Word: ervine
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...Washington, where there may be more attorneys per square foot than in any other city, the conversations are dominated by legal despair. The lawyers believe Ervin is doing an awful job in crossexamination. Young barristers and law school professors, freshly steeped in their textbook cases, are sure of it and can give you a lecture on how it should have been done...
...wonder if old Sam Ervin from Morganton, N.C., isn't a little wiser than all those kibitzers. Ervin is running an educational forum and not a court, and he knows it. The arguments are rooted in the Constitution, that is true, but now they transcend that. The big issue at this point is what each citizen thinks in his mind and feels in his heart about the President...
...part of Ervin's job, as he sees it, is to bring all the President's men before the public, as well as the committee, and let anybody interested see them and hear them. He is resolute in his belief that there is something magic about truth. The folks after a while get some notion of who is lying and who is not. That emerges most often in small natural increments, not in blinding flashes of acrimony. The witnesses kind of do it themselves...
...White House does not see it that way, however. Over there they have decided that Ervin is out to get the President, that behind the "sweet little ole country bumpkin" facade lies a monster. Memories are short in this town. The Ervin committee is about as gentle as they come...
...pass from him, to put it in his kind of language. Nothing would please him more than for Nixon to come there and drop all those documents and tape recordings on the committee table, exonerating himself. Or even, if not quite innocent, admit his errors openly and fully. Ervin gives the impression of a man willing to forgive a great deal if Nixon did that, and he thinks the country would be equally forgiving. Then Sam could go back to watching some of his favorite TV programs (Gunsmoke is one of them) and get a little time in the cool...