Of Vice and Men

GODDAMNIT, the guy was innocent. In the spring of 1973, a group of federal prosecutors, backed by others of the unkempt left, alleged that Spiro T. Agnew, then Vice President of the United States, had taken bribes, evaded taxes, and in general betrayed the public trust. The attempt to air the charges in some legal fashion suffered a little when Agnew, thinking as usual of his country, pleaded nolo contendere to a minor tax charge and avoided a trial. But the truth can hide only so long. The word is out now, in hardback, $10.95 from William Morrow and Co.

Go Quietly or Else is Agnew's firsthand account of how the liberals did him in. Take for example his recollection of what federal law enforcement authorities described as a $2500 cash bribe paid Agnew while he was Vice President: "I want to give you a campaign contribution, but I need your help in getting some work," Agnew remembers his friend as saying. "I will recommend you and do what I can to help you, but I have no control over awarding work," Agnew remembers replaying. "He seemed satisfied," the ex-Maryland governor remembers, "and arrangements were made for him to send a check." Directly contrary to the prosecutors' allegations, Agnew did not receive cash--he got the $2500 in a check. And see here, the money was not for services rendered--Agnew, a firm believer in Truth in Advertising, told his friend he would "do what he could to help," but made no guarantees.

If it sounds to you like Agnew is really admitting to unscrupulous practices, you simply do not have the political experience necessary to draw the line between morality and prison. The "political realities of fund-raising," Agnew thoughtfully explains, include the following: Campaign money comes "mainly from people who made money out of being politically 'in'." Furthermore, a pesky contributor "always wanted to give the money to you personally, so he was sure that you knew he was helping you." And, Agnew explains, "he usually gave it in cash," on which "he had probably not paid taxes." Anyway, the donor almost surely knew that "in every campaign there was a great need for 'walking around money,' the legal tender for paid election-day workers and for other cash needs that did not look quite right on a detailed election expenditure report." Wisely, it would seem, Agnew "wanted to be insulated from a process which always has gray overtones as to legality."

One might wonder, then, how liberals forced such a pillar of political integrity from office. Shakespeare helps to explain this phenomenon, Agnew contends. On his way to the courthouse where he would plead nolo contendere, Agnew dissected As You Like It with his Secret Service detail. "We began to talk about...the truth of the lines, 'All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players.'" And so, an hour later when he stood before a judge and agreed not to contest a felony charge, "inside me another voice said, 'It's only a play, only a play.'"

Indeed, all the world almost became a stage for Agnew--had he not been hounded by the feds, he would have replaced Richard Nixon when his presidency ended a year later under remarkably similar circumstances. Go Quietly or Else gives some intriguing clues as to what foreign policy would have been like under the first Greek-American president. That part of the world called North Vietnam would have been far wetter than under Nixon:

Taking out the dikes (through saturation bombing) was rejected because it would have killed a lot of people through flooding and famine. The administration doves were eloquently concerned about the horrified editorials from the new media that such action would bring, but taking out the dikes would have won the war by striking at the heart of the North's ability to sustain the aggression.

Not only that, it would have "preserved the freedom of the...millions who are suffering now under the yoke of the tyrannies that masquerade as people's democracies."

In China, too, Agnew would have stuck up for decency, not kowtowing to Peking simpy because it represented a fourth of the planet's population. "I disagree completely--and still do--with President Nixon's initiative to 'normalize' relations with the People's Republic of China," he writes. By looking with favor on the reds, he explained, we gave them "the political and economic muscle to seriously impair the security and prosperity of the seventeen million people on the island." And, he notes, with a tinge of sadness for the days when America had the guts to stand by its word, "this is a strange way to reward a loyal ally whose hard-working and creative citizens have made their country a model success story for the capitalistic free-enterprise system."

But don't think all of America's foreign policy would have changed under the Agnew administration. Nixon made some grand decisions in his day, Spiro beams, pointing to one widely-heralded example: "I was so proud of Nixon the day the troops went into the Cambodian sanctuaries in the spring of 1970 that I stopped him in the hall after he had announced it to the cabinet. 'Mr. President,' I said, 'I admire you for having the courage to make that tough decision.'"

One reason for Agnew's downfall, of course, was the liberal press--"I remember how enraged I was when I saw on television a gang of scruffy looking characters proudly carrying a Viet Cong flag down Pennsylvania Avenue, while a national network commentator ran along beside them with his microphone deferentially extended for whatever seditious statements they might choose to make." Not only did the press insist on covering both sides of the issue when one of them should have been "justly condemned for being traitors," it also slanted its depictions of the Vice President. One reason for the press' hostility, he explains, was simply vanity. Many of the traveling press, he writes, "were still enraged that they hadn't predicted my selection for the candidate for Vice President" in 1968. There were objective reporters, of course--three pages of Go Quietty or Else are filled with a reprint of a William Rusher column from The Conservative Advocate.

Agnew's book explains more eloquently than any outsider could ever hope to do the sad history of this star-crossed leader. As Agnew himself concludes his liner notes: "As a man I knew once often said, let me make one thing perfectly clear. This is not an autobiography; it is not intended to be a chronological account of my life." Period.