The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

goRton Agonistes 115
Quoting Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Shakespeare and Thucydides,
Gorton told a hushed Seattle Rotary Club that the president had
burdened the federal government with a “moral climate of cynicism and
suspicion.” The “finest service” Nixon could perform for his country,
Gorton concluded, would be to resign and enable the nation to “start
afresh.” Otherwise, the attorney general added, impeachment was nearly
certain because the president had demonstrated “a broad pattern of indifference
to and disrespect for the laws of the United States and the expectations
of its citizens.” In fact, “Richard Nixon, out of the evidence of his
own mouth,” had given the House of Representatives probable cause to
vote Articles of Impeachment when he stated that “In any organization,
the man at the top must bear the responsibility.” If what Nixon had done
didn’t merit impeachment, Gorton asked, “What actions of a future president
will be? What invasions of your privacy, what violations of your civil
rights?” 5
Gorton’s voice was flat—it reminded many of John Dean’s testimony
when he told the Senate committee about “the cancer growing on the
presidency.” It was also tinged with sadness and indignation, especially to
the handful of those who knew that the 17–page speech had been germinating
for months. It stands as one of his most eloquent in more than a
half-century in politics.
Gorton noted that most Rotarians had generally supported Nixon’s
progressive foreign policies, as well as his efforts to reduce federal spending
and centralization. He liked those things, too. But they’d been betrayed.
“It is your attitudes toward government that have been discredited.
It is your policies which are being increasingly defeated. It is your
voices in Congress who will be stilled in November’s elections if events
continue to drift as they have for the past year.” Gorton said it was clear
that the turmoil could grind on for months, even years, if it came down to
a trial in the U.S. Senate. “The nation can ill afford that time.” 6
“For most citizens,” the attorney general concluded, “either impeachment
or resignation is an extraordinary remedy with unknown and fearsome
consequences for the future. They agree with Hamlet’s dread of an
unknown future, which ‘makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly
to others that we know not of. Thus conscience doth make cowards of us
all. . . .’ It is our freedom, our rights against an ever-present and increasingly
powerful government which are at stake.” 7
When he was done, the Rotarians, who were “predominantly Republican
and conservative, as is Gorton, gave him a long applause,” wrote Shelby
Scates, the P-I’s political writer. Only “one person—not identified—