Custodian of the Great Society
KINGSBURY, ROGER
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. Custodian of the Great Society By Roger Kingsbury Washington During the first weeks of the Nixon Administration, Presidential aides privately suggested that they have about 15...
...Nixon must by now be aware that the days when these same groups will unleash their salvos in his direction are likely to approach more rapidly than his experts anticipated, leaving much less time for pondering over the vital issues than was originally hoped...
...In sharp contrast to his predecessor, for example, Nixon is a low silhouette President who does not publicly intrude upon the action centers of his Administration if it is politically disadvantageous to do so...
...The war, the economy, social unrest, and rising crime rates wait for no man—not even the President...
...Walter Hickel, for all his new-found conservationism, intends to fire the most effective Mine Safety Director the Department of Interior has ever had...
...But the suspicion lurks that these cool, rational planners have taken everything into account except the unexpected...
...characters...
...Undoubtedly, one of the principal reasons for the slow start is that these Republicans have had little Federal experience during the Democratic-dominated years...
...Meanwhile, many of the 300 major subcabinet posts in the Administration are still unfilled...
...Indeed, most of the strategic moves in Saigon and in Paris, both diplomatic and military, have been initiated with this 15-month deadline in mind...
...Events may well prove Nixon and Co...
...Among the multitudes waiting to be disappointed are many who are convinced that Nixon's remedy to curb inflation will be a 3-5 per cent increase in unemployment...
...If he could get away with it, he would be talking about "Johnson's B-52s...
...And while everyone may in time accept the President's candor, this should not be confused with ideological satisfaction...
...Even the cautious handling of the controversy surrounding the Sentinel antimissile system offers a narrow target...
...Republican efficiency, we are told, will separate the useful from the useless, but aside from weeding a bit in the poverty program, there is little the Nixon hands can do...
...Bud Wilkinson is putting in long hours examining applicants who want to preach at the White House services on Sunday...
...To his credit, Nixon has worked hard to restore a semblance of credibility to government, a problem inherited from LBJ, whose style and performance seemed to cast doubt upon practically everything he said or did...
...In essence, therefore, Nixon is the custodian of the Great Society, a role that surely does not thrill him, but that seems inescapable at the moment...
...Custodian of the Great Society By Roger Kingsbury Washington During the first weeks of the Nixon Administration, Presidential aides privately suggested that they have about 15 months to end the Vietnam fighting before they inherit, in full measure...
...Even Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Robert Finch, generally regarded as the most able member of the Cabinet, has clearly indicated his bewilderment at the complexities of the administrative nightmare he heads...
...But there are those who believe that it may also have revealed the actual limitations of the President himself...
...The president himself, a very cautious and exacting boss, likes to keep his options open...
...Just why Nixon is having so much trouble filling these jobs is not clear, except by the theory that Republicans usually have lucrative jobs they are reluctant to leave...
...William P. Rogers at State has made a very slow start, both in staffing his department and learning the intricacies of foreign policy...
...George Romney, at Housing and Urban Development, for instance, says privately that his experience as a governor offered surprisingly little preparation for being a Federal administrator...
...And the unexpected has shaped most of American foreign policy since the end of World War II...
...Vice President Spiro Agnew and Attorney General John Mitchell talk ominously of putative actions against campus rebels...
...Clearly, the President wants to avoid showdowns on the Hill, where many in the Democratic majority are itching to initiate an ideological conflict that would underscore the party's defense of the common man against the gop big business crowd...
...Simply put, neither Nixon nor his principal lieutenants have yet demonstrated a firm grasp of everything that must be mastered in the Capital...
...Nevertheless, he is learning the sad fact that as long as the war goes on, the President must be directly involved in key military decisions...
...becomes Dick's, the crusty Henry Cabot Lodge will be talking in Paris with a renewed sense of desperation...
...It's the same old quagmire with a new team of U.S...
...It is relatively easy to be cynical about Nixon and his team...
...You will never hear Dick Nixon speak of "my B-52s," "my Joint Chiefs," or "my boys hunkering in the field...
...Mostly the result of the 89th Congress, the new legislation is largely untried, and Nixon is reluctant to antagonize the Democratic majority in Congress by scuttling Johnson programs before they have had an opportunity to show what they can do...
...As Nixon asserts himself in his role of Commander-in-Chief, he may find his statesmanship yielding to the impulse to force Hanoi into concessions through escalation...
...Naturally, there are some minor differences...
...In fact, the only Nixon man who has bloomed during the first months of the Administration is old pro Henry Kissinger, the President's foreign policy adviser...
...Thus, we are in many ways constantly reminded that we really do have a Nixon Administration after all...
...Johnson produced enough social welfare legislation to keep the best administrators overworked for several years...
...Ugly quarrels with congressional Democrats over social welfare legislation will serve only to reinforce the widely held suspicion that Nixon is the reactionary ogre the liberals have claimed him to be...
...Some White House aides claim this first phase has been extremely valuable in revealing to Nixon the full extent of his limited options...
...Whatever the reason, this lack of first-line manpower has undoubtedly contributed to the Administration's sluggishness and wasted much of its so-called honeymoon period, during which actions may be undertaken in the initial warmth of postinaugural euphoria...
...Just a year ago Lyndon Johnson announced his decision to quit...
...Yet he still has a long way to go simply because he is Dick Nixon, and a sizable number of Americans have been weaned upon distrust of him...
...Those who have long judged Nixon an unreconstructed conservative and a peerless practitioner of political expediency will need considerable evidence to the contrary before changing their minds...
...After surveying the forces arrayed against him on the new and old Left, among antiwar groups and urban blacks, intellectuals and college students, LBJ decided that he had no realistic alternative...
...Very few Nixon appointees have learned the subtleties of Washington...
...Like Agnew, most of the Cabinet and subcabinet appointees have been struggling through a cram course in Government 101...
...Nixon's skillful handling of press conferences, coupled with his willingness to be more open about future plans, have to some extent remedied that sad situation...
...But the Administration is discovering, particularly where a domestic policy is concerned, that the options are distinctly limited...
...The reevaluation of the Johnson budget is little more than an intensive search to find politically vulnerable Johnson commitments that can be sheared off to pay for Nixon freight...
...But no matter how expert the balancing act, Nixon's Vietnam-limited budget and the cost of Johnson's new programs suggest widespread unhappiness with the Administration's commitment to helping urban America...
...Once reminded, however, it turns out there is not all that much to be critical about because the Administration is off to an extremely slow start...
...This estimate, carefully calculated during the pre-inaugural period, was incorporated into the game plan for Nixon's first year in office...
...This would be felt most acutely in the urban ghettos, since unskilled and semi-skilled labor are the first to feel the ax, and could give us a very warm summer, indeed...
...As matters now stand, Nixon's relations with the young, the antiwar groups, and the black community are tenuous at best...
...In Vietnam, especially, unforeseen events have a way of complicating the most carefully considered political estimates...
...This is inescapable and, to be sure, could wreck any neatly prepared timetables...
...The sustained ferocity of the latest Vietcong offensive indicates that the Communists have chosen to force the new President's hand militarily, perhaps anticipating that when Lyndon's war Roger Kingsbury regularly reports on the Washington political scene...
...The talk is that Nixon will try to balance an admittedly modest legislative package this session between "positive" and "tough" proposals—say, his black capitalism plan and an as yet incomplete anti-crime package...
...Johnson's war...
...In a breathlessly short period, Nixon could become a Johnson-type victim of confrontationism—unwilling to risk public appearances for fear of the demonstrations that might erupt...
...correct...
...And the Administration has seemingly backed down on its choice for Surgeon General after criticism from the American Medical Association...
Vol. 52 • March 1969 • No. 5
