Sorry, it's Sam Ervin, not "Irwin." It isn't a senior moment, I have actually misspelled his last name for years, different spellings, but always wrong! It was North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin that so famously led the Watergate hearings that brought down Nixon. Sam liked to say, "I'm just a country lawyer." and he loved to quote the Bible. He was in reality one of the most astute legal minds of his era in the U.S. Congress, and very far from the folksy picture of a "Country Lawyer" that he may have used in an attempt to disarm his hapless adversaries.
Here is a quote from the opening lines of a 1973 Rolling Stone Article.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/sermon-on-the-hill-a-sam-ervin-sampler-70955/ These lines, written years ago, seem prophetic today.
[And note, his name is misspelled in the photo caption below. ]
Sermon on the Hill: A Sam Ervin Sampler
Watergate: A Summer Recess Reader continues with the wit and wisdom of Chairman Sam Ervin in the Watergate hearings
By Charles Perry
Watergate Hearing: May 18th, 1973. (left to right) Senator Howard Baker, Senator Sam Irvin, Majority Council Sam Dash, Senator Herman E Talmadge and Senator Daniel Inouye listening to the testimony of James McCord.
Gene Forte/Getty
Samuel James Ervin, Jr., the son of a North Carolina lawyer, reluctantly left the judicial bench in 1946 to run for a state office vacated by his brother’s death; then reluctantly entered national politics in 1954 and straightaway led the fight to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Cold War witch hunter. Courage had gone in short supply in the Senate at that time, but Sam Ervin seemed to have it to spare, as his military decorations from World War I—gallantry in action citations, Purple Heart and all—attested.
Today he faces the last of the Cold War warriors, Richard M. Nixon, with the same determined spirit. The contrast between the two men could not be clearer. It showed in every newspaper or magazine that ever ran photos of them side by side. The lines in their faces say plainly which man is accustomed to smiling. For the first time since the ill-managed McGovern campaign there is opposition to Nixon’s unprincipled lust for personal power, and an effective spokesman against the program of repression Nixon put into effect after he took over the White House.
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