The Pitfalls Of Partisanship

"We're going to give him a chance to be fair," said Republican Samuel Devine last week, referring to Chairman Peter Rodino of the House Judiciary Committee. "If he isn't fair, we'll raise a barrel of hell about it."

No one knows better than Rodino how difficult it will be to prevent the 38-man committee (21 Democrats, 17 Republicans) from falling prey to the "animosities, partialities, influence and interest" that Alexander Hamilton warned in 1788 could make a mockery of impeachment proceedings. Rodino himself stirred the first controversy on the committee last October by ramming through a party-line vote giving him the sole power to issue subpoenas. Accused of partisanship, Rodino backed off and agreed to share subpoena powers with Michigan's Edward Hutchinson, the committee's ranking Republican.

The 36 men and two women on Rodino's committee are all lawyers, a fact that has helped them to think of themselves, in Hutchinson's words, as "the judicious committee." But that is about all they have in common. Deep political and sectional differences divide the members. In general, the committee's

Democrats are more liberal than House Democrats as a whole, while its Republicans are more conservative than most House Republicans. The lineup:

THE DEMOCRATS. In the 1960s party liberals fought to get on the Judiciary Committee because it was a focal point of civil rights activism. The last great civil rights bill, open housing, came before the committee in 1966, but the body continued to attract young, feisty and ambitious liberals as it dealt with matters of criminal justice, women's rights and the presidential succession; most recently, it handled the nomination of Gerald Ford as Vice President.

Only three of the 21 Democrats are conservative Southerners, and none is an obstructionist reactionary. The liberals are led by tough, testy Texan Jack Brooks, 51, who came to the House at 30 as a protege of Lyndon Johnson. Wisconsin's able Robert W. Kastenmeier, 50, chairs the subcommittee dealing with civil liberties, and California's Don Edwards, 59, was once the chairman of the ultraliberal Americans for Democratic Action. The A.D.A. rated eleven of the committee's Democrats 81% or higher on their 1973 voting record.

Of the 35 votes cast in the House last December against Ford's nomination, nine came from the committee's liberal Democrats, including Rodino. For months the White House has been complaining that these devout Democrats are as prejudiced against Nixon as a lynch mob that has already tossed its rope over a lamppost. Indeed, Massachusetts' Robert F. Drinan, 53, a Jesuit priest, last July became the first Congressman to introduce a resolution calling for Nixon's impeachment. (Father Drinan recently received a message saying: "If you can't impeach him, exorcise him.") California's Jerome R. Waldie, 49, has backed several impeachment resolutions, and Detroit's John Conyers Jr., one of three blacks among the Democrats, has advocated Nixon's impeachment. Brooks has said publicly that he wanted to "promote" Ford to "higher office."

THE REPUBLICANS. The Democrats are not the only ones accused of prejudice. Cracks Committee Democrat William L. Hungate: "There are a few Republicans who wouldn't vote to impeach Nixon if he were caught in a bank vault at midnight."

Republican Leader Hutchinson is an instinctive small-town conservative who has said, "Impeachment of a President is something the country can't afford." Hutchinson takes the narrow position that the President can be impeached only for an indictable crime; yet two weeks ago he publicly warned the White House against withholding information on the grounds of Executive privilege.

Because Hutchinson is a placid, publicity-shy man, the real leader of the Republicans may be Illinois' bright, peppery Robert McClory, 66, who has the same seniority as Hutchinson. Although a Nixon loyalist, McClory is expected to try to be open-minded. California's Charles E. Wiggins, 46, will be using his considerable legal talents to argue that Nixon should not be impeached because he "has not conducted himself substantially different from any other President." Last week the Republicans were strengthened when Ohio's experienced and conservative Delbert L. Latta, 53, was named to fill a vacancy and bring the party's total up to 17.

Like Love. Not all the Republicans on the committee are conservatives. Illinois' Tom Railsback, 42, supported the President just half of the time on legislation and is backed by labor in his constituency. "We are not to act as the President's defenders," says Railsback, "just as the Democrats are not to be his prosecutors." Maine's William S. Cohen, 33, says that he may have difficulty determining just what is an impeachable offense, but in the final analysis, it may be "like love-indefinable and unmistakable. I'll know it when I see it."

Although McClory admits that "it's going to be very hard to keep partisanship out of it," he adds, "I don't expect the final vote to be partisan." The guessing is that the committee, by a small majority, will recommend impeachment this spring. But, unless some Republicans go along with the Democrats, the committee will indeed be accused of partisanship, and the impeachment proceedings will begin on a discordant note.

The vote will be influenced by the recommendations defining impeachable offenses, to be submitted next week by Counsel John M. Doar, a Republican who has served in two Democratic Administrations. Doar, with a staff of 39 lawyers (27 picked by Rodino and 12 by Hutchinson) has promised to seek all the facts-those that exonerate as well as those that may implicate the President.

When Rodino considers the pitfalls that lie ahead, he ruefully recalls that as a youth he had really wanted to become a poet. He saw that he could never support himself or a family, so he became a lawyer, ran for Congress and became chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "If I had to do it over again," Rodino said with a wan smile, "maybe I'd have worked harder to be a poet."

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