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hands. Executive Privilege puts him in a position to blur parts of the
design and thus to make the whole illegible. Nixon demands Consti–
tutional authority to conspire to vitiate the Constitution.
Though he lacks the revolutionary mettle to defend illegality in
principle, Nixon declares that he accepts "full personal responsibility"
for Watergate. What does this mean?
If
taken seriously, it
is
an ex–
pression of solidarity with the burglars and an adoption of the break-in
as Nixon's own action. He is the instigator, if not by direct instruc–
tion then by general encouragement, of acts in this category. Nixon's
responsibility is consistent with his idea that the criminals only erred
in being overzealous.
If
Nixon is responsible, history is not responsible;
antiwar demonstrators are not responsible; Liddy, Hunt, McCord,
and the Cubans are responsible only as Nixon accessories.
If
Nixon
is responsible he belongs in jail with the others. Accepting full respon–
sibility is the stance of the revolutionary leader who asserts his identity
with
his
adherents to the extent of sharing their fate. "I am respon–
sible" means, if you lock them up you must lock me up too. In
1917 the Bolshevik leadership assumed responsibility for the July up–
rising which they had tried to prevent, in order to shield the revolu–
tionary masses from governmental reprisals, and Trotsky and other
Bolsheviks went to prison. Acts of violence perpetrated by Nazis in
the days of Weimar were claimed by Hitler as acts of his own. Nixon
accepts responsibility for the Watergate crime against the Democrats
in order to hold his leadership among activists of the right. But while
his vanguard sits in prison, he sanctimoniously assures the public that
they deserve to be punished. He takes responsibility, they take the
punishment. No wonder it is reported that the Cubans are mystified
and enraged. They thought they were acting under the direction of
a leader who dared to take
his
reelection into his own hands. Instead
they find themselves abandoned by the master of cover-up.
Nazi thugs knew that their chain of command reached directly
to the Fuehrer. By the time leading Nazis were tried at Nuremburg,
Hitler was dead. This left a vacuum at the top, comparable to Nixon's
ignorance but opposite in its effect on those below. In Jerusalem,
Eichmann invoked the missing leader, as had Nazis of all ranks, to
argue that he was only a "little man," a "cog in the wheel." All the
Nazis were "innocent" because their guilt ascended to Hitler. In
the Watergate affair the guilt was not allowed to rise but was shoved
