Fri Feb 10 2012
William Saxbe, who died last week at 94, was a plain-spoken, down-to-earth Ohio politician who found himself in a job he never dreamed of at the height of the Watergate scandal. But he proved to be perfect for the job.
Richard Nixon tapped Saxbe, a former Ohio attorney general who was a freshman senator, to head the Justice Department in late 1973; he was the third man to hold the post in less than a year. The embattled president might well have had second thoughts about his choice, who brought a welcome sense of integrity and independence to the job.
Saxbe had a reputation for bluntness. When Nixon bombed North Vietnam in late 1972, he mused that the president "appears to have taken leave of his senses." Of Nixon's supposed ignorance of Watergate sheananigans, he said the president was like "the guy who played the piano in a bordello saying he didn't know what was going on upstairs."
Bill Saxbe brought classic Midwestern common sense and decency to the Department of Justice at a time when it was direly needed. He was a politician without pretense, a man who did his job as he saw fit and never compromised his principles. It's too bad there aren't more like him today.
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