Watergate Ethics

The Watergate tape transcripts posed a dilemma for Billy Graham, who is both a stern moralist and a firm friend of Richard Nixon's. Last week, a month after the documents' release, Graham produced a statement: "I must confess this has been a profoundly disturbing and disappointing experience. One cannot but deplore the moral tone implied in these papers." Then Graham went on to offer a curious apologia for the President. He refused to judge Nixon's conduct as reflected in the transcripts and wondered aloud at the capacity of others to do so: "A nation confused for years by the teaching of situational ethics now finds itself dismayed by those in Government who apparently practiced it."

Situation ethics preaches against moral absolutes. When facing a choice for which more rigid codes offer an automatic answer (thou shalt not steal), a follower of situation ethics might decide upon reflection that breaking a literal rule would serve a higher moral purpose than observing it. Hence disclosing Government secrets, as in the Pentagon-papers case, might be justified by arguing that the act heightened opposition to an evil war.

The doctrine is fuzzy, subject to disparate interpretations and all too easily perverted. But Graham is groping wildly in connecting situation ethics and the Watergate coverup. Says Theologian Joseph Fletcher, author of Situation Ethics: the New Morality: "It is a misinterpretation. Those involved in Watergate weren't conducting themselves according to situation ethics. They didn't weigh the moral options. Their one guiding principle was to win at any price. Graham knows or ought to know better."

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