Letter From A Whig
Will, George F.
"Letter From A Whig" President Nixon is the first professional Republican to be President since Hoover; he is the first really combative Republican Presfdent since...
...They conjured this gossamer "majority" into existence and paid dearly for their delusion in 1970 when a lot of real old-fashioned blocs - - like blacks and unions and farmers - - went to the polls disgruntled...
...In 1968 Nixon received 3,322,677 fewer votes than his own 1960 total...
...Clearly a large number of Americans feel very at ease when it comestovoting for Nixon...
...He wanted to develop new relations with the Peoples Republic of China...
...The facts alone would be enough to lend drama to his re-election bid...
...tie is a uniquely familiar figure, and familiarity does not always breed contempt...
...But it still suffered from a lingering dose of Camelotitis -- a hankering for a politics of "style" by attractive people who trade in conspicuous gracefulness...
...He wanted to put the economy on an even keel...
...To understand this one must consult a few" dry facts about Nixon's track record...
...Furthermore, contrary to conventional widom, fighting inflation can be good political fun...
...4 The A l t e r n a t i v e December, 1971 President Nixon is the first professional Republican to be President since Hoover...
...He wanted an arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union...
...democracies produce abundantly only when they promise modestly...
...Obviously Nixon can read anything uninspiring to his critics...
...But a lack of commitments is not liberating...
...I suspect that Nixon sounds ill-at-ease to some people because his public rhetoric is so unsatisfying to those people...
...We all remember the ridicule that attended one candidate's venture into "the politics of joy...
...he must use a grand theme to captivate a winning plurality...
...In 1972, when he is running the campaign will be about things that make people happy...
...But if the public reaction since 15 August is anythingto go by, it just might be that the President has found a way of simultaneously fighting inflation, befuddling his opposition, and winning some affection from the electorate...
...Being Nixon, he will run with an accusing version of Ike's "peace and prosperity" slogan...
...He knows how much Nixon wants an agreement from the SALT talks...
...But unsatisfying to whom...
...viously, Nixon canafford the best speechwriters money can buy, and money can buy speechwriters by the bushel...
...With regard to the fourth goal, it is now clear that no prior position is too precious, no principle too sacred to survive the President's determined assault on inflation...
...In his two runs for the Presidency Nixon has received 65,893,637 votes...
...Rhetoric has its risks...
...Does his de-escalation of the rhetoric constitute a kind of unilateral political disarmament that could snell political suicide...
...And there are a lot more voters than audible voices...
...Consider the probable contrast between the 1972 and the 1970 Republican campaigns...
...But Bagehot's description of Disraeli ("the eloquent spokesman of many inaudible voices") somehow also fits Nixon...
...but so does surprise...
...To those millions who have been voting for him for 20 years?If that istrue, then why is he so stubbornly uneloquent...
...For Nixon, the least graceful of Presidents, surprise is "style" carried on by other means...
...But Nixon's achievements may make at least cheerful politics more manageable...
...But this raises an interesting question with regard to Nixon the politician...
...With regard to the first goal, he is achieving it, bet by other means...
...He has won one term in the White House and it is not unlikely that honest vote counting in Texas and Cook County, Illinois, in 1960 would have given him another...
...elected while trying to break our national addiction to rhetorical extravagance...
...His goals were these, in order of importance to him: He wanted to end the war through ~e Paris peace talks...
...Nixon will run as the man who got Americans out of combat, and who kept us all alive, and who made Armageddon a little more remote...
...I think he's really going to fight inflation, and that will kill him politically...
...The principle basis of Nixon's campaign for re-election is a unique record of prolonged exposure to the American people...
...Eisenhower received more (69,526,706), but he never ran with a third party nipping at his constituency...
...The answer is "yes" because, not surprisingly, Nixon has an alternative weapon up his sleeve...
...l~ixon's longevity is of a special rand...
...Now happiness is not all that easy to manage in today's politics...
...If Chou En Lai is as shrewd as the average Republican county chairman, he knows how politically important Nixon considers the China visit...
...By semantic fiat, anything can be baptized the "desired result...
...If Brezhnev is as cunning as his success in Kremlin politics suggests, be knows how far Nixon has committed himself to running as a "peace President...
...He was not clearly obligated to discernible blocs such as blacks or unions or farmers...
...Nixon cannot win by casting a series of small nets around blocs who basically want to be courted and caught...
...That is why one has the feeling that the hoops through which Nixon is jumping, and through which he is putting the country, are becoming progressively smaller...
...Nixon has been a member of three winning national tickets...
...Wayne TELEVISION WTTV-Bloomington, Indianapolis WPTA-Rounoke RADIO...
...He was not beholden to clearly defined constituencies because it was not clear which, if any, such constituencies voted heavily for him...
...True, in 1968 Nixon received 2,150,754 fewer votes than Eisenhower received in 1952 from an electorate that was 20 per cent smaller...
...What Nixon lacks by way of rhetorical ability he more than makes up for -poIRically --in his capacity for planned surprise...
...Of course, these numbers reflect the Wallace bite out of the electorate...
...In short, can a man get re...
...Surprises are an element, but by no means the only element, in his political operations...
...It is hard to gauge the cumulative impact of all the campaigning and other exposure that generated these votes...
...With regard to the second goal, he thinks the only means at hand--the SALT t a l k s - - may yield the desired results...
...Being a Republican, he will have to emphasize that he did all this without messing up the economy...
...Lacking a base of manageable, bitesized blocs, Nixon cannot hope to win with the techniques used by those who work with the still healthy and substantial remnant of the "New Deal coalition...
...After witnessing ill-starred Republican campaigns in 1970, Pat Moynihan made an astute observation...
...The risk of Nixon's surprises is of hostages given to hostile Governments...
...That is what he will be doing when he seeks reelection as the "peace President...
...The Nation which elected Nixon in 1968 was tired of rhetoric...
...R is too many votes to explain away with the theory that Nixon's longevity is the result of his "availability" and his "trickiness...
...Had Wallace not been running, and had his nearly ten million votes been evenly divided by Nixon and Humphrey, Nixon's grand total would be over 70 million votes...
...Why, then, do the critics keep telling us that Nixon sounds so ill-at.ease _9 with the American people...
...Of course, he may just be willing to shape his notion of "desirable" in order to get results...
...There is reason to fear that, along about mid-winter, various "difficulties" will be discovered by Peking, and paid for by Washington...
...Given what appears to be a tidy unfolding of events, it seems that Nixon has been planning this for some time...
...In fact, past exposure is Nixon's substitute for a more traditional kind of political "base...
...That is, he may go for - - s a y - - an agreement confined to defensive missiles...
...Before the 1968 election Dwight Eisenhower told a Nixon aid, "I think Dick's going to be elected Preident, but I think he's going to be a one-term President...
...Rather, Nixon must cast a single gigantic net...
...And he wanted to abjure rhetoric and flamboyance in the hope that a bit of studied political drabness might help reestablish domestic tranquillity...
...Leave aside the fact that, going back to 1952, Nixon has received 135,420,343 votes for national office...
...it is, by another name, the absence of a base...
...He said, "the trouble with the Nixonadministrationand Republicans generally was that they talked not about the things that made people happy but the things that made them unhappy- war, crime, welfarecheating, discord...
...Thus it was with more desperation than delight that the President and his men latched on to the idea of the "Silent Majority," They had nothing more solid by way of a base, so they committed the politically unpardonable sin of allowing their wishes to be father to their thoughts...
...Nixon, unlike Disraeli, of whom he is so fond, is not eloquent by the standards of those who write about "eloquence...
...I strongly suspect that democracies have more to fear from hot air than from hot wars...
...The very least that can be said is that in 1972 there will be a lot of people all across the nation who have been voting for Nixon for a long time, some of them for two decades...
...The drama is augmented by the circumstances of Nixon's 1968 election...
...It has been said of Nixon that no President in modern times came to office with fewer commitments...
...Actually, there is no longer anything surprising about Nixon's penchant for surprise...
...R is now clear that Nixon came to office with five grand goals...
...If one must choose one or the other as a political tactic, it is understandable why, after Sorensonlan pufferies about New Frontiers and after Goodwinian flights about Great Societies, a President -- and especially this President -- now would choose surprise...
...he is the first really combative Republican Presfdent since Theodore Roosevelt...
...But neither Hoover nor Teddy Roosevelt ran when the GOP was a minority party...
...The risk attendant upon rhetoric is dangerously teased hopes...
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...In addition, Brezhnev, and the Soviet officers in charge of his Mediterranean fleet and his missiles along the Suez Canal, know how much a "peace' President" has to fear from a Middle Eastern war...
...he will run on "prosperity without war...
...The achievement of these goals in the first four years was supposed to win him a second four years...
...That is a tremendous number of votes won by a supposedly bad politician...
...Film in a pumpkin, the "Checkers speech," a riot in Caracas, a debate in a kitchen, the seletion of Agnew, the China trip, a sudden Sunday evening abandonment of a recently affirmed economic "game plan" - - there is (continued on page 23) The Alternative December, 1971 23 LE'I'rER FROM A WHIG (continued from page 4) a pattern of surprises in Nixon's career...
...But before becoming too alarmed about the risks of the President's course, consider one thing...
...Perhaps there are kinds of eloquence which Washington's political writers do not recognize, but which communicate with and occasionally move the basically non-political mass of American voters...
...Nixon's fifth goal - - to de-escalate the rhetoric - - may be his most important goal...
...It is more than likely that Nixon understands this...
...But there is more to be learned from numbers...
...With regard to the third goal, things are right on schedule: his China trip will consummate the "new era" of U.S.China relations, and the consummation will come smack dab in the middle of the spring primaries...
Vol. 5 • December 1971 • No. 3
