THE PRESIDENCY: Richard Nixon Stumbles to the Brink

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At the same time Nixon, who once proclaimed so emphatically that it was time "to turn Watergate over to the courts," had short-circuited any such course. As Democratic Senator Adlai E. Stevenson aptly summed up the sorry situation last week: "By denying the special prosecutor access to the White House tapes, Mr. Nixon gives the American people no reason for confidence that they will ever know the whole truth about Watergate. By his disdain for the orderly processes of the law, he gives us no reason to believe that justice will be done." The Nixon argument that the real issues were the preservation of the constitutional separation of powers and Executive privilege could have some remotely redeeming merit; but it was hardly enhanced by his dismissal of Cox.

A nation that in many ways had undoubtedly been growing weary of Watergate now finds it impossible to put the matter behind it. To call into question the vital issue of whether its own Government recognizes the primacy of a system of laws over political expediency and personal power is to rock the nation to its philosophic foundations. It is not any imagined White House enemies in the press, the courts or the Congress that have created this situation. Richard Nixon, through his reckless deeds of last week, did it all alone.