THE PRESIDENCY by HUGH SIDEY: Trying to Grasp the Real Nixon

A clear picture from inside Richard Nixon’s White House never quite emerges from the shadows. Now and then there are tantalizing glimpses of a man different from the one generally portrayed, but they are obscured by a manufactured smokescreen that rises from Nixon’s doubts about what he does and says and his suspicions of even those who get close enough to watch him.

The President stood in the East Room last week, earnestly recounting to Americans on television how he had told his aides not to pay hush money to the Watergate burglars. But for all these months, he has refused to make public the tape or a transcript of that fateful meeting last March 21 so that those who have questions about the incident can decide for themselves.

Last January, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott rushed out of the White House and made headlines with the announcement that he had seen documents that would prove Nixon innocent of charges that the President knew about the Watergate coverup. But those documents remain locked in White House vaults.

Recently, Republican National Chairman George Bush came from a White House meeting with Nixon insisting that the President was informed, realistic, aware of his own peril and concerned about the burden he was to the Republican Party. “He was very good.” Then almost angrily Bush wondered aloud why that image of an open, intelligent leader was never picked up beyond the White House fence. But Bush, like most of the others who gather round the President, would say no more. The hard specifics of the meeting, the give and take between men that shows how a President’s mind works and how policy is made were kept secret.

Presidential Counsellor Anne Armstrong met with the President to tell him of worry about the fall elections. Her report: Nixon was “on top of his job.” He had the facts, and “he is a very clear-thinking realist.” But even her enthusiastic portrayal of the President blurred into generalities. “He thinks we will be out from under the energy crisis, the economy will be on the upturn . . .”

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Last week, in the aftermath of the Ohio and California congressional elections, Deputy Press Secretary Ken Clawson lamented that so few persons could perceive, as he did, Nixon’s voter appeal, the solid base of support for him still round the nation. “I wish just one candidate would run as an out-and-out Nixon man,” he said. But Clawson’s view of Nixon remains confined to the cool, ordered corridors where the President’s staff members dwell. There are few men on the Hill who have got this appealing picture of the man in the Oval Office.

All Presidents put on special acts for their staffs and their visitors. And the aura of the office still subdues people, still reduces the critical faculties of those who come into the epicenter. In these days, about the only people allowed the special view of the President are the ones who already are Nixon boosters. They are caught in the presidential spell, which is part awe and part fear, and the realities of Nixon and his life in the White House that might give him a third dimension are never carried out of the office.

Not long ago, after one of those White House meetings in which Nixon’s qualities of leadership were glowingly described by his aides, a powerful member of Congress who attended and who still retained a steely eye was asked about the session. “It was,” he said, “the worst one I’ve been to. The President was garrulous, and he couldn’t stick to the subject. He interrupted almost every discussion with personal reminiscences that didn’t have much to do with our business. I came away feeling that we had not talked very seriously about serious affairs.” It is one of the quirks of this strange time that seeing Nixon struggle realistically with himself and events in this manner might add some believable dimensions to the synthetic image that he has created and burdens him so much in his larger battle for survival.