Editorial: The Tribune on President Richard Nixon’s resignation

Editor’s note: On May 9, 1974, the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board published a three-part editorial, calling for President Richard Nixon to either resign or be removed from office. The editorial was published a little more than a week after Nixon released transcripts of taped Oval Office conversations that he believed would exonerate him to a public grasping to understand his role in the Watergate affair. Instead, the transcripts hastened his political demise. Nixon announced his resignation on Aug. 8, 1974, and left the White House the next day. This editorial was originally published on Aug. 9, 1974.

The resignation

The rumors have ceased. The bitter controversy is suddenly stilled. The President of the United States has resigned, effective at noon today.

In a graceful and touching farewell address, he announced what was clearly the most painful decision of his career. He admitted no more than wrong judgments, however, and attributed his decision solely to the loss of political support in Congress. He said he has made it in the national interest, not his own.

Mr. Nixon’s decision is best not only for this country, but also his party and himself. If he hadn’t chosen to resign, he would surely have been removed from office after a painful ordeal of impeachment. Yet there is no escape from the awesome realization that for the first time in nearly 200 years of the Republic’s history, a President has left office other than thru death or the end of his term.

And it comes just 10 months after Spiro Agnew became the first Vice President to resign under fire. (Vice President John C. Calhoun resigned in 1832 to take a seat in the Senate.)

It is an occasion not for joy, but rather for gratitude, relief, and a revival of hope. The monstrous apparition called Watergate no longer blocks the road ahead and obscures the sky. It can be relegated to the courts and to history, to be sorted out and dealt with as the facts, now known and yet to be learned, may warrant.

We are no longer crippled by the Presidency of a man who had insulated himself from the world of reality and somehow persuaded himself that it was in his interest or the country’s — we don’t know which — to pretend that a President can do no wrong. He tried to save himself while his closest associates were marched off to jail for their participation in a conspiracy in which it now appears he was the guiding conspirator.

The only other modern abdication approaching this drama was that of the late King Edward VIII of England, who gave up his throne in 1936 to marry the woman he loved. “I have never wanted to withhold anything, he said in his abdication speech, “but until now it has not been constitutionally possible for me to speak.”

Mr. Nixon’s problem was the reverse. He tried to withhold things that constitutionally he should have shouted about to the country.

And yet our feelings toward Mr. Nixon must be of sorrow rather than anger, and of mercy rather than vengeance. His weaknesses are more of blind ambition and poor judgment than deliberate contempt for the law. He has paid the heaviest price a man in public office can pay. He has forfeited the job and the power and the honor that he held so dear. His downfall will be recorded forever as evidence that no one is above the law and that Presidents must live up to the standards expected of their office.

Barring new and startling disclosures which we do not foresee, there is nothing to be gained by pursuing Mr. Nixon with criminal charges. The qualities of mercy and justice must temper one another. Despite his achievements, the damage he has done to the country in the last two years cannot be measured in terms of days in prison or dollars of a fine.

Let us rather look now to Mr. Ford and the future.

President Ford

The mantle of government that has fallen to Gerald Ford will be a heavy burden. He must heal the wounds of a divided people, restore faith in the Presidency, and quickly get the administration back to work on the nation’s neglected but pressing concerns. As he takes on this burden he deserves — and we’re confident he will get — the support and cooperation of Congress and the country, regardless of partisan or other differences. He has our prayers and good wishes, and we’re sure, those of the country. As Mr. Nixon said last night, the leadership of the country is in good hands.

Mr. Nixon’s place in history

The Nixon administration, already the first to lose a Vice President under fire, is now about to lose a President under fire as well — and this combination alone is enough to assure it of a prominent place in history.

It won’t be the place that Mr. Nixon had in mind when he decided to tape his office conversations “for posterity.” His political career draws to a close under a cloud far darker than the “Tricky Dick” aura that encumbered his earlier days in public life.

And yet it would be foolish at this point to predict what history will say of the Nixon administration years hence. Time tends to edit and often revise the passionate judgments made in the vortex of a political storm. Herbert Hoover, who left office as a villain, lived to see himself honored and respected, and the country will mark the centennial of his birth tomorrow. Time has been kind, too, to Harry Truman. On the other hand it has whittled down the halos accorded to Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

History’s verdict on the Nixon administration will depend on its answers to three questions. First, was he misjudged on Watergate? Second, to what extent did the evils of Watergate symbolize his whole administration? And third, how will his other policies and achievements stand up?

Even with the perspective of time, it is hard to see how history can condone Mr. Nixon’s behavior with respect to Watergate — the cumulative effort to hide the truth; the lies; the abuses perpetrated in the name of executive privilege and national security — abuses which have led the Supreme Court to confine the powers of future Presidents; and thru it all the utter lack of respect for the dignity and standards the people expect in the White House.

These are not transient political charges like those against President Andrew Johnson, subject to reevaluation in the calmer atmosphere of future years. They are enduring qualities involving honor and integrity. To justify Mr. Nixon’s behavior would be not only to contradict the overwhelming convictions of Congress and the people, but to deny the most fundamental tenets of society.

The next question is harder to answer. Will Watergate be written off as an isolated collection of misfortunes into which Mr. Nixon stumbled with the help of misguided associates? Or will it be looked on as typical of deception, press agentry, and hypocrisy characterizing the White House thruout the administration?

The answer to this, we suspect, will depend largely on how the administration’s other policies and achievements stand up — and this will depend largely on what happens from now on.

If peaceful coexistence in the world thrives, then the Nixon administration will quite properly be given credit for opening the doors that made it possible — and Watergate will subside in importance. If detente falls apart, the Nixon administration will be blamed for falling into a Soviet trap — and the evil influence of Watergate will be magnified.

If inflation subsides, the “steady pressure” which the Nixon administration has preached (but not always practiced) will be given credit, and the “old time religion” of economic discipline vindicated. If the economy roars on out of control, the right policies of the Nixon administration will be discredited along with the wrong ones.

If freedom holds its own in Southeast Asia, the Nixon claim of “peace with honor” will be vindicated. If Southeast Asia dissolves in corruption, tyranny, or Communism, the most controversial effort of the Nixon administration will have proved in vain.

The list could go on. And many of the Nixon administration’s tenets deserve to be proved correct, however inconsistent or unsuccessful it may have been in pursuing them. The economic truisms which it voiced, the trend toward decentralization of government; the steps to improve world communication (despite the disastrous failure of communication between the White House and the country) — these are all sensible and right. If they are thrown out along with Watergate, and if the country turns back toward Big Government and bigger spending, and to moral permissiveness at home and trade restrictions abroad, then Watergate will have proved far more disastrous than anything now imaginable.

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