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Thursday, October 11, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Bungling
It was a sad commentary about the political climate of the United States.
Vice President Spiro Agnew had resigned and pleaded nolo contendere in federal court to a single charge of income tax evasion. He was fined $10,000 and placed on probation for three years without supervision.
"Everyone's cheering," one said. "Now we've just gotta get Nixon."
Students at the University of Kansas seemed unconcerned
Get Nixon? Why?
President Nixon hasn't been convicted of committing any crimes. The Watergate whistle, permanently him, to be sure, but he is still innocent of wrongdoing until proven guilty of it.
The news of Agnew's resignation wasn't really news. The disclosure was expected. Americans have been watching the new law for the past two weeks to expect it.
The point is that Agnew, guilty or not, was tried and convicted by the news media. Time magazine practically hung Agnew from the yardard. The Washington Post continued its campaign of zealous
reporting, which seems to produce
writes as often as it reveals them.
One can't help but feel that the Agnew affair was bungled by everyone involved in it; Agnew himself, the Department of Justice, President Nixon and the news media.
Agnew bungled it by his incept handling of the situation. The Department of Justice bungled it by failing to prevent news leaks about the situation. Nixon bungled it by first failing to support Agnew in any obvious way, and then supporting him. The news media bungled it by assuming guilt before it had been proved.
What's next?
What's next?
A nice vice president will be selected. Newspapers will be crammed in the next few months with retrospective accounts of the affair. Life will go on.
the political climate in this country will continue to be one of anxiety. Who's next? What's next? Americans, already suspicious of the dictators because Watergate, will only grow more suspicious.
Apparently they have good reason to do just that.
Chuck Potter
Fumbling
It is amazing how trivial most human activities seem during the moments when a stunning news event first strike home.
When the news of Spiro Agnew's resignation came over the news wire, nothing else seemed to matter for a few electrifying seconds. I had been struggling with an editorial, a pontification about the lack of traffic signs at some Lawrence street intersections and handwritten quickly ripped from the typewriter as people filled the Kansan newsroom to crowd around the Associated Press wire machine.
On campus, half of the people were still oblivious to the news and the other half were spreading false information that easily told me that Agnew was dead.
The carnival atmosphere that swirled briefly wherever the announcement was made was fated to subside almost as suddenly as it began. The many projections and the gossip that have permeated the Agnew affair during past weeks took some of the sting out of the announcement. After all, there was still the Mets, the Lawrence street system and the Middle East War to worry about.
For a few seconds, however, this historic event caused a flurry of excitement and crowded out even public attention and led to the public's attention.
One can only wonder what was
crossing the mind of the Maryland politician who had hounded the press and delighted conservatives with his rumblings about "effete intellectual snobs," and "nattering nabobs of negativism."
This was the man who had said he could be elected president and who had pompously pledged support for a beleaguered Richard Nixon during the darker days of the Watergate scandals.
What was Agnew himself thinking while his resignation was causing such excitement in as place as Lawrence, Kansas?
Our own troubles affect only ourselves and perhaps a few other people. Agnew's worries are monumental and his failure has led him to a heartache. He has walked prominently into the history books with fumbling feet.
But, contrary to the rumor mentioned earlier, Agnew isn't dead yet. As a private citizen he may actually more ably defend himself against any additional criminal charges.
In the menatime, the former Vice President could use some encouragement. He must be ready for one of those Nixon telephone calls to the loser's locker room in which the President, in his infrequently humble way, says that, yes, Nixon was also a loser once.
—Bill Gibson
The tone of last night's television commentaries on the Agnew resignation was one of charity. Walter Crankite, who said he had become and ideological enemy of the vice president after the 1969 blast at the press, said we all shared in the Agnew tragedy. Eric Sevarile's tone also was one of Christian forebearance.
Myth-Making for the Masses
All of us, perhaps, should be as charitable Gloating, at the moment, would be unseemly and unproductive. But most Americans did not share in whatever the vice president is supposed to have done in Maryland, just as we—most of us—did not bug Watergate or engage in political "dirty tricks."
people as unknowing about Agnew as Funt found them about Lyndon B. Johnson 10 years ago. Agnew had almost as much press exposure as his leader. Yet he chose, like Richard Nixon, to use the press as a dart board.
Spiro T. Greene had come far from the "Spiro who?" days. Thanks to the mass media he probably was well known as vice president as we have had; it is doubtful that Allen Funt of Candida Camera would have found the American
in so doing, back in 1969, he probably was acting as an agent of the administration. Many people talked as Nixon, who had been an independent. The likelihood is that he was "Nixon's Nixon," in the sense that Nixon had been hatchet man for Dwight Eisenhower. The President must stay alone to go out with someone else to go out with the tar brush.
The vice president became a free-wheeling public speaker, delighting the white-haired, black-gowned, gloved ladies whose faces betray their loathing for her. The vice president, the types not as "eftefe" who liked Agnew for his tough talk and his
ideological stance. It was hard to have a vice president who could, and would, say the things we were unwilling to say ourselves. In that way Agwen did service for both Mr. Nixon and the many Americans who supported the President.
It is curious, in reflecting on the Agnew matter, that this man, like a number who have gone before him in recent months—out of public life, that is—are so willing to give up their jobs. It almost seems political moxharm. One could watch the Watergate hearings, in amelioration, as an old party horse like John Mitchell and a young climber like Daniel Kramer. They were much alike, and they, too, sounded like the incredible Bernard Barker.
Was Richard Nixon worth that much? Was getting him elected, and keeping him in power, that important? Was it all really a matter of "national security?" A
parade of people appeared to think so. Agnew was not one of the Watergate clique, of course, but it would seem that, in a sense, his career has been devastated, his life probably ruined, for the President.
Not that Agnew has been victimized, but surely the pressure shifted from Nixon to Agnew in recent months, and the press has long accused Agnew, not the loyal opposition—that did in Spiro T. Agnew, Meanwhile, Richard M. Nixon sits in the White House, and Agnew is out and the impact of his campaign on voters slowly grows that it was not the President's people but the evil press and the evil opposition party that were responsible for the scandals we sat and kept alive last summer in print opera time.
(No one, parenthetically, knows just how randy this particular administration has become. It's possible Nixon is crying bitter tears over the Agniew affair and would give his eyetooth to have stopped it but didn't care to do so because he needs his U.S. Attorney in Baltimore, his U.S. Attorney General, and Mr. Hope Peterson so much that they need him. If Nixon is not yet visibly a prisoner of his Politburo, it can be assumed with confidence that he feels a certain deference to his Justice Department.)
-Calder M. Pickett
Political Maneuver in Agnew Resignation?
NO MATTER WHO MADE the final decision to "get" Agree, the decision opens up new vistas on 1976, and we may be sure that Nixon will not be blind to these.
By PATRICK OWENS
Professor of Journalism
His first requirement was to get Agnew out of office. And in Spiro's earlier blunt refusal to step aside, we saw once again a strong case for the Eagleton Affair, to attention in the Eagleton Affair.
The President's hand is no more directly visible in the afflictions and indignities Agnew has suffered from within the Army. The agency's Watergate burglary or the cover-up. But it would be a rand administration indeed where the prosecution of Agnew, plus all the publicity that has accompanied the attack, have been cleared all the way to the Oval Office.
Like so much that has come to us from the 1960s, the 25th Amendment is proving to be less than a blessing. With former Vice President Gerald Ford's own Maximum Leader's own future somewhat shaky, the 25th promises to do little to provide legitimacy to a government system.
Prompted by the assassination of President Kennedy, the 25th provides that when the vice presidency becomes vacant, "The president shall nominate a vice president who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both House
IT'S NOT CLEAR that it is precisely what Richard Nixon has in mind, but he seems curiously unmoved by Spiro Anew's difficulties.
One obvious disadvantage of such an arrangement is that it is so susceptible to partisan abuse that a president who effectively controlled both Houses could, for example, arrange a vice presidential resignation and then position his boy in the office, and thus in the strongest possible position to seek the presidency.
This is that a vice president or a vice
presidential candidate, like Sen. Eagleton, cannot be summarily fired. Most of the commentators seemed to have missed this point and speculation was common in recent days that Agnew would surely quit if Nixon asked him to.
If Agnew was talking to anyone in his "I-will-not-resign" speech, he was talk to Mr. Nixon. He did not say he would not resign unless the president asked him to. He said he would not resign, period. Not even if he were indicted.
A VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION after Agnew's departure would provide President Nixon with his best chance to put a new face on his administration. The right nominee would be Barker or John Connell, who would be a formidable candidate for the Presidency in 1976.
But how can a president who is himself suspected of high crimes and misdemeanors appraise the attachment of Nixon may not be ground the corner, but it cannot be ruled
out as a possibility.
If he defies a Supreme Court decision on the Tapes, Congress is going to have to act whether it wants to or not. In these circumstances an officeholder suspected of felonious conduct would be in the position of successor, an 004 procedure indeed.
Perhaps the key question is how congress will react to the Nixon nomination. If it follows precedent, it will subordinate its president to the Senate's nominee. The president should be given his way on his appointments whenever possible. But a vice president is not just another member of the president's entourage. Potentially he is also the most important than a Supreme Court Justice.
CONGRESS IS UNDER no obligation to accept a vice presidential nominee of Nikon's choosing and would have considerable justification, in the changes that brought Nixon has wrought in the Supreme Court and the present circumstance of some of his former
Cabinet appointees (two of them are under indictment) suggest that the Senate tradition of courtesy to the president may deserve suspension so long as Nixon is on
But what all this tells us about the 25th Amendment is, I think that it poses as many problems as it resolves. A cloud larger than an apple or a house-like House any successor nominated by Mr. Nixon. Such a man would have only a limited claim to national leadership. He would, no matter what, be a successor to his predecessor and a successor to a discredited chief executive.
This prospect suggests, in turn, that the question of presidential succession should be settled long before vacancies occur in the executive branch. Choosing two vice presidents instead of one was one proposal considered but rejected when the 63rd was written.
No strong president seems likely to fortunei potentialities for politicking built into the 2010s.
"---AS A MATTER OF FACT I THINK HE DESERVES A PAT ON THE PAT/ "
Persian Gulf Impact
Arab-Israeli Conflict Threatens Supply of Oil
By ROSE L. GREAVES
For some years careful students of Middle Eastern affairs have called attention to the Persian Gulf area as one of vital importance to the Western World.
It is of particular importance to western Europe, Japan and the United States. This region is also one of long historic and lively current interest to the Soviet Union. Until recently, if you mentioned the Persian Gulf you got was a pity smiling “Where is it?”
Everybody now knows of the energy crisis. Journalists and others have joined the experts and specialists, the scholars, oil men and petroleum engineers, who have for years given warning of the present uncertainty, which may be troubled and bleak indeed.
ways quite apart from the rest.
Saudi Arabia, which will soon be the world's wealthiest state, is changing rapidly. King Faisal has emerged as a new leader in the Arab world with a quite unprecedented diplomatic and economic presence. He is the most numerous and several of its members are highly educated, skilled and responsible people.
Non-Arab and belonging to the Shia branch of Islam, Iran is a well established national and political unit. Iran seems easily to be the strongest power in the area. It has large commitments on the Arab side of the gulf. It looks anxiously at the United States from its airway through which passes an oil tanker every twenty minutes of every day and night.
Even now the seriousness of the problem—not only of supply of oil but of the amount of money needed to pay for it—is no less than the one that engrate the general public consciousness.
Nevertheless, by now all but the most carefree persons must have at least some idea of where the Middle East and the Persian Gulf are. After all, nearly three quarters of the proved oil reserves of the Western World are in the Middle East. Most of this belongs to states in or bordering the Middle East, and many of these states are Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, the Federation of Arab Emirates and, overriding them all, Saudi Arabia.
the percentage to one-half.
At this eastern end of the gulf the problems of Pakistan concern Iran as does
These are widely divergent areas in race, religion, political outlook and sophistication and in economic development and potential for development. Iran, which controls the entire northern and eastern gulf littoral as well as certain strategic islands, is in many
Still, much of the edifice in Saudi Arabia depends upon King Faisal. He is aging now.
from the withdrawal of British military forces from the Persian Gulf in December, 1945.
Of the seven states in this union the two most important are the oil producers Abu Dhabi and Dubai. As Iraq claims on Kuwait, so does Saudi Arabia make claims on Abu Dhabi and Oman. The most threatening subversion campaign—with both Russian and Chinese influences at work—is in Oman.
Oman is large, hard to govern, and now
"Given the internal tensions within the gulf area itself and the intensification of these tensions and strains by the impact of the Arab-Israeli problem, it seems unlikely that the countries of the Persian Gulf will escape without violent eruptions somewhere there in the next few years. This situation is for economic, strategic and diplomatic reasons of first importance to the United States."
Iraq is basically discontented, has developed close ties with the Soviet Union and is a center for subversion for the entire gulf region. Iraq has by no means dropped its claims on Kuwait—a small neighboring country with great oil reserves and a vast desert that, with huge oil reserves. But in recent years Iraq has shown a genius for isolating itself.
the position of its own Balah people. At the other end of the gulf the neighboring Arab state of Iraq borders Iran. Bad relations between Iraq and Iran are normal.
Of all the gulf states Saudi Arabia has by far the greatest oil resources. They are monumental. It is the pivot upon which so much depends now and in the immediate future, because of their one-quarter of the world's known oil reserves. Adding Kuwait and Iran raises
Who will succeed him is of critical importance. Saudi Arabia is frequently likened to Libya—both have oil wealth, and its citizens are under significant political structure in Saudi Arabia seems more secure since the country has been established (though not with the same boundaries) for two centuries, and, unlike Libya, there is no shortage of heirs in Saudi Arabia.
Other Gulf states include Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. The United Arab Emirates are a recent creation formed to meet the new situation arising
The Arab-Iraeli conflict has a special interest for King Faisal. He holds two Muslim holy cities—Mecca and Medina—and the position of Jerusalem, another Muslim holy city, is unsatisfactory to him when it is out of Arab hands.
an oil producer. Its territorial differences with its neighbors include the long standing and bitter dispute over the Buraym oasis. It also regates the state to watch is sound Arabia.
What happens there, more than anywhere else, will determine what happens elsewhere—and this includes what Iran do. How will the Saudi regime stand up against Iran's actions from Iran on one side and from the Dhorda province of Oman on the other?
With its oil wealth now bewildering it and with the consequent social and political changes taking place at such a rapid pace, the gulf area has enough problems of its own. The Arab-Iraeli conflict sends waves all through the region.
Many of the Arab states do not have the human resources to meet the new conditions. Immigration of aliens—Balluch, Pakistani and Palestinian—has taken place on such a scale that in some states the immigrants are in the majority. These immigrants don't have the same rights and privileges as the indigenous peoples.
Over 50 per cent of Qatar's population, over 50 per cent of Kuwait's population and just under 50 per cent of the people in the United Arab Emirates are immigrants. There are as many Palestinians in Kuwait as Kuwaitis. Some Palestinians hold high salaries. Can the present rulers keep their control of their almost unbelievable riches?
Even though the oil embargo of 1967 was short lived and ineffective that may not be so now or in the coming years. Circumstances are radically different in 1973. They may be even more different in 1975 and 1980.
Given the internal tensions within the Gulf area itself and the intensification of these tensions and strains by the impact of the Arab-Israeli problem, it seems unlikely that the countries of the Persian Gulf will escape without violent eruptions somewhere there. The Gulf's strategic importance to the economic, strategic and diplomatic reasons of first importance to the United States.
these are questions which will occupy not only Americans but also Western Europe. Japan is the largest country for over 80 per cent of their oil supply and Japanese who depend on the Middle East
The big question is: Even if we have security of supply how are we to pay for the vast amounts of oil we are consuming and must increasingly import? And what will the Persian Gulf countries do with the increasing wealth at their disposal?
for more than 90 per cent of their oil supply. Since oil is an exhaustible resource how far will the producer governments wish to go in meeting this unprecedented demand for the one marketable commodity most of the Persian Gulf countries have?
We in the United States should address ourselves to two questions. First, how can we get our very high consumption figure down? Its projected increase is staggering. Second, what alternative indigenous energy do we have, and how can they be used?
Oil supplies in Alaska do not alter the overall picture of increasing, large scale, dependence upon the Persian Gulf region for petroleum products. If steps are to be taken to change this trend, these steps must be taken at once and energetically.
(Rose L. G. Greaves is an associate professor in the history department.)
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