Poor Richard

Whether or not the American people decide to turn their backs on Richard Nixon, he cannot shake off the large aura of unethicalness that $18,000 has placed above his brow. All the enumerations and all the charges of smear and all the evidence of the catholicity of his practise may prove he is clean in intention, but they do not diminish the unwholesome odor that a privately endowed slush fund always radiates.

In his televised appeal to the people Tuesday night, Nixon said, "when an ordinary politician is accused, he either ignores or denies it." Nixon has tried to do both. First, he dodged, denouncing the expose as a "deliberate smear attempt by persons intent on perpetuating the present administration in power." He overlooked the fact that many of the newspapers urging his withdrawal were enthusiastically supporting Eisenhower. He forgot that the original story about his fund was a simple reportorial job--in fact it followed with Nixon's own campaign principle: "I will not smear, but if the record itself smears, so be it."

Secondly, Nixon denied. As newswires sizzled with the story that he had helped a trustee of his fund out of a tax hole, Nixon asserted that he had neither incurred or played off any obligation to his angels. Right or wrong, he missed the point. Private funds of this nature are essentially like free railroad passes and corporation checks in a candidate's bank account: they may be innocent in themselves, but the abuses that inevitably develop from such practices are as tainted as Mark Hanna's hat. Public opinion eventually forced the abolition of free railroad passes and the like, and if the Congress could not cover their subtler form, such as Nixon's fund, that does not justify it.

New Steam

Whatever the people's verdict by telegram is, one thing is sure: the Republican campaign must find some new steam. In his first campaign speech, Eisenhower impressed even his critics by raising the banner of clean government. Since then the GOP has not conducted a campaign, but a Crusade, with corruption in government its target. And this target was the only clear-cut unanswerable issue of the campaign.

But now that the Crusade's crown prince has been caught consorting with infidels, GOP swords are blunted and GOP shields tarnished. A nagging confusion has taken hold of many independants who once hoped that a Republican victory would add a needed touch of decency to all levels of the federal government.

Whatever happens to the Republicans, however, and whatever happens to Nixon himself, we hope that the next Congress will try to solve the problem of the poor man in politics, a problem which Nixon dramatically posed last Tuesday. Even the Governor of Illinois has faced the problem, and his answer has if nothing else an advantage over Nixon's in that no private contributor knows who he is helping support.

Both solutions are makeshift, and at least one of them is potentially corrupt. If the salaries of Congressmen and other public servants rose to a point commensurate with the importance of their work, essentially honest men like Nixon would need no angels.