The Charlotte News

Tuesday, August 12, 1941

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "The New Order in Georgia", even poetically speaking, we presume, does not relate to the stories today in the press out of Georgia of the former Soviet Union, now an independent state. We are glad to see that after five days of hostilities, Russia has announced that the mission into Georgia was accomplished, to halt the alleged incursions into the former Georgian territory, nominally independent since 1992, Ossetia, and that, after several thousand deaths, the fighting has been halted.

It appears the fighting went beyond Ossetia, and for that the United Nations and the United States have condemned the action by Russia.

The United States, of course, has plenty of good ground for condemning any sort of pre-emptive action by another country against a sovereign.

But, the mission is accomplished, and so that's all water over the dam now.

The little poem on the page today regards instead Gene Talmadge's efforts to keep "furriners" out of the colleges and universities of Georgia, that is to say, keep the administration and professors entirely homebred Georgians--none from neighboring South Carolina, Tennessee, or Alabama for instance--obviously a very different sort of conflict 67 years ago from the one in today's prints.

Times change; everything remains more or less the same, humans being humans.

To further distinguish, Gene Talmadge was the father of Herman Talmadge who later served as both a segregationist Governor in the pre-Brown v. Board of Education era, and long-time Senator from Georgia, in the latter position serving four terms, from 1957 until 1981. You may remember him as the soft-spoken Southerner serving on Sam Ervin's Senate Select Committee investigating Watergate in 1973. As an opponent of busing, and thus crossing party lines to be an occasional ally of the Nixon Administration on some conservative legislation, many had expected Talmadge to be a swing Democratic vote on the Committee, perhaps swaying the committee to exonerate Nixon and his henchmen, to end the matter without referral to the House to begin impeachment hearings. But he turned out to be the converse, and a bitter disappointment to the Administration.

It is quite historically characteristic of Southern politicians that one sort of behavior, appealing to homegrown constituents, is deemed appropriate when it comes to issues which impact directly local matters, another type of alignment entirely when the issues are more national in character, especially when assuming party interests at stake. In the latter mode, the politician, heeding the tradition of the party line, is very unlikely to go against party interests. Such tends to be the case, whether Republican or Democrat.

Impeachment hearings on Nixon, incidentally, began in the House in the summer of 1974. Articles were returned in late July, early August, 1974, and of course Nixon resigned shortly thereafter, effective at noon August 9, as he was informed by most of the leaders of his own party, prominent among whom at the time was Senator Barry Goldwater, that he had little support left at all in the Senate, that a vote of impeachment, especially on the article regarding obstruction of justice, was a foregone conclusion, even among all but a handful of the most loyal Republicans. The latter article was premised primarily on Nixon's June 23, 1972 "smoking gun" tape, made six days after the break-in, wherein Nixon instructed his understrappers, Haldeman and Erlichman, to busy themselves with obtaining intercession by the CIA, led since 1966 by Richard Helms, to head off the FBI investigation, already initiated by the new Director, L. Patrick Gray, appointed by Nixon after the death on May 2 of J. Edgar Hoover. The expressed premise was that such an investigation would probe sensitive matter involving national security, ultimately leading back to what Nixon called the "whole Bay of Pigs".

The Watergate scandal was not the result of any leftwing conspiracy, by the public, the press or the Democratic Party. It was the result of subversion of the American system of democracy, repeatedly, and the repeated violations of the most basic tenets of the Constitution by Nixon-led members of his Administration, which led to Mr. Nixon's forced resignation, quite concurred in by that point by solid majorities of prominent members of both parties. The Watergate break-in, and the trends leading to it, began in 1960, maybe even as early in Nixon's political career as 1952 with the Sans Souci and the Checkers episodes; Watergate was only the tip of the iceberg, the last straw in a corrupt tenure by an American politician who left such a stamp on two generations of the country that his ghost still pervades.

It was certainly not, however, even unto itself, just some ordinary burglary. It was the burglary during a Presidential election year of the opposing party's national headquarters by paid operatives of Dat Elect Committee to Re-Elect the President to an Identical Term (DECREPIT), and the subsequent attempt by the Executive branch building (the Ebb), with Nixon's clear personal approval, to cover up the WH involvement in the break-in by use of the Flo method from the Harding years.

It was the payment of hush money to numerous witnesses not to provide evidence, also with the President's plain personal approval, a felony in each such instance. That made Nixon a criminal in fact, a co-conspirator, the head co-conspirator of a criminal enterprise to obstruct justice. And the laundry list of serious violations of the law by his Administration begins from there.

If any one of us paid a witness not to provide truthful testimony or to keep quiet in any matter in which he or she was a witness, even in a small claims civil matter, does anyone in their right mind believe that such is not an offense which not only can be punished by a prison sentence, but ought to be so punished, as it subverts the system of justice?--even if Nixon, for the sake of unity in the country at the time, was properly, we think, spared a felony conviction and a prison sentence. His lasting--and permanent--disgrace in history was sufficient. Nixon as a man may be forgiven as any man. But Nixon as President should never be forgiven, lest history repeat, and perhaps next time with impunity, to the lasting destruction of the country.

Anyone who you hear today trying to label this episode in our history a "third-rate burglary" is simply either dumb or a liar or both. They are also little, bitter partisans who cannot accept that the Republican Party is not made up, any more than is the Democratic Party, of intrinsically moral saints, above the suspicion of the rest of us mere mortals. Indeed, we would have to think long and hard to determine the last American who was canonized, whether politician, citizen, or churchman.

But you have it your way, Blondie Bumstead.

Speaking, incidentally, of Chevies, "Caprice" might draw to mind the one about the twisting it in with relish; or even the one about the shocking revelations amid the smoking guns; or even the information to have been obtained, we are told by Mr. Liddy, regarding the call girl ring. But that's all another capriciously informed story, a little squirrelly, and so we shall leave it to you to ferret.

In any event, we are glad to see that the war in Georgia appears to be over, both the one over here and the one over there.

Ob-La-Da.

The Woodstock Scuffle; or, Most dreadfull apparitions that were lately seene in the Mannor-house of Woodstock, neere Oxford, to the great terror and the wonderful amazement of all there that did behold them.