The President has compounded earlier errors of judgment by delegating investigation of the affair to his new Attorney General, Mr Elliot Richardson. The reasons which impelled Mr Kleindienst to resign as Attorney Ñ that he was Òa close and professional associateÓ of others involved in Watergate Ñ apply equally to the President. Did not Mr Nixon, as recently as Easter weekend, telephone Mr John Dean to assure that Òyou are still counsel to the PresidentÓ? Mr Dean has now been thrown to the wolves. Yet did he not rank as a close associate?
Mr Nixon also felt it necessary to allow two of his closest aides, Mr Haldeman and Mr Ehrlichman, to resign Ñ though in their cases without implication of guilt. He ought to have acknowledged that this disqualified him, as their chief, from taking any further part in the investigation of Watergate. The personal integrity of Mr Richardson is not questioned. But if the President wishes to let justice be seen to be done, a member of his own Administration is not the right man to choose, and even the appointment by Mr Richardson of a Òspecial supervising prosecutorÓ is not enough. It is now the White House, the Administration and the President himself who are under suspicion and if he hopes for that suspicion finally to be dispersed, Mr Nixon should appoint an independent investigator, or prosecutor, wholly outside government or politics. Better still, he should get the Chief Justice to find such a man.
If this appears to ask too much of the President, one must point to the effect this tragic, long drawn-out scandal has had even among nominal Nixon supporters. Senator Charles Percy, the Illinois Republican, declares that Òthe whole story is not out, and it will get worse, not better.Ó That, quite brutally, is what friends of America fear and its enemies hope. At best Mr Nixon has already been shown to be a bad picker of men, credulous about what they tell him, stubborn about what his critics say, and Ñ in his broadcast Ñ still too much of a political cheapjack in trying to disperse the stench of corruption by the sweet smell of international diplomatic success. At worst, he will be shown to be a liar; and if that happens both the Presidency and the profession of politics will bear another grievous scar. 
In urging that the Watergate inquiry must be pursued as rigorously as that, Mr NixonÕs critics must avoid the alternative sins Ñ of witch-hunting, of McCarthyism, of tainting the innocent with a political prejudice that is blind to justice. Let it be admitted: to people in Britain, the murkier aspects of United States politics and electioneering are in a world apart. Without sounding holier-than-thou, can anyone conceive the fund-raising methods that are tolerated in America being acceptable here? Can anyone conceive that the conjunction of patronage and the legal system would be tolerated? Those of us who belabour the Nixon Administration now would do well to remember that he, and not John Kennedy, might have become President in 1960 had it not been that the odd electoral methods of Cook County took Illinois into the Democrat column and Kennedy into the White House. Mr Nixon is not the man to say it, and this is not the time for him to say it, but the methods of American electioneering do need a thorough spring-cleaning. As for the law, one of the minor sidelights of Watergate, which emerged yesterday was the admission by the Judge in the Pentagon Papers trial that he met Mr Ehrlichman on March 31 and April 2 to discuss taking another post, reported to be that of head of the FBI. Mr Ehrlichman deserved to be sacked for that indiscretion alone. 
Why has the President been so insensitive ? The simple answer is to regard him as a wicked or stupid man. That seems too simple. Mr Nixon is the product of a remarkable political career, the turning points of which were his defeats in 1960 and for the Governorship of California two years later. From those he emerged as a political lone-wolf, with a deep paranoia about the media and a near-limitless loyalty to the few political friends who stood by him. 
For Watergate has illuminated a fatal flaw in his method of operating. An arrogant White House and a distant Congress may just work while all goes well (though even then the dangers of a foreign policy conceived by two men alone are somewhat frightening). When things go wrong the President has no protection from the faults of his advisers, the hostility of the Congress, and even of his own party within that Congress Ñ and the hatred of the press. For if an unsympathetic and sometimes cruel press in the past has made a bitter President, the reverse is also true. Even if no more mud sticks to him, Mr Nixon will have to practise politics in a way that shows more respect.