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Show Tbe Salt LaLf Trihane.Tb.ursitax flcUibefrAeJtSZIAjj; David S. Broder Can Nations Governors Act to Smooth Washington Turmoil? The Washington Post WASHINGTON The extraordinary crisis at the heart of the American government requires an extraordinary remedy This column discusses one possible solution. On one front, a special prosecutor, armed with the powers of the attorney general, is seeking to compel the President of the United States to turn over evidence, in the form of tapes, which may implicate the President's former top aides and perhaps the President himself in criminal acts First, a word as to the nature of the The case is before the courts, President has strongly suggested doubts the authority of the branch. to enforce a judgment him d crisis A civd war is being fought within the topmost ranks of two-side- the executive but the that he judicial agamst Presenting Other Evidence branch, which the mam- combatants tain is bevond the reach of the judiciary to mediate, and which the legislative branch thus far refuses to attempt to resolve Meantime, the Justice Department is presenting evidence of separate allegations of criminal activity against the vice president, vv ho charges that on both constitutional and political grounds, the grai.d jury and the incompetent to judge him ae courts for which no solution .s government ap- parent. The President has sought to terminate a congressional investigation of the case in which he is involved, while the 'ice the opposite tack, is seeking a congressional inquiry into the merits of his case However, neither the flagging Senate investigation of Watergate nor the stillborn nouse investigation of the Agnew case promises speedy resolution of the crisis through the one constitutional remedy available to Congress impeachment p.esident, taking exactly Thus, this beleaguered democracy still reeling from the wounds of its most unpopular war and the ravages of an now unchecked eight-yea- r inflation confronts a crisis at the center of its The first principle of the republic is the people shall judge. but our Constitution seemingly provides no convenient way of rendering that judgment The next presidential election is tnree election years away, and if the mid-terof 1974 is conducted m the traditional manner, it will measure little more than the political potency of particular incumbents and challengers us almost intolerable to think that the nation must endure three years of warfare and mutual vilification among the leaders of the government. Personal pride and institutional parochialism sim brief history as a free naparliamentary system has twice gven way to rrlitarv rule. Right now, the restoration of an electoral system appears a negligible prospect. Ghana must be numbered among the many lands where parliamentary democracy flourished briefly m our time, and died. RIP. Once it was commonplace for us in America to sit back in our easy chairs and decry the ruffians-- , here and there and elsewhere, who overthrew elected governments. Perhaps our current exposure to massive corruption among our own elected officials will make us more humble On Way to Extinction? Increasingly, it becomes important to ask why parliamentary democracies are and, in fact, whether tuey may dung not be a genus on the way to extinction Here in the presidential palace, once a slave traders fortress, Joseph Appiah had some thoughts One of the grand old men of the Ghanaian independence of a movement, Appiah is the noted English parliamentarian and a brilliant lawver In the Kwame Nkrumah years, he went to jail to preserve democracy Now hes an adviser to the latest . Mingle With People The members of the military 'government" he continued, have brought to the lives of my people the doctrine of They have shown great personal humility, and have given up great houses and big cars. They are not always surrounded by armed guards, and they nuigle with the people What we're doing now is rethinking the form that a future civilian government must take. In Ghana, we are a people with centuries of government and ancestral tradition behind us. We must examine our past and find a new wav, which can be our way and still stand the test of true democracy. The military government is a step in an evolutionary process Terhaps it requires military discipline and tenacity to uproot the abuses of the past from the body politic. We need a new foundation before restoring civilian rule In my view, the military regime should stay on for quite some time Senator Soaper If the federal government is going to pass a law requiring the use of seat bells, how about an even greater step toward pedestrian safety, making the umbrella compulsory ? Root Out Weakness have not rejected democracy But, examining the two civilian governments that have existed since independence, its quite clear that one has to reconsider the parliamentary system that was imposed on us by the British, and root out its two had We have weaknesses that elected deimn.rdtu.aliy regimes abused the domoc alic rule of law. I The man at the next desk is not lured the neighborhood movie marquee adWho Butter flies are Fiec vertising needs butterflies' They used to give away dishes by Is it a citSo what is democracy of a to izen's right paper called put piece a ballot into a box That's nothing but a member of a car cooler weather is here. A ceremony, if it hasnt any subsequent meaning Does democracy mean that alter the leaders are democratically selected, they are free to do anything they l.ke? To be sure, its easy for supporters of a government that has come forcibly to power to rationalize the flaws of its predecessors. Yet even the most impartial observers acknowledge that both of Ghana's freelv elected heads of govern- - pool is glad that All summer, the group has been congratulating itself on but arguing its conservation-mindednesabout whether turning off the an conditioning wasn't extremism s It's pretty hard to believe a man is when he associates with politicians, which suiely nobody would do just for laughs not a candidate NORTH A K J92 Souths hand had tremen- AQ5 0 A J5 EAST A 63 WEST A 8 C J 9 6 2 0 Q84 AKQ dous K 10 7 3 10 I"1 K 8 4 3 0 6 96 A 8 7 4 32 SOUTH A AQ 3 10 7 O A 10 J9 754 5 2 A Void The bidd.ng trick-takin- potential. After his partners jump raise of his trump suit, he realized that if North held the right cards, a slam was possible despite the fact that the point-coumight be less than that normally considered necessary to contract for 12 tricks. Since the use of the Blackwood Convention would not help his cause South was interested in whether North held a specific ace, not how many aces South initiated a sequence. When this revealed that North held the ace of hearts and second-roundiamond control, Sou'h felt that the combined g Kings W orld By John Lloyd LONDON There were some exception m the old. old days, but by and large it was a mans world They've been rearranging the suits of d. Ac 1. 4, of the line to become monarch. The fact that discrimination touches the monarchy itself is surely evidence that none of your female subjects is free from it, the letter says The Queen is urged to refer to discrimination in her speech epemng the new session of parliament next November. The most notable English exception to the rule was Elizabeth I She was, however, the product of happenstance There was no male heir in the royal family Maybe women's lib can draw satisfaction from the fact that a woman does after all today wear the crown But that is no assurance for the future Inexorably the centuries have rolled by and we' live now in the days of women's lib And the long arm of the liberators is reaching out for, among other objectives, the succession to the throne. The feelers haven't come yet direct from women's lib, but keen female eyes are watemng for the result, you can be sure A committee from the National Union of Journalists is investigating discrimination against women and nas written to Queen Elizabeth II on the subject It points a finger at the law of accession, which provides for the oldest ma.e Bernstein on Words Ward oddities. Many apparently think that someone who lacks intelligence must have a lightweight brain, and the lightest thing they cart think of is a hair thov tend to dub him Therefore, hairhrained. But that's wrong He should be dubbed harebrained, having no more intelligence than a hare. Why hares should be so maligned is difficult to say; there must be other creatures that are more harebrained than hares play succeeded, and South landed h s slrni losing only a heart trick. for slam. Rurae inOi tvf? Sorry About That, Libbers armor in the Tower of London to form groups and be m more natural postures. One even has its legs crossed You can bet your best mace that was no woman toward dummy When West followed with the eight, declarer finessed the ten. This unuual k. London Letter two He drew tribution. rounds of trumps, ending in dummy, and ruffed the tables remaining club. The ace of diamonds was cashed and a low diamond was led values offered excellent play The next step in arranging for his succession would be for the governors to petition the House of Representatives to elect Rockef'dlcr as speaker. A speaker may resign at any time, and the by Constitution occupant of the office need not be a member of the and law House. The governors could count on strong public and editorial support for their petition, support which pol.acally sensitive congressmen would not ignore. Should Democrat Carl Mbert make th? sacrifice of stepping down from his post, the third most powerful m government, it would be a powerful prod to the Republican President and vice president I to do likewise A bipartisan House vote to elevate Rockefeller to the speaker's office would signal the Houses will as clearly as a vote of impeachment y et with far less bitterness and delay Under such circumstances, the President and vice president could resign without seeming to admit and would, m my judgment, be guilt under a powerful compulsion to do so. -- Declarer found a way to circumvent the rocks of dis- d is a rrmim about finowng handed down to us from the Aould Recommend Rocky My strong hunch is that if such a meeting were held, the Democns who New York. ice President Speaker Rockefeller would then become president and would have the opportunity to designate, with the approval of the Senate and llonse, a vice president, who, like him, enjoyed bread public trust and who was willing to renounce his own candidacy for any office in 1976. Through such a process, the new president would be compelled before taking office to give the proper assurances about his exercise of power to the leaders of the states, to the Congress, to the last elected president and vice president and to the future aspirants for those offices. The opening lead of the king of clubs was ruffed in the closed hand. A thought-- 1 e s s player might draw trumps and then cash the ace and king of diamonds. If this failed to drop the queen, declarer would then have to rely on the heart finesse for his contract. On the actual lie of the cards, this would have spelled defeat. days of whist Generally, the principle is sound enough but it is always dangerous to follow rules blindly. South deals. that year the 50 governorships- would ignore partisanship in this time of cnsis and recommend for the presidency the most senior man in the ranks of gover-an- d the most broadly respected. Republican Nelson A. Rockefeller of hold 31 ot Could Designate By C. H r.orpn vulnerable fice in P&V7 Goren on Todays Bridge h The suggestion is that the governors states convene m special session for the single purpose of recommending a person to assume the presidency until 1976. with the understanding that he will not be a candidate for the ofof the 50 Election in Ghana is sometimes taken as a mandate to plunder rather than to serve. Elected office became a license to use power for private rather than for public ends Under those circumstances, it's hard to defend democratic theory. Once the elect come to regard their offices as personal fiefs, the whole idea of democracy collapses As he talked, Appiah known for his love of the flamboyant periodically threw a comet of the sparkling red cloth that covered his spare black body over a bare shoulder. Starkly bald, he has an exquisite Oxonian accent, and clearly revels m the contradiction of cultures that his incongruous appearance represents. But in its tion Ghana's North-Sout- it ment Nkrumah more than Kofi Busia severely abused the rule of law. Mandate to Plunder Star-New- military government I can only speak on the evidence, he said, as Eve seen and experienced it m my own country I began working for democracy when we were still under the English I was a member of the first parliament after independence I saw the evil genius of tyranny possess Nkrumah. who had been my best friend I could have fled to England, but I stayed to speak my mind solution knowledge, that Yet it venge- first suggested, to my by American Umvctsity graduate student Joseph Felter at a seminar with this writer on Oct. 1 may be for the sovereign states which created the nation to act now to rescue A No Convenient Methods Democracy Just Not Answer To Ghanas Many Problems By Milton Viorst s Writer Washington Fifteen years ago, ACCRA, GH ANA when Ghana became independent, the promise of parliamentary democracy was bright. Ghanas leaders had been trained in English politics and law. The country was reasonably wealthy, and its literacy rate was high Even as a colony, it had developed a constitutional tradition ply cannot be allowed to wreak ance on a paralyzed America There are those who might be tempted to suggest that d South had peeked at his left-han- opponents cards, oth- erwise he was wrong to finesse holding nine cards in The play was the suit. to trying to inferior slightly However, drop the queen the play was technically correct once West followed to the second diamond, since it guaianieed the contract Let us assume that East has the queen of diamonds and wins the trick. He won't enjoy being on lead, for he is left with a choice of returning a club, giving declarer a ruff in dummy while sluffing a heart from h's hand, or leading a heart into dummy's tenace In either case, declarer will not lose a heart tnck and will make his slam, conceding only a trick to the queen of diamonds. Elizabeth II, like Elizabeth I. is When the monarch by happenstance. crown is passed on again it vdl go to her eldest child, Charles, which is right and proper But if something meanwhile has happened to Charles the sucession will fall to Prince Andrew, now 13, the Queens second eldest son It will skip Princess Anne, because she is a woman Nevertheless, if one has to guess, the odds are that a change in the law of accession is not likely to be made hastily and womens lib may well have to be content for the time being with other accomplishments of all of and honor The interests them would be protected, and the nation would be rescued from what seems an endless agony. There is no need to underline the practical difficulties and political suspicions that would beset such a course; they are obvious. But the American people deserve better than the chaos that threatens in Washington today, and the governors have it m their power to attempt the rescue effort. The institute for the future takes a gloomy view of the nations prospects in the next decade. Thats always a good plan for avoiding unpleasant surprises. Can the underlying substructure of our society long surmve if such institutions as Willie Mays are swept away? Proposed legislation would require that all ingredients be hsted on cosmetics Tilly says the ideal perfume would be one that was hazardous to the smeller but not the smellee. |