348
HAROLD ROSENBERG
stantly bubbling. Not the least of the contributions of the Senate
hearings is their exposure of the system of rules by which Nixon and
his
associates have been able to evade or blunt charges of incrimina–
tion. Understanding the White House processes of maintaining in–
nocence is at least as important as convicting the perpetrators of the
break-in and cover-up. Hence, to end the hearings has become Nixon's
primary goal in regard to Watergate.
To organize crimes through hints rather than through direct
instruction requires that the instigator and his tool shall share a com–
mon vision. In
The Brothers Karamazov
Smerdyakov reads the de–
sire for the murder of the father in the mind of I van and appoints
himself as agent to carry it out. The Nixon collaborators were similar–
ly moved by an essence beyond speech. In regard to Watergate, the
planners, the burglars, and the operators of the cover-up lived in the
aura of The Presidency - that transcendental entity that in the
Nixon Administration had come to reign over the White House.
Nixon himself professes to worship this abstraction, which Americans
and the whole world are being urged to revere. He withholds the
tapes, says the President, not to protect Richard Nixon but to pre–
serve the future integrity of The Presidency. The Chief of State, his
staff, the armed forces, the Federal agencies, Billy Graham, Liddy,
Hunt, the four Cubans, the American people take on a tribal unity
as they kneel before this golden calf. Nixon buys real estate in Key
Biscayne and San Clemente: The Presidency transforms it into tem–
ple precincts, and public monies are poured into aggrandizing and
making "secure" these sacred groves. I know of nothing more offen–
sive to the sensibility of a free individual than the Hollywood-style
metaphysics by which Nixon has glamorized his corrupt invention of
a Presidency that exists independently of the President. Meditating
alone on the beaches of the Pacific or the Caribbean, Nixon seeks
inspiration from the Muse of The Presidency, later to return to him–
self in the company of Abplanalp or Rebozo. The principle of separa–
tion of church and state ought to be enforced in Nixon's White
Houses.
If
he wishes to remain as Chief Executive he should be
obliged to abjure publicly the superstar Other to which he has been
striving to convert Americans. In the United States there is room at
the top, according to the Constitution, only for a mortal being - not
for a noumenon with measureless powers and endless immunities.
