THE CONGRESS: The Fateful Vote to Impeach

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evidence traced "governmental corruption unequaled in the history of the United States." Asked Republican Cohen: "How in the world did we ever get from the Federalist papers to the edited transcripts?"

In the view of many members of the committee's majority, failure to impeach would do far greater harm to the nation's welfare than would the trauma of a Senate trial. Surprising his colleagues with the vehemence of his anti-Nixon stand, Republican Butler declared: "If we fail to impeach, we will have condoned and left unpunished a course of conduct totally inconsistent with the reasonable expectations of the American people ... and we will have said to the American people, 'These deeds are inconsequential and unimportant.' "

Democrat Thornton claimed that such a failure "would effectively repeal the right of this body to act as a check on the abuses that we see." After breathlessly reeling off a lengthy list of specific improper Nixon acts, Rattsback warned of another result. Speaking of the nation's young people, he claimed: "You are going to see the most frustrated people, the most turned-off people, the most disillusioned people, and it is going to make the period of L.B.J. in 1968,1967 ... look tame."

The President's Staunchest Defenders

"To become Congressmen and Congresswomen," noted Missouri Democrat William Hungate, "we took the same oath to uphold the Constitution which Richard M. Nixon took. If we are to be faithful to our oaths, we must find him faithless in his." Iowa Democrat Edward Mezvinsky expressed a similar thought, arguing that Nixon should be brought "to account for the gross abuse of office," and that "we must all ask ourselves, if we do not, who will?"

The President's staunches! defenders quickly proved to be Sandman, California's Charles Wiggins and Indiana's David Dennis. Sandman called the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868 "one of the darkest moments in the Government of this great nation," and added: "I do not propose to be any part of a second blotch on the history of this great nation."

Nixon's supporters chose mainly to attack the nature of the evidence on which the committee majority had based articles of impeachment. "This case must be decided according to the law, and on no other basis," noted Wiggins. Posing sharp legalistic questions, Wiggins insisted that perhaps only half of one volume among the committee's books of evidence would be admissible in a Senate trial of the President. "Simple theories, of course, are inadequate. That is not evidence. A supposition, however persuasive, is not evidence. A bare possibility that something might have happened is not evidence."

To follow an evidentiary trail from the improper activities of Nixon's aides to the President, argued California Republican Carlos Moorhead, "there is a big moat that you have to jump across to get the President involved — and I cannot jump over that moat." Mississippi Republican Trent Lott argued with < vigor that "for every bit of evidence implicating the President, there is evidence to the contrary." The case against Nixon, contended Iowa 3 Republican Wiley Mayne, consists of "a series of inferences piled upon