FROM WATERGATE TO WHERE?:
Steinfels, Peter
PRESIDENT Nixon came into office of the federal government. The Ad- with three general ambitions. The ...
...ington...
...Clair, continues in point, of course, is that its grip on black and radical activities is fully his strategy of attrition, then the first American politics has been somehow investigated...
...Especially when, making are absolutely right...
...But he did isolate blacks on equality, America's international role the conservative, McCarthyite Repub- the bussing issue and paralyzed the -let alone on the issues of the '70s licans from whose ranks Richard anti-war radicals with legal harass- -inflation, energy, ecology, d6tente, Nixon emerged and which schooled ment...
...that means that not many currently power...
...political resolution of Watergate will illegitimate, its innovations bordering As for Nixon's third ambition, the come with the November elections...
...was for years in ised "to get this country moving Vietnam...
...relations...
...but it is publican-led establishment of moder- nomination...
...years ago, he would have added fel- when the recenty revealed F.B.I...
...ethics of the business world from the Administration was willing to ma- We are now either at a splendid mowhence so many Nixon men issued, nipulate illegal snooping, forging, pass- ment of new beginnings--or the longand (b) the privileges and powers of ing of funds, and exercise of executive est period of lame duckedness the a "security" apparatus grown thick power in order to assure its command country has ever had to survive...
...with fire...
...29 March 1974: 78...
...tion, Nixon scored about a B-minus...
...ideology coincided nicely with (a) the tivities now exposed occurred because The Nixon Presidency has ended...
...nam, he won't withdraw...
...The main ect on infiltration and disruption of sisted by Mr...
...districts are so "soft" as to be "tricked" the country into World an are understandably incensed about had for the asking...
...The FROM ministration's opponents are deterfirst was to make his mark in foreign WATERGATE mined that it not get away with this...
...The Democratic party, once so break the hold of the New Deal es- our bridges to Europe and Japan...
...The second was to stabilize TO WHERE...
...The battle is po- Nonetheless, the Democrats' opporthe temptation all the more irresistible, litical...
...America, essentially by reversing the Politically the President is already deverdict of 1960: Kennedy had prom- PETER STEINFELS feated, as the U.S...
...He just managed to keep his and the demand for political participamany of the men he brought to Wash- head above the rising tide of peace tion by "forgotten Americans...
...Patrick Buchanan has recently sentiment by a politically adroit, if Nor is Congress as a whole ready described it as a sinister combination morally bankrupt, "management" of and able to fill the vacuum...
...The whole constellation of ac- tunity is at hand...
...stands for, a party which has yet to The New Deal establishment has al- He could not rally his own troops to articulate a consensus on the remainways played a crucial role in the myth- launch Moynihan's new era of income ing issues of the '60s-poverty, racial ology of Republicans, particularly of supports...
...In badly, if needlessly, divided, is slowly tablishment which had dominated na- any case, the President's foreign tri- but surely being reassembled, as David tional politics for over three decades umphs may have assured him of re- S. Broder reports in an excellent acand to replace it with an enduring Re- election long before the McGovern count in the March Atlantic...
...in Vietagain," and in that shiny promise, on the compost of the Cold War...
...As for his second ambi- still a party uncertain about what it ates and conservatives...
...built bridges to Russia and China Vietnam and the racial conflict of the would pursue his third ambition: to but as the time when we dismantled '60s...
...We are of academics, labor, foundations, big- the war issue...
...They see the "flap over Water- number of the Administration's voting ture, of this larger outlook...
...The chances for a democratic sweep ous...
...Twenty litical militancy we will discover only essarily imply a strong Congress...
...proj- Supposing that the President, aslow-travelers, pinkos, etc...
...In a sense, they crats...
...What other means were about to have it demonstrated that a city machines, national news media employed to undermine and divert po- weak Executive branch does not necand Eastern Seaboard wealih...
...Nixon is in Nixon believed, was the germ which By 1972 Nixon had succeeded in decline, but nothing is rising to take had produced eight years of turmoil...
...on the unconstitutional if not traitor- 1972 landslide put it within reach...
...but like the U.S...
...A certain witty Irish-American limitations...
...The result, at present, is a vacuum...
...they will be safer than ever...
...What will they do...
...Nixon brought uine representatives of a sort of pays ambassador is rumored to have re- in few Congressmen on his coattails reel, how else explain the Democrats' marked that Nixon has done for con- and the Democrats already hold a success except by their partisan ex- servatism what Stalin did for Com- considerable margin in the House: ploitation of the federal levers of munism...
...Against gate" as the New Deal establishment's allies in the House are already Demosuch an enemy, why not fight fire effort to protect itself...
...Second, a fair War II was crystallization, in minia- this...
...The New Deal establishIn effect, Nixon wanted to slow this record this not as the era when the ment was itself shattered by the war in country down again...
...First, Mr...
...The Adwith three general ambitions...
...In doing so, he U.S...
...his first ambition-though history may his place...
...Since these Republicans have al- And now Watergate has put it out of are good, though there are two obvious ways considered themselves the gen- reach...
...The tale of how Roosevelt Republican ideologists like Buchan- G.O.P...
Vol. 100 • March 1974 • No. 4
