For once, the machinery of constitutional succession worked properly. The 25th Amendment, so very recently ratified by Congress and the states, provided for the ascension of the Vice President to the Presidency in an acting capacity upon the inability of the President to carry out their duties. The afternoon of May 10th was the first test of a system designed to avoid previous issues, such as Lyndon Johnson serving a full year and change as President without a Vice President, because no such method existed for nominating and confirming a replacement when the President died and the Vice President moved up a rung on the ladder. John Connally, of course, was firmly ensconced in Washington, working in his West Wing office ensuring that all the mundane parts of the Presidency were functioning. He’d been at lunch, surprisingly enough, with Ben Barnes when Richard Milhous Nixon departed on his quest to set alight his political career with gasoline on national television. Within seconds of Nixon’s limp body being carried from the Senate chamber, Connally had been roused from his corner in the senior White House mess with Barnes and rushed to the Situation Room, for no reason other than when crisis struck, this is where people went.
The Veep asked for and received Nixon’s current condition (unconscious, breathing, heart rate a bit weak). His next action was to have the Cabinet rushed to the White House, which was actually expected in this case because the world watched the American President collapse in front of live television cameras. This was accomplished within a half-hour, not bad for a first effort in an actual coordinated movement of the entire Cabinet (not the same method as a Doomsday evacuation, but good practice for the necessary coordination), Connally judged. He sat down in his usual seat in the Cabinet room, the better to not act as if he was trying to take a metaphorical throne that everyone else in the room was convinced he’d be sitting in within days. When he did so, he beckoned to Dr. Saul Paul Ehrlich Jr., who went by Dr. S. Paul Ehrlich to make it less of a tongue-twister. Dr. Ehrlich was the director of international health and also the acting Surgeon General since February 1973, not officially nominated for reasons that had been forgotten in the maelstrom that was Watergate. He briefed the Cabinet on what had happened with the President since that morning—General Tkach and Captain Lukash had gone to GWU to assist with the President’s condition—including the phlebitis, the surprising refusal of the President to do much about it, the manic behavior, and why the President had likely collapsed in the well of the Senate.
When he was done, Connally looked around the room. “Gentlemen, a vote is now required. The President is incapacitated, and for me to properly execute duties as acting President, a majority must certify that Dick is unable to perform his duties as President. A show of hands will suffice, I believe,” here Connally looked over at Len Garment, White House counsel, who nodded affirmatively. “All in favor?” the Vice President asked, and everyone’s hand went up. Well, that makes it so much easier now, doesn’t it? “Okay, thank you, gentlemen. Right now, I think we should take a minute to pray for Dick and his recovery here.” Connally bowed his head, calling upon Almighty God to save the life of Richard Nixon, to heal his phlebitis, and allow him to finish his term. The last part drew a few raised eyebrows—nobody in this room was ignorant of John Bowden Connally’s teeming ambition to be President. “Alright. Ron should brief the media that we have done as the Constitution asks of us, and Len can call the Speaker’s office to inform him of the same. I imagine the Senate is still tied up in adjourning today’s session and voting on how to proceed. I think it’s important to show continuity to the world, just so nobody gets any smart ideas on trying to nuke us or Saigon or wherever. Any issue with that?” Again, no dissension. Henry even chimed in to say how wise he thought Connally’s decision was. The men in this room were political animals, and they’d made the instinctual decision that Richard Nixon’s time as President was measured in days. Cabinet officers enjoy their posts and perks quite a bit, and so by backing Connally here, they were making their bid to stay in their posts after the big Texan shifted seats to be on the other side of the oval table.
Carl Albert raised no objection to the move by the Vice President and the Cabinet. He, too, had been watching and was dumbstruck when Nixon collapsed. He’d already gotten into his whiskey cabinet, trying to calm his nerves because he was now (for the moment) the next in line for the Presidency, and he loved being Speaker and was terrified of being President through historical accident. The President had real responsibilities at a level Carl Albert would gladly stay away from. While Carl got into his bourbon, Mike Mansfield was, as surmised, rather busy at the moment in conference with Minority Leader Hugh Scott and Chief Justice Burger trying to determine how to conduct the rest of the impeachment trial. The President’s presence had been an anomaly, not one required by the rules or the Constitution, and as such, there was no legal reason to continue on with him. As a moral decision, though, the three were troubled by a defendant not being able to assist in his defense until the very end. It was not their choice, though. By the rules of impeachment, the Senate had to vote as a body to suspend the trial. When the leaders brought that proposal to the floor (the cameras were off and the production crew were well away from the chamber), they were greeted with a good helping of scorn and derision from both sides. Liberal stalwarts like Ted Kennedy and Mike Gravel argued that the President’s behavior prior to his collapse was reason enough to convict him and move on, while Republicans, torn between party loyalty and the gross misconduct of its leader, split on the matter. Ultimately, though, Chuck Percy, Edward Brooke, Jacob Javits, George Aiken, Lowell Weicker, Mark Hatfield, and Bob Packwood all voted against a suspension of the trial. The Dixiecrat caucus of Harry Bryd, John Stennis, James Eastland, J. Bennett Johnston, John Sparkman, and James Allen voted with the rest of the GOP…and Mike Mansfield himself. This left the final vote 56-44. The trial would continue on Monday.
A Greek tragedy is structured into three parts: prologue, parados and exodus. In between those parts is stasima, where the veritable Greek chorus comments upon the action in the tragedy. The stasima was missing from this tragedy, though, for as the senators left the floor, they would not comment to the veritable dogpile of press outside the chambers. Eventually, Richard Schweiker would hold a brief “scrum,” as the terminology went, in his office later that day, but as Friday turned to Saturday, the parados was at its apogee, and chorus or not, the exodus was on its way.
The weekend came and went, with Nixon in his medical coma and Connally calmly conducting the business of state, as the tension silently built in the capital, the air crackling with metaphorical and physical electricity as thunderstorms moved in Sunday. The morning’s news shows, Issues & Answers, Meet the Press, and Face the Nation, granted F. Lee Bailey the vaunted trifecta of appearances, as journalists scrambled to elicit answers out of Bailey that the doctors at Bethesda Navy Medical Center would not. Bailey was quite aware of their thirst and gladly played along, stringing them along, teasing substantive answers while carefully pushing his narrative that the President was innocent, so much so that he’d risked his life to prove that on Friday. The litigator was hoping to drum up a major round of sympathy for his client, one that would pressure the Senate into acquitting the President. His calculation, not an unreasonable one, was that a 56-44 vote to continue the trial was still ten votes short of conviction (Bailey was not a fool, and knew Mansfield would vote to convict). If the 43 others who voted to recess stuck together, Richard Nixon would stay president. Bailey’s answers and spiel, therefore, were aimed at those 43 men voting for acquittal. Even if he lost five of them, it was still a victory. The high bar that the Constitution had for conviction in an impeachment trial was the best friend of Richard Nixon. And if he stayed in office, he could stave off the inevitable federal prosecution that would surely ensue upon his departure, not to mention the lawsuits.
Unfortunately for Lawyer Bailey and President Nixon, someone else had different plans. The Acting President, one John Bowden Connally, Jr., was quite aware of Bailey’s plans and was laying his own that Sunday. Unlike Richard Nixon, whose legal career was marked by a lumbering manner disguising his keen intellect, John Connally was a skilled dealmaker, one who knew the law well and how to walk its line even better. His intelligence was never in question, and he performed so ably that, as one Texas oilman was said to have remarked, “you didn’t even know he’d picked your pocket until after he left the room and you realized your wallet was gone.” The play here was simple. Get the Dixiecrats in a room and work them, charm them, serve them fine bourbon and cigars while that baritone Texas twang massaged their egos and offered them their wish lists in return for one thing: a vote for conviction of Nixon should it become necessary. Of the ten votes he believed needed to be peeled off, Connally had seven in the room—Allen, Sparkman, Harry Byrd, Stennis, Eastland, Johnston, and Strom Thurmond, no longer a Democrat but the man who created the Dixiecrats by himself. That left three others still needing to be convinced, and two of those would almost certainly be the ones who tried to get Nixon to resign, Chuck Percy and Barry Goldwater. That left one to get. Fannin was a maybe, as was Norris Cotton, not running for re-election and a man with occasional liberal leanings. Connally figured that, since votes were tallied in alphabetical order, three Dixiecrats would have voted against Nixon by the time Fannin and Goldwater came up for their votes, and if they both jumped, Percy would surely do the same. Just reaching out to the Dixiecrats and finding common ground was masterstroke enough. If there’s one thing that JBC could do, it was count, and the count was moving heavily in his favor.
Monday morning dawned humid and sticky, the moisture from the previous day’s thunderstorms still permeating the air in the onetime swamplands. Seersucker suits were beginning to appear amongst the more elderly Senators as they filed into the chamber. The House managers, slated to give their closing argument, instead surprisingly moved to go immediately to the vote. Bailey objected to the motion. Chief Justice Burger, unsure of what to do, conferred sotto voce with the parliamentarian for some minutes before enabling his microphone and declaring that the motion could be voted on by the Senators. A quick roll call was taken, and the motion defeated by the slimmest of margins, 51-49. Mansfield was the 51st, having deferred until the end, and deciding to once more fall on the side of fairness. The motion having been denied, Peter Rodino walked to the rostrum to give the closing argument. Tip O’Neill had quietly arranged for Bob Shrum, the wunderkind speechwriter of Ted Kennedy, to come down from Boston to assist Rodino over the weekend after it became clear the trial would conclude this week. O’Neill wanted to strike while they iron was hot, close quickly and get the vote in, because he believed and had convinced the others it was easier to remove Nixon while he was unable to do the job anyway and had been removed from the job under the 25th Amendment. Take what is temporary and make it permanent. So Shrum wrote the words for Rodino, words which were brief but would ring throughout history.
“I have the honor of giving this closing statement, and I am grateful to the members of this body for their fairness throughout this difficult moment in our nation’s history. Some thirty-plus years ago, many of us in the House and the Senate swore an oath as we donned the uniforms of the United States military and went off into battle, fighting on distant shores, in thick jungles, on mountaintops and in deserts, in caves and castles, to defend our freedom and our way of life. That oath is essentially the same as the one we’ve all sworn to be members of Congress. “To Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution of the United States.” Not the nation itself, though that is surely part of the bargain, but the Constitution. Not the nation’s leaders, but its guiding principles. This may not resemble Anzio or Normandy or El Alamein, but what we do here today is as vital to protecting our way of life and our Constitution as any of those battles. What the President strove to do was to use the power of the presidency, a vast, mighty power indeed, and direct it towards subverting the right of the people to choose their leaders fairly, in a free election, without the heavy hand of the state upon the scale.
When one candidate is unable to run their campaign without agents of the state interfering in the process, then the Constitution loses value, and if that value is allowed to be further diminished over time, it would jeopardize our republic. These were not mere “dirty tricks,” as the President’s men phrased them. These were retired CIA and FBI agents, working alongside mercenaries, breaking and entering into a political party’s headquarters, stealing documents, planting microphones, and planning to use that illicit access to completely sabotage the election. It was shocking then, and became far more so when the scope of the Nixon campaign’s involvement became clear.” Rodino paused, took a breath, and continued into the peroration that would rank this speech as one of the finest in American political history, one that made Bob Shrum the most in-demand speechwriter in Democratic politics for the next decade. “Now, I am a modest man, I do not like the spotlight, and I am uncomfortable with it even now, but I am standing on a different shore than the one so many brave men died on thirty years ago. This shore I stand on today is that of the rule of law, of our Constitution, and by God, I will defend this shore to my last. Your votes, Senators, are the bullets for my gun. Give me enough of them and we will have protected our democracy once more from attack. Give me too few, and the next person to attempt such an attack upon our free and fair elections might well succeed, and our cherished Republic fall. Our work here is done, our cause is just, the hour is nigh; the decision is yours. Thank you for your time.”
The gallery erupted in applause, the succinct message of the member from New Jersey breaking through all the noise and spin to present one unalienable truth: this trial was about protecting the Constitution and the country. Burger repeatedly gaveled, trying to bring matters under control. After the commotion settled down, in a surprising twist, Herb Brownell and not F. Lee Bailey rose to take the spot at the rostrum, making one final argument to save the political life of the President, while his actual life hung in the balance a short walk away at Bethesda Naval Medical Center.
“If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be. A great philosopher from my neck of the woods said that. A few of you may even have heard his name before: Yogi Berra.” Laughter rippled through the chamber. Brownell smiled. His gambit had worked. “The great Yogi may have sounded as if he’d stepped on his own words there, but there was a big truth behind those words. We live in an imperfect world, but even a “perfect” world wouldn’t really be perfect. And just like our world is imperfect, so are the leaders of the nations in it, present company excluded, of course.” More laughter as Brownell flashed another lopsided grin. “I’m sure everyone across this great land of ours can agree that Richard Nixon is an imperfect man. The president, though, won two terms as president, the second one by the largest landslide in American history. There’s a lot of talk during this impeachment that the President rigged the election, that by helping swing the race to Senator McGovern, he drew the best opponent he could wish for. Now, I’m not entirely sure what’s more insulting about that. Is it that Senator McGovern, one of your colleagues, is so inept at politics that he only won the Democratic nomination because of the President’s interference? Or is it that the voters are unable to discern fact from fiction, and the biggest landslide in history was because they are easily swayed? That infers that they were not influenced by the facts, that the President did reduce our presence in Vietnam and negotiate peace with honor in Vietnam, that he did open up China again, and that he signed a historic arms control treaty with the Soviet Union. Everything I just named are facts, and they are undisputed. I would argue that as much as there is evidence in this whole sordid saga, there is also much conjecture. There are inferences made from conversations, but no hard facts. The only physical evidence of any of this is from the inept burglars who were arrested at the Watergate. We’ve heard much testimony in front of the Ervin Committee, and those who uttered the words largely stood to gain by bringing the President down with them.
The President right now is fighting for his life at Bethesda Naval Medical Center. I’ve known Richard Nixon for over twenty years. He is as tough a man as I’ve ever known. I have no doubt he will recover from what happened here last Friday. He cannot, however, recover from what happens here today if an unjust verdict is brought down upon him. There is no appeal to this vote. There is no second chance. An impeachment conviction would forever bar this President, one of the most effective in this century, from his pension, access to information and resources, and ability to provide future service to this government. Is that just? Is that a proper punishment for these alleged crimes? Is that the right decision to come to when the evidence presented is not as conclusive as the House managers make it out to be? Are the President’s mistakes greater than his successes?
Senators, one of your brethren, later to become President, wrote not twenty years ago about Edmund Gibson Ross. He was the deciding vote in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. Now, Johnson was a horrible man and a horrible President, but the crimes which he was charged with were not actual crimes. The Congress passed a law that was unconstitutional in its claim of power over the President—the Tenure of Office Act. That act stated that the President could not accept the resignation nor fire any of his Cabinet officers without the concurrence of Congress. Now, the Senate is to provide advice and consent to a President’s appointees, but this was the first time Congress claimed to have power over the ability of the President to fire members of the executive branch. Johnson was a proud man, and so he tested the Act, leading to his impeachment in the House and his acquittal by the Senate by a single vote. One vote. That was Senator Ross, who was facing pressure from his party and most of the nation. Senator Ross, though, voted his conscience. He knew the charges were improper. He voted no, and lost his next election and his political career. It was a brave step, though, and Jack Kennedy immortalized him for it.
Today I am asking you, the jurors of this case, to take the same brave step. This impeachment was rushed. The charges lack hard evidence. The House determined it wanted to be rid of Richard Nixon, but this body, the Senate, named after that august body of ancient Rome, was meant to prevent a rush to judgment. Madison wrote in Federalist No. 62 that the Senate was less likely “to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions,” and less inclined to “the impulse of sudden and violent passions.” The House acted passionately, angered by what they read in the transcripts provided to them by the President, and acted swiftly to impeach him. It is your job, as the house of Congress the Founders intended to be deliberative, to act dispassionately, and to deliver justice. It may not be popular, but the only just verdict is acquittal. Thank you for your time.”
Chief Justice Warren Burger looked to Mike Mansfield. The Majority Leader rose to speak. “Mr. Chief Justice, the Senate will now move into closed session for deliberation of these articles of impeachment, and seek permission to do so from the chair.” “The motion is granted. The Senate shall move into closed session, and the chair shall adjourn to the President’s Room to await a verdict.” Burger gaveled the Senate to a close, and the room was cleared of all but the one hundred senators and the sergeant-at-arms, who sealed the doors. It was a very informal affair, not that much different than a court jury, except the room was much bigger and this jury was 8.3 times larger than a standard one. Mansfield put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The chatter stopped. “Alright, boys, before we start talking, Barry’s asked me if he can go first and I’ve agreed to let him do so. Barry, the floor is yours.” Mansfield stepped aside from the well and let Goldwater stand facing the other ninety-eight senators.
“Now, listen, I’m gonna be blunt with all of you because I think we all know each other well enough that I can do that. I’ve known Herb Brownell since I came to the Senate over 20 years ago, and I think he did a fine job advocating for the President. Despite that fine job, Dick is guilty as hell and I think we need to own up to that as a party and cut him loose. He got in front of this body and lost his damned mind yelling at his own former attorney. Now he’s lying in a coma at Bethesda. Even if some of you wanted to acquit him out of friendship or party loyalty, the fact is he certainly is not even capable of doing the job and would be removed via the 25th Amendment anyway. I think this body, our party, and our nation would be better off if we just moved on from this sorry period.” The reaction was somewhat muted, but that was all the better in Mansfield’s mind. It meant they were thinking it over in their heads right now.
One by one, senators stood up and cast their informal votes. Howard Baker was a reluctant yes. Wallace Bennett, who’d tangentially been involved in the early days of Watergate when his son’s ties to E. Howard Hunt had been published by Woodward and Bernstein, joined the no column. Bill Brock and Edward Brooke were two more defections. Jim Buckley held to a firm no. Bob Dole, whose full-throated defense of Nixon during the 1972 campaign had aged like a bad wheel of Brie cheese, abstained for now. Pete Domenici owed his Senate seat to Nixon and voted no. Hiram Fong, considered a bellwether vote—a liberal Republican who’d staunchly supported the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon—voted yes. Bob Griffin, another liberal Republican, tearfully voted yes. On the voting went, a few Republicans having crossed over, but the solid South remaining in doubt, holding out until the end, their fingers firmly wetted and up in the air. The Republicans in the South, like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, said they’d never desert this President. Hugh Scott, the Minority Leader, couldn’t bring himself to vote yes. When the count got to Robert Taft, Jr., the son of the Ohio stalwart whom Richard Nixon had helped shove out of the presidential nomination in 1952, he gleefully announced he would vote yes. The good senator served his revenge quite chilled to the President. It was damnably close now, and wouldn’t be sealed until Lowell Weicker, the maverick Connecticut Republican, voted yes. That was the 67th vote, the one that cinched a conviction. Then Russell Long spoke up, and announced he’d vote yes. At that point, the Dixiecrats all broke no, a safe vote, keeping their political base happy while not being the ones to acquit Nixon. Even John McClellan, hardly a Nixon friend, voted no.
Mansfield was pleased. He’d delivered a bipartisan vote by letting Goldwater make the case and if politics made for strange bedfellows, Goldwater voting yes with a number of liberal Republicans while his fellow conservatives stood with Nixon to the end was downright incomprehensible. The final vote was 69-31, a number that would haunt Nixon for years, not knowing the deal that the Dixiecrats had struck with Connally that they wouldn’t help acquit the man, but they wouldn’t go against him if they could avoid it. If he’d known the truth, maybe it would’ve helped him, maybe it would’ve just made his emotional state worse. That was in a future yet unseen, though, with the man in a coma at Bethesda Naval Medical Center. A page was sent for Chief Justice Burger. The chief justice also owed his position to Nixon, but he possessed no desire to throw himself in front of a moving train like this. If Nixon had brought the tapes case to the court as part of a criminal subpoena instead of a congressional one, Burger would’ve voted against him. The justices had all agreed they caught a lucky break not having to get involved.
Burger might be a vain man, susceptible to flattery, but he was not stupid. He deduced that such a relatively short deliberation meant conviction was occurring. He wrote a quick note to William O. Douglas, the senior-most Associate Justice on the high court, telling him to head to the White House as soon as possible. Burger loathed Douglas, and vice versa, but this moment called for propriety, and Douglas was the justice that should swear in the Vice President. He sealed the note and had an aide run it across the street to the Court. Then he checked himself in the mirror, fixed his tie, and strode out into the Senate Chamber, ascending to the presiding seat at the front. The networks, tipped off that a verdict was reached, scrambled to go live, cutting into programming with little preamble. Graphics were hurriedly put on the screen to inform viewers this was the moment of truth. Burger leaned into his microphone and spoke. “Mr. Majority Leader, I am informed that the senators have reached a verdict in the impeachment charges before them. Per the rules of this impeachment trial, I shall now poll each senator for their vote, in alphabetical order, and the clerk shall tally the votes.”
James Allen (D-AL), No
James Abourezk (D-SD), Yes
George Aiken (R-VT), Yes
Howard Baker (R-TN), Yes
Birch Bayh (D-IN), Yes
Dewey F. Bartlett (R-OK), No
John Glenn Beall, Jr. (R-MD), Yes
Henry Bellmon (R-OK), No
Wallace F. Bennett (R-UT), No
Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX), Yes
Alan Bible (D-NV), Yes
Joe Biden (D-DE), Yes
Bill Brock (R-TN), Yes
Edward Brooke (R-MA), Yes
James L. Buckley (C/R-NY), No
Quentin Northrup Burdick (D-ND), Yes
Harry F. Byrd, Jr. (I-VA), No
Robert Byrd (D-WV), Yes
Howard Cannon (D-NV), Yes
Clifford P. Case (R-NJ), Yes
Lawton Chiles (D-FL), Yes
Frank Church (D-ID), Yes
Richard C. Clark (D-IA), Yes
Marlow Cook (R-KY), No
Norris Cotton (R-NH), No
Alan Cranston (D-CA), Yes
Carl Curtis (R-NE), No
Bob Dole (R-KS), No
Pete Domenici (R-NM), No
Peter H. Dominick (R-CO), Yes
Thomas Eagleton (D-MO), Yes
James Eastland (D-MS), No
Sam Ervin (D-NC), Yes
Paul Fannin (R-AZ), No
Hiram Fong (R-HI), Yes
J. William Fulbright (D-AR), Yes
Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), Yes
Edward J. Gurney (R-FL), No
Mike Gravel (D-AK), Yes
Robert P. Griffin (R-MI), Yes
Clifford Hansen (R-WY), No
Philip Hart (D-MI), Yes
Vance Hartke (D-IN), Yes
Floyd K. Haskell (D-CO), Yes
Mark Hatfield (R-OR), Yes
William Hathaway (D-ME), Yes
Jesse Helms (R-NC), No
Ernest Hollings (D-SC), No
Roman Hruska (R-NE), No
Walter Huddleston (D-KY), Yes
Harold Hughes (D-IA), Yes
Hubert Humphrey (D-MN), Yes
Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Yes
Henry M. Jackson (D-WA), Yes
Jacob K. Javits (R-NY), Yes
Bennett Johnston Jr. (D-LA), No
Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Yes
Russell B. Long (D-LA), Yes
Warren G. Magnuson (D-WA), Yes
Mike Mansfield (D-MT), Yes
Charles Mathias (R-MD), Yes
John Little McClellan (D-AR), Yes
James A. McClure (R-ID), No
Gale W. McGee (D-WY), Yes
George McGovern (D-SD), Yes
Thomas J. McIntyre (D-NH), Yes
Lee Metcalf (D-MT), Yes
Walter Mondale (D-MN), Yes
Joseph Montoya (D-NM), Yes
Frank Moss (D-UT), Yes
Edmund Muskie (D-ME), Yes
Gaylord Nelson (D-WI), Yes
Sam Nunn (D-GA), Yes
Bob Packwood (R-OR), Yes
John O. Pastore (D-RI), Yes
James B. Pearson (R-KS), No
Claiborne Pell (D-RI), Yes
Charles H. Percy (R-IL), Yes
William Proxmire (D-WI), Yes
Jennings Randolph (D-WV), Yes
Abraham A. Ribicoff (D-CT), Yes
William Saxbe (R-OH), No
Bill Roth (R-DE), Yes
Richard Schweiker (R-PA), Yes
Hugh Scott (R-PA), No
William L. Scott (R-VA), No
John Sparkman (D-AL), No
Robert Stafford (R-VT), Yes
John C. Stennis (D-MS), No
Ted Stevens (R-AK), No
Adlai Stevenson III (D-IL), Yes
Stuart Symington (D-MO), Yes
Robert Taft, Jr. (R-OH), Yes
Herman Talmadge (D-GA), No
Strom Thurmond (R-SC), No
John Tower (R-TX), No
John V. Tunney (D-CA), Yes
Lowell Weicker (R-CT), Yes
Harrison A. Williams (D-NJ), Yes
Milton R. Young, (R-ND), No
As things went, with the vote in alphabetical order, the 66th vote for conviction went to Taft, and the deciding vote was cast by John Tunney, the freshman senator from California and best friend of Ted Kennedy. It was a verdict where all of Nixon’s misdeeds, injured friendships, and illegal shenanigans backfired, his victims all coming back to haunt him with Yes votes. Once Milton Young cast the final vote, Burger took a deep breath and intoned, “The ayes being 69, the noes being 31, the Senate of the United States has convicted Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States, of the impeachment charges laid before them, and, by the procedure set out in the Constitution, have removed him from the office of President. As soon as expedient, the Vice President, per the 25th Amendment, shall be sworn in as the 38th President of the United States. The Senate shall, at a time of its choosing, vote on whether to bar Richard Milhous Nixon from holding any future office under the auspices of the government of the United States. This impeachment court is adjourned.” The Chief Justice banged his gavel and stepped down from his chair, shaking hands briefly with Mansfield and Hugh Scott before departing through the door to the President’s Room. He didn’t wish to draw attention to himself for this.
Across America, every antiwar protestor, every embittered Vietnam veteran, every liberal who’d been convinced Nixon was a fascist since he Red-baited Helen Gahagan Douglas twenty-four years prior, celebrated with car horns and champagne bottles and beer cans. Fireworks were lit off. Dance parties broke out from San Francisco to New York’s Greenwich Village. And just as equally, across the Sun Belt and in the Rockies, on Staten Island and in the Appalachians, middle-aged white factory workers, farmers, oilmen and preachers fumed over the conviction. It was this rapidly cleaving society which John Bowden Connally would become President of, and it would take all of his political skills and personal charm to bridge the chasm.