Word: agnew
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Saddened Man. Whatever the origin of the resignation rumor, it quickly developed a momentum of its own, building up a drumbeat of pressure on Agnew beyond the immediate exigencies of his situation. When Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter phoned Agnew to encourage his old friend, he found himself talking to a weary and saddened man. Reported Carter: "He said that he and his family were under tremendous pressure and that he felt like he was fighting a division with a platoon...
Even a natural political enemy came to Agnew's defense. Declared Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy: "The deliberate campaign of abuse to which he is being subjected should be ended now. The White House and the Department of Justice have an obligation of fundamental fairness to the Vice President to let the investigation take its course, free of the pervasive current atmosphere of a kangaroo trial by 'undisclosed sources.' Vice President Agnew has conducted himself with dignity in recent weeks. He deserves the nation's respect for his demeanor in this unprecedented situation...
...Agnew did his determined best to carry on his personal and official life just as before. It was his wife who most showed the strain. Judy Agnew is a quiet, unassuming woman who never wanted to enter the minefields of politics. Unlike Pat Nixon, who has been steeled by many crises in the past, Mrs. Agnew is experiencing her first ordeal. For the first time she has been confronted by reporters demanding, "Is your husband going to resign?" Calmly, she answered, "You'll have to ask my husband...
...carried off most of the week very well, but then she was jolted by one of those sharp little rebuffs that showed how the President was keeping his public distance from his Vice President. At a White House dinner for Pakistani Prime Minister Ali Bhutto, the Agnews were swiftly ushered out of camera range into the East Room instead of waiting, as usual, for the Nixons to descend the curving staircase. When the Agnews joined the Nixons and the Bhuttos at the head table that night, the strain showed on Judy Agnew's usually smiling, round face...
Ready to Argue. In this kind of atmosphere, the humor, understandably, was either black or a very dark shade of gray. At a party at the home of Peter Malatesta, Agnew's political handyman, the pianist glided into an old favorite -"Don't throw bouquets at me... Don't laugh at my jokes too much ..." Listening, Murray Chotiner, Nixon's longtime adviser, took the cigar out of his mouth and cracked: "That's the Vice President singing to the President." Malatesta, the nephew of Bob Hope, quickly whispered into the ear of the pianist...