THE PRESIDENCY by HUGH SIDEY: Toward an Uncertain Spring

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Presidential boomlets bubbled all across this vast landscape: "Can Percy make it? ... Is Connally finished, I hope, and Teddy Kennedy too? ... Does Rockefeller have any chance?" We need someone better, they often said. Who has the special intelligence and compassion and energy to rise above all the others?

A surprising number almost timidly suggested Henry Kissinger. A European-born Jew with a German accent in the White House -even if the Constitution could be amended to permit it? Well, why not, in this strange world?

It is plain that many are still reluctant to look upon the crimes known as Watergate as sufficient cause for action against the President. There is no stolen property, no body count, no looted treasury. Moral transgressions, while quickly deplored, are not so easily brought to judgment, especially in a nation whose basic life-style is still fundamentally intact. But people are feeling the weight of the developing crises, and it is NIXON & KISSINGER growing heavier. Hugh Sidey