That man is Gerald Ford, but he will have a hard time justifying a blanket presidential pardon for an admitted felon without at least the appearance of a ground swell of public sympathy to back him up.

So we may as well get braced for a daily dose of extremely grim news out of San Clemente, once Nixon is formally indicted. We will hear reports that the ex-president frequently bursts into tears for no reason at all, that he utters heartrending screams every night in his sleep, and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner will quote an unnamed “prominent Beverly Hills psychiatrist” who will describe Nixon as a “pitiful basket case” and “a chronic bedwetter.” And if Ford still seems reluctant to let Nixon go free, we will start seeing front-page “exclusive photos” of Nixon alone on the beach, staring soulfully at the sunset with tears drooling out of his eyes.

It will be a carefully orchestrated public relations campaign in the classic Nixon tradition. Ziegler will hold daily press briefings and read finely crafted descriptions of the former president's pitiful condition from the typewriter of Ray Price, Nixon's former chief speechwriter at the White House. Both Price and Pat Buchanan, the left and right forks of Nixon's tongue ever since he decided to make his move on the White House back in 1965, showed up at the San Clemente fortress in early September, both insisting they had just come out to say hello and “check up on the old man.” As it happened, however, they both appeared about the same time rumors began surfacing in New York about a $2-million advance that Nixon had been offered for his memoirs.

Neither Price nor Buchanan claimed to know anything definite about the book offer, but in New York Spiro Agnew's literary agent was telling everybody who asked that the Nixon deal could be closed momentarily for at least $2 million and maybe more.

That is a hell of a lot of money for anybody's memoirs -- even people who might reasonably be expected to tell the truth. But even a ridiculously fraudulent version of his five and a half wretched years in the White House and his own twisted view of the scandal that finished him off would be an automatic best seller if the book-buying public could be conned somehow into believing Richard Nixon was actually the author.

Meanwhile, with either Price or Buchanan or both standing ready to write his memoirs for him, Nixon was pondering an offer from Reader's Digest to sign on as a “consulting editor” at a salary of $100,000 a year. . . And Thursday of that week, President Ford made headlines by urging the Congress to appropriate $850,000 to cover Nixon's pension, living expenses and other costs of the painful transition from the White House to San Clemente. When the $850,000 runs out, he will have to scrimp until July 1st of next year, when he will pick up another $400,000 that will have to last him until July 1st, 1976. For as long as he lives, Richard Nixon will be on the federal dole forever at $400,000 a year -- $60,000 pension, $96,000 to cover his personal staff salaries, $40,000 for travel, $21,000 to cover his telephone bills and $100,000 for “miscellaneous.”