Go Quietly ... or Else

Why stay? Spiro Agnew's woeful tale of how, rightly or wrongly, he was indeed driven from the vice-presidency would evoke more sympathy if he didn't see himself as everyone's unfavorite person. The press was against him from the outset, he says, because as Maryland governor he had opposed militant blacks. Nixon froze him out. ""Absolutely."" He had few friends on Capitol Hill (because, like Carter, he hadn't come up the Congressional route), almost no allies in the Cabinet (because of his extreme hawkishness on Vietnam), and lots of enemies in the White House. He also made the crucial mistake of okaying the nomination of a Maryland political antagonist, George Beall, as U.S. Attorney. So when a couple of his old buddies got into legal trouble and he wouldn't (couldn't, considering Watergate) help them out, they got immunity from prosecution by naming him as a bribe-taker--to the delight of the ""Gang of Four"" young radicals in Beall's office, of elite Easterner Elliot Richardson, then Attorney General, and of RN himself, glad for a distraction from his own mounting troubles. And when Agnew, who'd been turned down on the compromise by which he ultimately left office (the nolo conte