I should not be critical, as a matter of course, of Republicans who vote against the President.
Larry Hogan18 spoke out and indicated how he’d vote—issuing a strong statement of condemnation of the President. The White House took him on. I will not. His move was too political—he should have waited until the vote—but he reached his decision after agony and worry and study.
When I heard of the taping in the White House—I felt disturbed and concerned—standing in the Southwest Lobby of the White House. I told Bryce Harlow “I am shocked, the President can’t survive this taping of all his conversations”—but I was wrong. The public concern was not with the taping but with ‘what’s on the tapes’. To me it’s just plain wrong to tape all those conversations, but I guess that’s an old fashioned view.
I have not read all the impeachment evidence, but if I felt after reading it as I feel now—I would vote not to impeach. That would be considered by many as a cop-out. (My close friend Railsback19 told me, “George, if you read the evidence I know you’d vote to impeach.”)
Censure for permitting tone of arrogance and disrespect for institutions to spring up and fester—yes.
Incidentally the doing of things that now sound bad for reasons of national security do not trouble me for an Ellsberg should be stopped. Don’t bug his psychiatrist but stop the flat out stealing of classified documents. That is clearly wrong and yet an Ellsberg enjoys today a respectability because of the methods of those who tried to bring him up short.
I shall stop with this gratuitous advice. Listen to your conscience. Don’t be afraid not to join the mob—if you feel inside it’s wrong.
Don’t confuse being ‘soft’ with seeing the other guy’s point of view.
In judging your President give him the enormous credit he’s due for substantive achievements. Try to understand the ‘why’ of the National Security concern; but understand too that the power accompanied by arrogance is very dangerous. It’s particularly dangerous when men with no real experience have it—for they can abuse our great institutions.
Avoid self-righteously turning on a friend, but have your friendship mean enough that you would be willing to share with your friend your judgment.
Don’t assign away your judgment to achieve power.
These have been a tough 18 months. I feel battered and disillusioned. I feel betrayed in a sense by those who did wrong and tracked corruption and institutional subversion into that beautiful White House. In trying to build Party, I feel like the guy in charge of the Titanic boiler room—one damn shock after another.
But too I retain a basic confidence in the President’s ability. I respect him still—not at all for the tapes nor for some of his employees’ past—but for his courage under fire and for his accomplishments.
I will never feel the same around the President after all of this, but I hope he survives and finishes his term. I think that’s best for the country in the long run.
Civility will return to Washington eventually. The excesses condoned by the press will give way to reason and fair play. Personalities will change and our system will have proved that it works—more slowly than some would want—less efficiently than some would decree—but it works and gives us—even in adversity—great stability.
I expect it has not been easy for you to have your Dad be head of the RNC at this time. I know your peers must put you in funny positions at times by little words in jest that don’t seem funny or by saying things that hurt you because of your family loyalty.
I can’t wait to see you all in August. I’m still family champ in back-gammon.
Devotedly,
Dad
Nixon had appointed Leon Jaworski—a respected Houston lawyer and longtime friend of ours—to replace Archibald Cox as the special prosecutor. Determined to do a thorough job, Jaworski asked Judge Sirica to subpoena an additional sixty-four tapes and documents. Nixon refused, and Jaworski took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. On July 24, the court ruled 8—0 that Nixon did not have “absolute authority” to control the material and ordered him to turn over the tapes. The President complied. Many more shocking revelations were on the tapes, but the most damning—the “smoking gun” tape—was a conversation from June 23, 1972, where Nixon could be heard telling Haldeman to block the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate break-in, which had occurred just six days earlier. This was proof the President had been involved, at least in the cover-up. This was proof the President had lied. After this, I lost faith in Nixon. I could not forgive him this lie.
None of this had been made public yet when Al Haig called me to the White House on July 31. I dictated to my diary:
July 31, 1974
. . . We talked for close to an hour. He reviewed the entire situation. I spoke to him very frankly about the President’s chances. I told him that I thought we were worse off in the House than the White House probably thought—losing votes from people that we should be getting them from and that I thought the Senate would similarly deteriorate. He indicated the following to me:
• That there would be more bad news including a major shock from one of the tapes.
• A sentence that the President had been up the mountain top and down several times meaning considering resignation. Haig’s own view tended toward resignation though he certainly told the President he obviously would stick by the decision (the more I see Haig, the more I realize what tremendous pressures he’s been under.)
He told me that Ziegler was no longer going to speak out on Watergate and agreed that the Kangaroo Court wordage that he thought might have come from the President, came from Ziegler. He told me the President denied he had even had anything to do with it. Ziegler is now out of the Watergate statement business but it’s too darn late in my view.
The President is holding up pretty well. He is under tremendous pressure. I reminded Haig that nothing we had ever discussed had been leaked in any way. He noted that, and proceeded to be very frank with me. . . .
Haig made some reference to the fact that the decision would be made within the next twenty-four hours and he thought the decision was going to be made all out to go ahead. If it was made the President would have to take the offense, go up and testify himself, work with the Party, work with the Senators, have a very strong offense. I asked how the family was holding up. Haig said fine. Haig was terribly complimentary of Ford and the job he was doing, indicating that that was one of the best things the President had ever done. . . .
I don’t know how Haig remains as decent and pleasant as he is under this enormous pressure where I am sure he feels great isolation. . . .
I told him that in my view if the President was going to resign he ought to do it now rather than later. If he resigned after the elections we would probably take a bigger bath in the elections and then the new president would be faced with a Congress far to the left of where the country stood and he would also be denied a honeymoon period because many of the people coming in would have no personal affection for the Vice President such as the present members of Congress both Democrats and Republicans feel. I felt that the honeymoon period now indeed would help the country and clearly would help the country keep from moving left in the elections. I told Haig I didn’t feel that political expediency should be a consideration for resignation however. But it was hard to discount politics. We both agreed that what is best for the country counts. We discussed the effect on the President, the humiliation, the economic effects. I suggested that clearly the country would not expect him to be dragged through courts and stuff. . . . I told Haig that in my view that what happened to the President was just an accumulation of the weight of it all. One shock after another. Matters like the Connally indictment,20 the Ehrlichman conviction, the various White House aides, etc. were the things that all added up and dragged the President down. I told him that I wished the President did not have to have the opinion that these were the two finest servants. Haig indicated to me that he realized that he had been had by the finest top ai
des. I told him how very strongly I felt on this. Haig stopped short of being critical of me although I will readily concede the White House probably feels I have not done enough to partisanize [the RNC]. He feels the proceedings of the Judiciary Committee have been much less than fair, that there has been a vendetta, that they oozed evidence out to hurt the President, that many of our people bit the bullet and are going to have revenge taken by the voters. I told him I didn’t think there would be as much of this as he felt. . . .
August 5, 1974
A calamitous day. Burch called me right after noon and asked me if I could come down to the White House, that he had some news, that he was going to go out and brief Johnny Rhodes and was taking Buzhardt21 with him. Wondered if I could come down there and ride out and get clued in. I went down. The news was, of course, the tapes.22 . . .
It became clear we were all upset. I even suggested that in order to move things forward I would consider resigning, saying the President was entitled to some kind of defense but I could no longer defend him. Therefore I would resign. I would call a meeting of the national committee and let them select a chairman who could. . . . My feeling being not to run away but simply to highlight the dilemma. Burch and Buzhardt said that somebody needs to be around to pick up the pieces and clearly this wouldn’t be a good thing to do.
I felt at the time I should have made clear to them that it was not my intention to run away from a tough situation but rather to lead, because I feel so strongly about what happened. . . .
I talked to Haig at 9:50 in my office. He indicated that he didn’t think it was a surprise, he didn’t feel the President ought to speak out like Agnew, but of course he was giving a lot of consideration to resignation. I told him about the erosion on the National Committee, that I thought it was serious. He asked me to be sure of my judgment etc. I told him I was, and he said if we get that kind of erosion then we can be sure the President will do the right thing. He simply is waiting for the right time. He thinks he can survive in the Senate. He realizes there is a tremendous deterioration in the House. But he says “Not so in the Senate. Guys are hanging tough in the Senate.” . . . I told him I wondered who he was talking to . . .
Haig said we must think big, think big about the country first. Let’s worry about the country first. I tried to indicate to him that that was what we were doing. He did not think the President’s survival is the answer, but he does think that we should be moderate and reasonable and be sure of the weight of the thing. They had just called about a Cabinet meeting. I asked him what that was for. He said [Nixon] was going to tell why he did and what he did. He told me I was in a very difficult position, getting whip-sawed and kind of complimented me on the way it was going. Although I told him I felt in a half-assed position—neither fish nor fowl. He told me he had spent an unbelievable week with this guy—meaning the President. Bitter—very tough week. He didn’t know how the President keeps going. . . .
He predicted the President would not survive but that we would look back when we were both 80 and say he had been one of the great presidents of our time . . .
As I dictate this memo at 10:10 p.m. on August 5 I do not feel the President can survive. . . . I have decided not to issue a statement. I am torn between wanting to express my own agony and my own emotion, and get out front and cry resignation and this is too much. And at the same time recognizing that this system must work, should be permitted to work fairly, and as Burch says somebody has got to pick up the pieces. I got torn between how to lead and what is leadership at a point like this. Oddly enough at this moment leadership may mean doing nothing. There’s an awful lot of noise out there. . . . Maybe by sitting quietly, accurately reporting, trying to hold the party together, one can do the most service. But it means the risk that people won’t know how strongly and deeply I feel about this whole grubby Watergate mess. It is beneath the dignity of that oval office, and yes the President’s accomplishments are magnificent, but Watergate is a shabby, tawdry business that demeans the Presidency. Am I failing to lead by not stating that?
August 6, 1974
A traumatic day. The Cabinet meeting, set back from 10:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., proved to be a grueling session. . . . the atmosphere was one of unreality in one sense. The President sat there, strong, determined, announcing his decision to remain in office and yet unreality prevailed. Jerry Ford reiterated his position that because of his peculiar situation he was not going to involve himself in the President’s defense. The statement is public. It kind of cast a pall over the meeting. Haig later told me he thought it was wrong, the President was clearly shook up. Ford later told me that he wondered if it had offended the President and how it had gone over. I told him I thought that he had done the right thing and that I had told Haig, which I did, that Ford was simply reiterating a position he expressed the day before, so that the President would be sure to know it. Because the President indeed at that meeting was saying we should all go out, be together, be unified, go forward, etc. The President tried to express his concern about the affairs but it just didn’t come through. His explanation of this awful lie was not convincing. It simply was unreal, but everybody just sat there. . . .
The President looked uncomfortable, once he smiled over to me and with his lips said, “George,” smiled and looked warm and my heart went totally out to him even though I felt deeply betrayed by his lie of the day before. The man is amoral. He has a different sense than the rest of people. He came up the hard way. He hung tough. He hunkered down, he stone walled. He became President of the United States and a damn good one in many ways, but now it had all caught up with him. All the people he hated—Ivy League, press, establishment, Democrats, privileged—all of this ended up biting him and bringing him down. . . .
The minute the meeting was over I got aside with Al Haig. I told Haig the whole goddamned thing had come undone and there was no way it could be resolved. . . . I said your Senate count is wrong . . . I told him that people were not leveling with the White House. That it was much worse. Haig in his total decency pointed out to me that the President did understand this. I requested a meeting with the President. I told him I felt that if I were going to say something publicly, I should first do it to the President. I didn’t want to be dramatic. I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad tidings, my heart ached for him and for his family but I felt I had a real obligation to make clear the point. Haig told me to kind of stand by (I told him I was going to have lunch with Dean Burch) and he would then let me know whether the President would see me. . . .
I left the meeting, went to Burch’s office—Burch had already gone to lunch. Kind of hung around waiting for Haig to call to see if I would see the President. Nothing happened. I then went down and had a solitary lunch at the conference mess, made a few calls. There were all these messages that the press were calling frantically. My temptation was to blast the President, blast the lie, and then I thought why add to the personal tragedy and the personal grief. Events were moving so fast that it just didn’t seem right to kind of “pile on.” . . .
I think of that little Julie . . . so sensitive and thoughtful and loyal too, and I wonder, “My God what would that be like for our family.” At the end of my luncheon Haig called. I went up to his office and he told me that the President did not want to see me. . . .
I must confess that I was somewhat offended . . . I asked Al, “What was his reaction? Why won’t he see me?” He said, “Well, he just wasn’t up to it. He said, ‘maybe tomorrow.’” . . . The President simply cannot bring himself to talk to people outside of a tiny, tiny circle and this has brought him to his knees. . . .
It is so hard to know what is fair and right. It is so easy to get a headline. It is so difficult to assess how the sublimation of one’s views in a position of leadership might be detected as softness. All of this is quite clear to those on the outside but it is never clear to those on the inside. I don’t want to pile on. I don’t want to add to the woes of the President, I don’t want to increase th
e agony of his family. And yet I want to make damn clear the lie is something we can’t support. But this era of tawdry, shabby lack of morality has got to end. . . . I will take Ford’s decency over Nixon’s toughness because what we need at this juncture in our history is a certain sense of morality and a certain sense of decency. . . .
We have had a lot of press calls about Ford picking me for Vice President. Bill Steiger called and said that he and Martha Griffiths had decided that I was the guy—Martha of all people. Mary Matthews in Barber Conable’s office said that Barber had said that’s what it should be. Jerry Pettis said that he and many are undertaking it.23 The press are hypothecating. And yet I am convinced that it won’t happen and almost that it shouldn’t because the Vice President needs something separate, apart and clean. And unfairly or not I may have tracked it in and kind of spread it around the living room carpet—not by design and hopefully not by character, but rather by an association. It’s a weird, weird world.
My own views are that the Vice President can make it as President. He needs to surround himself by quality, stature, academicians, brilliance but I am not sure it will happen. I think it will though because he asks for advice and you know he wants to listen. He is a latter-day Eisenhower. He is an Ike without the heroics but he has that decency the country is crying out for right now.
. . . The incivility of the press had been a disturbing and paralyzing kind of thing over the last few months. And now it continues, that blood lust, the talons sharpened and clutched, ready to charge in there and grab the carrion of this President. I am sick at heart. Sick about the President’s betrayal and sick about the fact that the major Nixon enemies can now gloat because they have proved he is what they said he is. No credit, no compassion, no healing, simply the meat-grinder at work. I suppose when it is written one can establish that perhaps I should have done more, but I am not made up to walk on the body of a man whom I don’t love but whom I respect for his accomplishments.
All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings Page 21