Nixon Above the Storm Clouds

...The new President cannot be expected to propose much if any progressive legislation...

...Moynihan was a surprising White House appointee...

...But several, including black militant Nathan Wright, noted that he depends for his advice about dealing with Negroes on men like Daniel P. Moynihan, who is anathema to them since authoring a report on the disintegration of the Negro family...

...The Israelis know they are in for a rough period with the new Administration...

...The Middle East is also an area where the Soviets and the Americans can team up for a joint action—leaving open the possibility of numerous other cooperative actions and accords between the superpowers over the next few years...

...Presidents usually rise to the high demands of the office, and maybe Nixon will too...

...Nixon, lacking Johnson's color and vitality, will exaggerate less and deliver more carefully prepared speeches...

...And no matter what his feelings are about social welfare legislation, it is unlikely that a Democratic-controlled Congress will allow him to emasculate the largely untested Great Society programs...

...The Nixon people know their man enjoys neither great affection nor great expectations...

...If he is to succeed as 37th President, though, his personal Vietnam ordeal must end far short of Johnson's three years of frustrating grappling...

...Nixon's difficulty here, as he well knows, is that he received only 15 per cent of the Jewish vote •—a situation that distresses him, since many Jews are quite influential in Establishment circles...

...In his State of the Union address, Johnson was pointing to several of Nixon's expected changes when he proposed breaking up the poverty program into various Federal agencies and asking for post office reorganization along the lines of the Kappel Commission report...

...They claim to be unworried, anticipating that he will fool his critics by slowly building solid respect for his competent leadership...

...He is a deeply rooted conservative, a driving perfectionist, dispassionate and calculating on issues, terribly sensitive to criticism, fearful of making mistakes, and suspicious of intellectuals, liberals and journalists...

...In the meantime, all that can be said with assurance is that the man in the White House is Dick Nixon—one of the most familiar political warhorses in American politics...

...Compounding his problems in trying to avoid a deepening antagonism toward his Administration is the influential political voice of Edward Kennedy, who is expected to gradually become the Democratic spokesman in Washington, especially on matters pertaining to Congressional opposition...

...Although Nixon is probably the most conservative-oriented President since Herbert Hoover, he is aware that he won his White House seat in one of America's closest elections?that nearly as many voters cast their ballots for Hubert Humphrey, the most liberal Democratic candidate since Adlai Stevenson...

...When he does tamper seriously with Great Society programs, it will be only in areas where political realities will allow him to succeed...

...he is basically the Republican Establishment version of LBJ...

...What this really means is that the old, unresolved issues remain just as challenging as ever...

...The Russians are nothing short of desperate to settle the Arab-Israeli problem, and not only because they fear the possibilities of a direct confrontation with the Americans there...

...Those who attended the meeting said publicly and privately that he was impressive...

...If Nixon can reach a prompt and effective accord in Paris, he will get the big break he is looking for...

...He may be right in calculating that if he helps to bail out the USSR from a very touchy situation in the Middle East, he could well keep the peace in the post-Vietnam era...

...He is not a respectable George Wallace...

...The biggest difference between the two men is neither ideology nor operational style, but preference of interests...

...Vienam holds the greatest promise...

...But there are several sound reasons why Nixon and company remain enigmatic, not the least being that they have not really solved the question of what major actions to take...

...He would not oppose a program on ideological grounds if it were an unpopular thing to do...

...A safe guess is that the nation will give him about one year to conclude the Vietnam war before the familiar pounding crescendo of criticism sets in...

...It is relatively easy to judge which Johnson programs worked well and which did not...

...Otherwise, a guess at what Johnson would have done in a certain situation remains the best clue to Nixon's probable strategy...

...Johnson resented the time and attention he was forced to devote to foreign affairs...

...His maneuverability is very limited, for Johnson has left him with few real options to choose...

...Perhaps significantly, even though Nixon has told several intimates that he fully recognizes the enormous problems he faces in the Negro community, he has done very very little about placing Negroes who could advise him and provide insight in positions of proximity...

...Nixon shows every indication of being entirely opposite—he wants to be immersed in foreign affairs and may become increasingly impatient with the time he is forced to devote to domestic problems...

...They realize that a fourth round in the war would once again produce a battering defeat for their clients and make Soviet policy in the area untenable...

...Such talk flirts dangerously with the credibility gapFor there will be abundant deceptions flowing from the White House, just as there has been throughout our history...

...bold, imaginative actions are simply not his style...

...In many ways he summed up the tone and attitude of Richard Nixon's brave new Administration—or at least this town's expectations of it...

...This places Nixon in the unenviable position of feeding grist into his potential 1972 opponent's mill...

...Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Robert Finch hints at major changes, especially in restoring state and local initiatives in managing government programs...

...But while he seems to think efficient management of government and firmness in dealing with problems can earn him public confidence and, ultimately, affection, the lesson of recent years indicates that without a reservoir of goodwill and support to begin with (such as John Kennedy enjoyed), the controversial nature of the office guarantees a decline of public trust in Presidents as time goes on...

...There has been a good deal of grumbling in Washington in recent weeks concerning the new Administration's apparent lack of direction...

...there would be no deceptions or outright lies...

...Still, Republicans tend to equate politics with efficiency, and Nixon's tendency is to sit high above the storm clouds, blueprinting neat and orderly decisions that would undoubtedly work in a neat and orderly world...

...If we keep the peace, we keep the White House," is thought by many here to be Nixon's slogan...

...If these sources reveal a continual drift to the Right, Nixon may feel emboldened to pick fights with Kennedy and leave his rival isolated on the Left way before the 1972 conventions...

...And because he is Waspishly genteel, he has purposely surrounded himself in the White House with members of his own set...

...Thus, there appear to be the makings of a series of nasty confrontations between the Administration and the revolutionary elements in our society...

...Consequently, he has talked about major surgery for the Office of Economic Opportunity and a new look at the entire welfare system...

...Nixon simply cannot understand the man behind the clenched fist or the shouted curse, and his lifelong instinct has been to put down those who try to batter the status quo...

...and more information would be made available than ever before...

...Good relations with the Russians has long been the central goal of a successful U.S...

...The President's hopes for a swift popularity uplift rest almost entirely overseas...

...In Nixon's case, it hardly seems that he will try to do this on the domestic side...

...In addition, he has clearly set his sights on the Middle East as the breeding ground for a similar kind of personal triumph worth its weight in political prestige...

...Ironically, Nixon will find himself devoting as much time to Vietnam on a day-today basis as did LBJ...

...Ever since the election, Johnson aides were saying privately that the President-elect did not seem to have "the foggiest notion" of where to steer the ship of state...

...The new Chief Executive has long been one of the most cautious politicians on the American scene...

...There is bound to be angry Jewish reaction to such an approach, but Nixon may figure that if bad medicine is forced down some throats early enough in his Administration, he will be able to recoup his losses by 1972...

...during the first year of the Nixon Administration which will veer sharply from the Eisenhower-Kennedy-Johnson direction...

...He has little patience for passion and no sympathy for those who justify their desperation through angry actions...

...The President's hope of defusing the Middle East seems to be based entirely on the United States and the Soviet Union reaching agreement on the kind of settlement to be imposed...

...Notwithstanding the ideological differences between his own policies and those he has inherited from LBJ, it may also help to explain the belief that few changes will be made Roger Kingsbury regularly reports on the Washington political scene...

...his steely Attorney General, John Mitchell, wants wider use of wiretapping to help curb crime...

...But there is simply no way of telling in what direction serious negotiations will flow...

...foreign policy, and Nixon may be willing to chance temporary Jewish wrath to reach unprecedented heights of cooperation with the Russians...

...Reporters were told that no promises would be made that could not be delivered...

...Nixon is far more a pragmatist than an ideologist...

...Clearly, he will take a tougher attitude toward fighting crime or squashing ghetto uprisings than did the Democrats...

...During the transition, they assessed all of the Great Society programs and outlined recommendations for greater efficiency and effectiveness...

...we aren't coming to Washington determined to throw the Democractic rascals out or anything like that," a Nixon aide said several weeks ago...

...It is not unfair to say that he lacks rapport with the black community, with youthful militants, and with the other groups currently stirring the dust...

...Each new Chief Executive wants to quickly stamp his personality on the country...

...As a result, most major Administration decisions in the next few years will have to be weighed against speculation of what Kennedy may say about them...

...Some help in this area may come from the work of the Nixon task force groups...

...In retrospect, however, the choice contains the seeds of the President's attitude toward both blacks and liberals—they are to be dealt with and appeased, if possible, to keep their opposition to a minimum...

...But fundamentally, he is still the same Dick Nixon we have known for many years...

...If this thumbnail portait bares a striking resemblance to a certain retired Texan, it may well explain why Nixon's arrival in Washington has sparked little genuine exuberance and a great deal of indifference...

...Johnson's legislative proposals may have been rooted in the progressive liberal traditions of his party, yet most of his domestic and foreign policies were comfortably anchored to the right of center, a locus of activity that seems destined to become Nixon's stamping grounds in the years ahead...

...These are politically popular moves, and hence relatively safe: Democrats on the Hill will not protest too loudly when Gallup indicates an overwhelming number of Americans back the President...

...Aweek before his inauguration, Nixon met with six Negro leaders at New York's Hotel Pierre and told them he planned to do more for the blacks economically than anyone has done before...

...The pressures that first swirled around one President, and now another, are undiminished...

...it is far more difficult to discover workable remedies, or to decide whether to abandon certain projects altogether...

...Depending on the nation's mood, Kennedy could succeed in keeping Nixon's nose to the center mark on the political spectrum, or he could speed the process whereby Nixon's true conservative colors are clearly revealed...

...In any event, perhaps more than any President in memory, Richard Nixon needs a quick and decisive victory to bolster his stock to the point where he can govern effectively...

...By proposing Social Security increases and a large-scale low-cost housing program, he was clearly pressuring his successor to go along or face the political fire of Congressional Democrats...

...LBJ's pride of authorship in the Great Society has led him to deeply distrust Nixon's stewardship...

...Of course, Nixon is as much addicted to opinion polls and evidences of national trends as was his predecessor...

...Few if any politicians or journalists can say with conviction what it has decided to do in the first months...

...It is by no means clear that Israel, for one, would go along with such an imposition, yet Nixon apparently would risk the try if the terms were regarded by the majority of the American public as being equitable to all sides...

...Nixon seems to have little comprehension of the nuances necessary to foster real working relationships...

...Throughout the transition period, Nixon aides suggested that the first priority of the new government would be to re-establish public trust and confidence in the Presidency...

...He was in essence domestically oriented...

...In short, one can feel gloomy about Nixon without sniffing national disaster...

...If this fact is kept clearly in mind, we will not be too surprised or disappointed about what he does with his new job...