enough
The principal remaining question about Mr Nixon is whether it is better that he should resign the Presidency, or that he should be dismissed from it following an impeachment trial in the Senate. It is melancholy to record this judgement for, as his few remaining defenders have so vehemently argued, he has many achievements to his credit: from the withdrawal from Vietnam, through the opening of relations with China and the attempt to achieve peace in the Middle East, down to such domestic social concerns as the first serious experiments with a negative income tax, Mr Nixon has made not inconsiderable strides in breaking up the stagnant consensus that preceded his election. What he has done is not beyond criticism: it may well be that the détente with the Soviet Union, for example, is a product of delusion. And, indeed, in the field of foreign policy which he and Dr Kissinger have so much made their own, the prolongation of his time in office is more likely than not to produce results damaging to America and western interests. It is said, for example, that Mr Nixon and his supporters trust that his visit to Moscow, planned for June, will help compensate for the reverses created by the Watergate affair. But all the evidence — we need do no more than remember Khruschev's trial of strength with Kennedy over Cuba — suggests that the Soviet leaders specialise in putting weak or uncertain Presidents under severe pressure to yield to their machinations in return for some illusory triumph. And Mr Nixon is now clearly so desperate that he might well be tempted to respond to such pressure.
It is in senses like this that Mr Nixon's continuance in office threatens the external security of the United States, as much as the continued revelations about his private no less than his public behaviour threaten the nation's internal balance and self-confidence. Nonetheless, it could well be argued — as, indeed, we believe — that the President has a point when he stresses the damage that might be done to the institution of the Presidency itself were he forced from office without any proof that he was guilty of criminal offences, nor any confession from him to that effect. On the other hand, the trauma of an impeachment trial is likely to inflict further deep wounds on American political society. However, there will be other Presidents after Mr Nixon, and the special place of the Presidency in the American Constitution makes it desirable that they should not be weakened more that is absolutely necessary by the vagaries and malfeasances of the current incumbent's activities. If the choice, therefore, is to lie between silent resignation and impeachment, the balance of the argument is in favour of impeachment. A Fonstitutionally conducted trial in the Senate, if it is followed by a verdict of guilty, establishes a plausible proposition to the effect that Mr Nixon behaved exceptionally: the residency need not be considered weakened bY the wrongdoing of one President.
There is only one alternative — that Mr Nixon should admit that he has done wrong and resign the Presidency, having been given, in return, a guarantee of immunity against further prosecution. Of course it is undesirable ln principle to give such guarantees: but such a promise might well be the only means of securing a peaceful departure, and as such it could well serve a higher good. Nor need Mr Nuion confess to anything he has not already admitted: for the astonishing thing, following the most recent release of transcripts, is that the President has himself revealed that his general conduct of affairs — as much as any 13ecific undertaking anent Watergate which ne sanctioned — unfitted him for the most Powerful office in the world. The standards of government and political conduct which are clearly a deep part of him are offensive to ,democratic and American traditions alike. Let rum say so, and go peacefully.
Power and principle
The latest news from the AUEW front is that Mr Scanlon and his executive have instructed their members to refuse to perform any work connected with Britain's military contracts With Chile. Since this ban will apply not merely to the specific construction that has aroused the ire of Mr Heffer, but to repairs and replacements for armaments already in the Possession of the Chilean armed forces, it Would if implemented utterly destroy the basis elf the contractual relationships the British Government enjoys with a number of foreign countries — including, incidentally, such betes 4oires of the left as South Africa. There are sOme indications that AUEW workers, preferring their own jobs to Mr Scanlon's principles, Will refuse to obey the ban: it appears that the constitutional position is that individual seg?lents of the union are not obliged to heed an ,Injunction from the executive which is not ,ninding on all union members. Nonetheless, matter raises again in an acute fashion the issue of political power which came into the ,nrien with the mysterious payment of £65,000 Into the Industrial Relations Court to avert a national stoppage of the AUEW.
What is quite exceptionally depressing about he first of these issues — and may be equally uepressing about the second, if Mr Callaghan's stout defence of his position on fulfilling the Chilean contracts is overrun — is that Government ministers and spokesmen have Rad nothing whatever to say in public about Pile principles involved. Mr Foot, it is true, 'lied to persuade the AUEW in private to appear before the court and hold matters off Until he could get around to abolishing the court; but in public he confined himself to pointless abuse of Sir John Donaldson — hardly an honourable exercise for one who has in the past paraded as a tribune of freedom. Then, though there was nothing specifically illegal or indeed improper about people who possessed the cash paying Mr Scanlon's fines, there was something that smelt about the whole conduct of the exercise; and again, it is difficult to believe that, the principal or principals having been in negotiation with the court and the Government for more than a week, Mr Foot did not know, as he claims, their names. If. this Government is truly to govern, if it is not to show itself again and again to be the catspaw, not necessarily of the unions in general — Mr Jones, for example, has been a model of co-operative responsibility — but certainly of Mr Scanlon in particular, Mr Wilson and his ministers will have to do a great deal better than they have done. The shifty compromises in dark corners, the weasel words of toadying to powerful monopolies, are scarcely the tones of Labour freedom, and they postpone, rather than avert, the moment of final confrontation between unions and people.
Dangerous and disgraceful
The more powerful a human emotion, or the greater the emotional potential of a situation, the more television trivialises it. At the same time — it is no paradox — the impact of some television programmes produces, as do some press campaigns, a momentary emotional impulse of great power, but little duration. For all these general reasons the decision of the IBA to allow the screening of the World in Action programme, in which the American showman Ben Hunter paraded four small orphans before television viewers in the hope of finding parents for them, was disgraceful. It was on an exact par with those newspaper competitions in which children and their parents are invited to win a cat or a dog or a pony — the Sun has been the worst recent offender in their respect — only to discover, as happens in a large number of cases, that they do not want the animal. It is subsequently usually inadequately cared for, or even ill-treated, and sometimes abandoned.
Of course the adoption and fosterage experts who have supported the programme insist that prospective parents will be scrutinised in the usual thorough way. But that does not take away from the potentially dangerous impact of the show on the children. For one thing, the presentation of Mr Hunter was deliberately and powerfully designed to heighten emotion. What will be the effect of that on, say, Ronnie, for whom child-care officers have struggled without success to find a home for four years? Like any child of his age he is likely to have been deeply impressed by the glamour of a TV show: if that, too, fails, he could be alienated for life. The experiment is deeply and dangerously destructive. Since Mr Hunter runs a regular show of this kind in the United States it can only be supposed that the programme company's executives have it in mind to start a similar one here. They must be resisted; and the whole business called to a halt before more damage is done.
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