Our Public Servants Serve Us Right'

...Colors guaranteed to run...

...In September, he urged the Senate to delay and to reassess ratification of the nuclear nonpro-liferation treaty...

...Look, kid, nobody likes a wise guy...

...The candidate did not actually put a price tag on peace, yet one could safely estimate that by the time he subjugates the Soviet Union in nuclear warheads, outstrips the Russians in space, builds a nuclear Navy "second to none," restores "ready access of our top military professionals to the President of the United States"—closes, in other words, the "Security Gap"—either we will all be dead or it is going to add at least $50-100 billion to the U.S...

...This new spending, along with his proposals for an all-volunteer army and a Social Security system tied to the cost of living, was in no way to be confused with the government spending, deficits and rising taxes which Nixon promised to stop...

...But too often his speeches, with their endless refrain of Republican recessions and Democratic triumphs of yesteryear, were an exercise in memory...

...You cannot have order unless you have progress, because order without progress, if you just stifle the dissent, if you stifle the progress, you will have an explosion and you will have disorder...

...even though it might cost him the election, he was not about to risk upsetting the delicate negotiations in Paris...

...This, then, was the New Nixon...

...Demagoguery does not come as naturally to Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace lacks the subtlety that comes with a few go-arounds in Presidential politics...

...A vote for Hubert Humphrey is a vote to continue the lackadaisical attitude toward the crime crisis in America...

...He abandoned his defense of the Administration's Vietnam policy and replaced it with a kaleidoscope of catchwords which flashed in and out of sight and clarified nothing...

...Humphrey has given aid and comfort to rioters and looters...

...Absorbs endless punishment...

...Dick Nixon under-stood that concern—he's a guy with a wife and two daughters living only a couple of miles from Harlem, for gosh sakes—and he also understood what This Great Country of Ours is all about...

...Humphrey is the do-nothing candidate on law and order," said Mr...

...for five, with the Great Society...

...Somehow, though, this one seemed to stand alone in terms of evasion, deception, hypocrisy, irrelevance and unmitigated bullshit...

...The result of this balderdash...

...This week, freely, in curtained privacy, we select our President...

...In October, he said the "peculiar doctrine called military parity" was a dangerous one, and he pledged to restore "clear-cut" American military supremacy over the Soviet Union...

...Nixon...

...Perhaps he sensed the folly of his ways, for long before he ran for President he left us with a fitting epitaph for the '68 campaign: "Our public servants serve us right...

...Perhaps past Presidential campaigns have been just as bad—Jack Kennedy's promise to get the country moving again was sketchy at best, and Lyndon Johnson's promise of no wider war is a classic in its own time...

...The cornerstone of the Nixon approach was peace—peace in our time, yes...

...for 10, with Richard Daley...

...Not only should the contestants have been disqualified for putting on such a poor show, but the judges—the electorate—should be mortified for permitting it...

...Aside from promising to "end the war and win the peace" (win the peace...

...The peace and security of the American people," he said, "demand the defeat of Hubert Humphrey in November...

...In West Virginia, Humphrey told audiences that Republicans let people in Appalachia "starve and die...

...It can be conceded that we do the thing better than it is done in Haiti or South Vietnam...

...There were days early in his campaign when Humphrey was willing to discuss certain relevant issues?education, crime control, the arms race—thoughfully and in some depth...

...Despite his support of LBJ's every escalation (you don't criticize the Commander in Chief), Nixon was, frankly, in all candor, appalled by the mess in Vietnam...

...That's the American way...

...The last Presidential nominee to campaign on reason was Adlai Stevenson...

...Meanwhile, the great majority of us seems content with campaigns aimed at our fears, our prejudices, and our craving for seductively easy answers...

...The United States simply cannot survive as a free nation with four more years of the kind of crime wave that has swept across the country the last four years...

...He was also against smut, and he wasn't afraid to say so...

...But if Hubert Humphrey was learning his lessons, Richard Nixon had written the book...

...Whadyamean, change to whatV...

...for 15, with Hugh Hefner's philosophy...

...I have often said that you cannot have order unless you have justice...

...We have cheerfully suffered 100-millimeter cigarettes, silicon breasts, Hilton hotel service, 237 books about the Kennedys, educational tv, and Pentagon body counts...

...His press improved, the polls improved, and Arthur Schlesinger and Eugene McCarthy returned to the fold...

...Increasingly he reverted to slogans and name-calling...

...Run outside and play in the traffic . . . During the campaign, it sometimes seemed that the only relevant voices belonged to those occasional hecklers at Nixon rallys who—when Nixon was promising more weapons and a relaxation in international tensions, a get-tough policy in the streets and domestic harmony, a balanced budget and a rebirth of the cities—would shout peevishly, "How...

...peace at any price, no...

...No home or nation should be without one...

...That put Nixon at the head of this particular parade, but each candidate deserves a share of the credit...

...Nor was Nixon's campaign statesmanship limited to domestic affairs...

...Our Public Servants Serve Us Right' By Robert Sandoz Washington For all the talk about dark strains of intolerance in this country, there is a good argument to be made that the American public is a lavishly tolerant body...

...a maturer and mellower man," in Walter Lippmann's words, "who is no longer clawing his way to the top...

...Fair enough...

...So he changed tactics...

...Most of us," he observed in mid-October, "are going to spend our time in the future...

...More than anything else, Nixon's forgotten countrymen were concerned about the deterioration of law and order...

...He said that he expected American forces to start being removed from Vietnam in late 1968 or early 1969...

...But in 1968, we deserve no gold medal for our national election...

...So it all seemed a little murky, a little slick...

...Cheap...

...Item #6344 in the Sears catalogue under a President Humphrey: "American flag dormat...

...And most recently, for two-plus months, we put up with the Nixon-Humphrey-Wallace race...

...He proposed a Federal anti-obscenity act "to turn the tide of pornography aimed at teenagers," although he neglected to mention where he was going to turn it...

...military budget (a figure that does not take into account the Soviet response to this flurry of military activity, or our response to their response, or...

...Perhaps the day will come when the nation insists that its candidates say what they mean and mean what they say...

...He spent infinitely more time recounting what he once did about Medicare than what he planned to do about Vietnam...

...For 20 years, we have put up with Ed Sullivan...

...But it was time for a change, wasn't it...

...Well, not exactly discuss . . . "The American flag will not be a doormat for anybody at home or abroad," he said, which, as everyone could see, was precisely what Hubird had in mind for it...

...Humphrey, as always, talked too much and said too little...

...Apparently he considered the Pueblo negotiations in Korea less delicate, for he was willing to discuss that issue...

...But most of all, he was against Hubert Humphrey, well-known ally of confessed rapists the world over...

...Nixon's position on the arms race was by itself a monument to the tolerance of America's adult population...

...On the other hand, you cannot have progress without order because when you have disorder, revolution, what you do, you destroy all the progress that you have...

...No greater tolerance hath any nation...

...however, he was loath to discuss the issue...

...Attorney General Ramsey Clark and the Supreme Court ("When confessed rapists and murderers are turned loose, the Supreme Court has gone too far...

...In August, he called for an end to the "era of confrontation," to be replaced by an "era of negotiations" in U.S.-Soviet relations...

...So he put his career on the line and gave it to us straight: "To me law and order must be combined with justice...

...But Aristotle Onassis has received a better press than the Vice President was getting for his troubles, the polls looked like they had been compiled by the Republican National Committee, the intellectual community was so obsessed with Vietnam that it ignored or dismissed whatever Humphrey had to say on any other issue, and his crowds were small, bored, or often both...

...Being for law and order, it followed that Nixon was against crime...