The President of the United States would never act that way -- at least not during baseball season. Like Nixon's new White House chief of staff, Melvin Laird, said shortly before his appointment: “If the President turns out to be guilty, I don't want to hear about it.”

This is the other end of the attitude-spectrum from the comment I heard, last week, from a man in Denver: “I've been waiting a long time for this,” he said. “Maybe not as long as Jerry Voorhis or Helen Gahagan Douglas. . . and I never really thought it would happen, to tell you the truth.” He flashed me a humorless smile and turned back to his TV set. “But it is, by god! And it's almost too good to be true.”

My problem -- journalistically, at least -- has its roots in the fact that I agree with just about everything that laughing, vengeful bastard said that day. We didn't talk much. There was no need for it. Everything Richard Milhous Nixon ever stood for was going up in smoke right in front of our eyes. And anybody who could understand and appreciate that, I felt, didn't need many words to communicate. At least not with me.

(The question is: what did he stand for, and what next for that? Agnew? Reagan? Rockefeller? Even Percy? Nixon was finally “successful” for the same reason he was finally brought low. He kept pushing, pushing, pushing -- and inevitably he pushed too far.)

Noon -- Tuesday, June 26th

The TV set is out on the porch now -- a move that involved much cursing and staggering.

Weicker has the mike -- mono a mono on Dean -- and after 13 minutes of apparently aimless blathering he comes off no better than Talmadge. Weicker seemed oddly cautious -- a trifle obtuse, perhaps.

What are the connections? Weicker is a personal friend of Pat Gray's. He is also the only member of the Select Committee with after-hours personal access to John Dean.

“-- Live from Senate Caucus Room --”

-- flash on CBS screen

Live? Rehearsed? In any case, Dean is livelier than most -- not only because of what he has to say, but because he -- unlike the other witnesses -- refused to say it first in executive session to Committee staffers before going on TV.

Strange -- Dean's obvious credibility comes not from his long-awaited impact (or lack of it) on the American public, but from his obvious ability to deal with the seven Senatorial Inquisitors. They seem awed.

Dean got his edge, early on, with a mocking lash at the integrity of Minority Counsel Fred Thompson -- and the others fell meekly in line. Dean radiates a certain very narrow kind of authority -- nothing personal, but the kind of nasal blank-hearted authority you feel in the presence of the taxman or a very polite FBI agent.