law and order to the

but of such monopolies as the milk trust, bring it has shown an angry determination to ring law and order to our streets. It would be fascinating to poll the average American as to Which he fears most: a penny rise in the price df his morning milk, or a knife in his, back at night.

Were we electrified by the sordidness of politics when, in the contagion of Watergate, Spiro Agnew was revealed to have accepted a tew dubious bucks, in contrast to the candidate he defeated, Sergeant Shriver, whose irnPeccability was guaranteed by his splendid Character, and certainly not because his wife IS heiress to one fourth of the Kennedy billions? Did we learn, for the first time, that our income tax laws could be used as diseiPline, or had we known all about that sort of thing, since the early 'thirties when they were Used to discipline Al Capone? Were we dismayed to learn that large contributors to CREEP were given ambassadorships, or had we forgotten that one of the most naive, but generous, contributors to , rranklin Roosevelt's campaign was given the crucial ambassadorship to Russia, and that his Childishness launched thirty years of cold War?

, Were we heartbroken when Watergate `aught us that a president sometimes would

,.i ' lhd it necessary to tell us something not quite ,amounting to the whole truth, or had we ldrgotten President Eisenhower's hilarious explanation of the U2 incident, President wilson's solemn promise that no American World would be shed on foreign shores in ,sworld War I, or the same vow from President Koosevelt prior to World War 11?

But there is no going back: the shabby 'nimble of Watergate has been blown into a national disgrace,. •

Those whose secrets have been revealed have come out no better than the secrets the revealers unthinkingly revealed about themselves; both turn out to be dealers in base c,dnning, hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness — or !nail we say, as politicians, playing that nonolds-barred, knee-in-the-groin game in the °flly way it has ever, possibly can ever, be Played.

wWi hat, as a result of Watergate, will change? tens political campaigns no longer require 'ens of millions, or will they go on, as before, 'tinder a new set of rules that you can bet will ,Place no more financial restrictions on candidates than the old ones, for they will be 'made by officeholders who know that only Money, and more money,,can help when they are candidates again? Will White House staffs " loyal to their master, or will they be

Chibald Cbxes, loyal only to conscience? .;-Very politician knows the answer to that. White House staffs will be loyal to their

.ster, • Only the President has suggested that we Stop wallowing in Watergate, but that under sr_tandably was dismissed as self-serving, since .'d,e mud was landing on him. Yet for all the igle.e of the Good Guys that the Bad Guys are being punished, their blatherings and postur,198s have set so stern a standard of retroac!e chastity they had better, themselves, turn 0" ut under scrutiny to be Better Guys than any Gclod Guys have ever been in history, and many of us here don't believe they are or ever w. ere. The United States may henceforth be forced to select its Presidents as new born babes like the Dalai Lama. a anree era nal ng n's as ild ive eir ye, )e) esa ed me ah• ast ,ay ast ng on ite elY Ise be n't ,en at or ye -Cs as is he he Oil te US ng ne er in ur If er :e

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