Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then. Humphrey's voice just belched out of my radio, demanding that we get to the bottom of this Watergate mess, but meanwhile we have to make sure the Ruskies understand that we all stand firmly behind The President.

Right. As far behind him as possible, if GOP standard-bearers like B. Goldwater and Hugh Scott are any measure of the party's allegiance to the frightened unprincipled little shyster they were calling -- when they nominated him for re-canonization ten months ago in Miami -- “one of the greatest Presidents in American History.” We will want those tapes for posterity because we won't hear their like again -- from Scott, Goldwater, Duke Wayne, Martha, Sammy Davis, Senator Percy or anyone else. Not even George Meany will join a foursome with Richard Nixon these days. The hallowed halls of the White House no longer echo with the happy sound of bouncing golf balls. Or footballs either, for that matter. . . or any other kind.

The hard-nosed super-executives Nixon chose to run this country for us turned on each other like rats in a slum-fire when the first signs of trouble appeared. What we have seen in the past few weeks is the incredible spectacle of a President of the United States either firing or being hastily abandoned by all of his hired hands and cronies -- all the people who put him where he is today, in fact, and now that they're gone he seems helpless. Some of his closest “friends” and advisers are headed for prison, his once-helpless Democratic Congress is verging on mutiny, the threat of impeachment looms closer every day, and his coveted “place in history” is even now being etched out in acid by eager Harvard historians.

Six months ago Richard Nixon was Zeus himself, calling firebombs and shitrains down on friend and foe alike -- the most powerful man in the world, for a while -- but all that is gone now and nothing he can do will ever bring a hint of it back. Richard Nixon's seventh crisis will be his last. He will go down with Harding and Grant as one of America's classically rotten presidents.

Which is exactly what he deserves -- and if saying that makes me “one of the vulture-hearted,” by Ms. Alexander's lights. . . well. . . I think I can live with it. My grandmother was one of those stunned old ladies who cried when the Duke of Windsor quit the Big Throne to marry an American commoner back in 1936. She didn't know the Duke or anything about him. But she knew -- along with millions of other old ladies and closet monarchists -- that a Once and Future King had a duty to keep up the act. She wept for her lost illusions -- for the same reason Stewart Alsop and Shana Alexander will weep tomorrow if President Richard M. Nixon is impeached and put on trial by the US Senate.