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Arizona's Statesman:
Congressman John J. Rhodes
The Watergate Era
As "Point Man" for President Nixon in the U.S. House of Representatives, Minority Leader John Rhodes was expected to rally his party to support the Republican administration.
On Sunday, August 4, 1974, just days before Nixon would resign and when speculation about Rhodes’s decision on impeachment of the president was rampant, the following article was published in the Washington Star-News. It illustrates well the press and public interest in Rhodes’s position and the difficulties he encountered after becoming Minority Leader.
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Under increasing pressure from the press, the public, and his colleagues, Rhodes defended the President as long as was possible; in the end, however, he followed his conscience. In the following essay, John Rhodes recounts his experiences during that critical juncture in American history. His account is augmented by notes that his press secretary, Jay Smith, kept during the watershed year of 1974.
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In October, 1983, John Rhodes was asked to speak on the Nixon Presidency at the Second Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Symposium on American Politics at Boston College. His remarks are presented here in its entirety due to their exceptional perceptiveness and Rhodes’s remarkable insight into the office of the presidency.
