A: Well, I think that any of them that are would not express any public concern about it. It's a difficult thing to speculate about publicly. We don't know. Those are things that are the domain of the doctors rather than politicians.

Q: How's your mail running on impeachment? Are people sort of lamenting that they didn't listen to you?

A: We get a certain amount of that. We get a rather significant amount of mail expressing that sentiment, and also lots of people who stop members of the staff and stop me or others who worked in the campaign and express regrets for how they voted.

Q: Do you think the Watergate issue alone would have been enough to make you president if all this had come out a year ago?

A: Well, of course a lot of it did come out. I think people were reluctant to accept it. I think if what is now known had been brought out prior to the election that there's no question it would have influenced the voters' decision. They really didn't believe that the president was involved personally in this kind of shabby behavior.

Q: A lot of people say that Watergate has vindicated you. Do you agree with that? Is Watergate enough?

A: Well, it verifies the judgment that I advanced a year ago that this was a corrupt administration, but there is other supporting evidence for that: the ITT fix, the milk sell-out, the wheat deal, the misuse of campaign funds, the violation of campaign contribution laws, the secret and unauthorized bombing and the denial of it--public denial of it. Those things all add to the corruption charge that go beyond what is sometimes called the Watergate sequence.

Q: What about the more basic economic reforms that you were calling for? Do you think that Watergate is sort of taking attention away from issues such as that?

A: I do, and of course one of the regrettable prices we have to pay for misconduct on the part of the administration is that it dissipates both their energies and also the energies of the Congress. That is, it diverts those energies from the serious economic problems that face it. I think the president is getting very bad advice on economic policy. They've relied too heavily on high interest rates instead of on tax reform and fiscal policy to control inflation. They've continued a very high level of military expenditures which is above where it was a year ago, and which also continues to feed the inflationary fires. They do that in the face of improvement in our relations with China and the Soviet Union and in the face of the so-called peace settlement in Indochina. So I think there has been a diversion from sound economic policy and close attention to our economic problems that has been very painful to the country.

Q: So in a strange way you agree with Nixon that people are wallowing in Watergate?

A: No, I don't agree with him at all. He's the one who created the wallow and who keeps us in it. He leaves the impression that somehow Congress created this wallow. We didn't create it--we're trying to get the nation out of it. One way to do that is to get Mr. Nixon out of office.

Q: Well, a year ago, when you were saying that Nixon's administration was the most corrupt in American history, you were called irresponsible. Now everyone is saying it, and your voice is not as loud as it once was in that regard. In fact, it's getting a little bit boring hearing everybody say it.

A: That's why I don't say it. It's not necessary any more.

Q: Is there anything else you have to say that's irresponsible that a year from now we can come back and look at?

A: [laughter] Well, I would say this: that I'm more certain than ever that we must reduce military outlays if we plan to release resources that we need for other important things. We're faced, for example, with a crisis in the financing of education in this country that extends all the way from kindergarten through the Ph.D. The whole question of adequate student aid to permit qualified students to go on to college is a very serious matter in this country. And the problems of the environment which stay with us--the fuel shortage, the shortages in other things that are necessary for the economy--those things are brought about in part because for the last 30 years we've plowed so much of our resources into military expenditures. And we can't go on that way, simply because we're going to exhaust both our resources and our economy if we continue to make investments at the level we're now doing on the military front.