A President Under Fire

It's April, and I'm watching the hearings on television that may decide the president's fate. I don't have much faith in polls, but I do know his administration has been taking a pounding.

Perhaps the recent change of heart in allowing White House aides to testify might help, but I don't know. The president's initial instinct to invoke executive privilege to keep aides from appearing in public was a disaster. The chairman who will run the hearings insists on sworn testimony in public, arguing that invoking executive privilege would be a "terrible disservice to the high office of the presidency." Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) complains that "the indiscriminate use" of executive privilege "can only serve to distort its historical concept and injure the credibility of the government." Ralph Nader says he has little faith in getting any information from the government.

Even the press secretary feels he needs to weigh in. "The president wants it made clear it has not been and is not and will not be the objective of the White House to cover up or withhold any information," he assures everyone. But not everyone buys it. A Republican senator from Oregon fears that the longer this drags out, the more likely it is to harm the party. Another Republican senator, the one from Arizona who once ran for president and whose relationship with the current president has long been icy, didn't like what he saw, insisting that the man who came to the presidency by the closest of margins should tell the American people what he knew.

The hearings break for lunch. I turn away from the TV to check out the newspapers. The head of the FBI is under fire and has lost the confidence of the public, I learn. The vice president is quoted as saying, "We are inundated with rumor, hearsay… speculation and statements from undisclosed sources.… Presently, it is virtually impossible to separate fact from fiction."

Much else is going on at the same time. The Energy Department is pushing to get oil from Alaska, but most Democrats are opposed. Democrats continue to make life miserable for the president in the Senate; Joe Biden (Del.) and Ted Kennedy (Mass.) are especially recalcitrant. I drift off to national news. I read that the former governor of Illinois may be sent to prison for his role in a bribery scandal. I switch to the foreign news. North Korea is once again insisting the United States remove its troops from South Korea. Nothing new there.

Back to the tube, though this time I'm watching the president's prime time address to the nation. His poll numbers are down 14 points from January. Sixty-three percent of the American people say the White House has "withheld important information." His "positive" ratings drop to 50 percent. But he seems resolute, determined, confident. "I want these to be the best days in America's history because I love America," he tells us. "I deeply believe that America is the hope of the world, and I know that in the quality and wisdom of the leadership America gives lies the only hope for millions of people all over the world that they can live their lives in peace and freedom. Tonight, I ask for your prayers."

I turn off the TV. I think over what the president said, and I wonder how his words will be received by the rest of the country. To me, so much is left unanswered. And I have no idea if the president will be able to rescue his political career.

It's April, and I'm closely following the news. It's April 1973.