Chairman of the Board

...The reselling of Richard Nixon is no cottage industry...

...On cursory inspection, the Nixon battle plan seems rather bloodless...

...The final Miami shooting script called on Richard Nixon to play the role of the confident, yet not cocky, chairman of the board familiar with his awesome responsibilities...

...The sole difference, it seems, is that where the McGovern campaign utilizes volunteers to write up the results of canvassing efforts on index cards, the Nixon campaign organization is doing its recording on magnetic tape...

...The incumbents will spend only about $8 million for this purpose in 1972, compared to $20 million in the "Nixon's the One" campaign of 1968...

...Thank you very much for your interest and attention, and please don't forget to leave your proxies with management November 7, correctly filled out...

...No fewer than 60 million American voters have been designated to receive a computer-printed letter from the President...

...This includes a windfall of five states, and 45 electoral votes, that went to George Wallace in 1968...

...While seemingly prudent, these arrangements also smacked of a certain smugness...

...On August 30, 1971, the California Supreme Court in Serrano v. Priest delivered itself of these inflammatory sentiments: "We are called upon to determine whether the California public school financing system, with its substantial dependence on local property taxes and resultant wide disparities in school revenue, violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment...

...Meantime, "The Old Man," as Richard Nixon is known to his staff, would heed their advice for the moment and, somewhat reluctantly, retain a low profile...

...The fellow specifically in charge of "getting McGovern," White House special counsel Chuck Colson, recently wrote a memo to the Nixon staff that said in part: "Just so you understand me, let me point out that the statement in last week's UPI story that I was once reported to have said that 'I would walk over my grandmother if necessary' is absolutely accurate...

...The morning after the breakfast meeting, Nixon would let it be known that he once more intended to run with Spiro Agnew, whose image was to be refurbished for the campaign to suit the pastel tastes of a larger constituency...

...It has been carefully programmed, however, to accomplish its immediate limited objective: dispatching McGovern back to the Senate and, if possible, improving the Republican Congressional position in the process...

...had been hospitalized on several occasions for a mental disorder...

...To hear the chairman tell it, Vietnam was a poorly conceived investment by a previous inept management, which your management has skillfully converted into a small nonrecurring loss...

...Consequently, the White House will spend a record $45 million to get the reelection job done...

...About 35 Nixon surrogates (including many of the people gathered in the state dining room that day to hear the President's remarks) would systematically attack virtually every aspect of the McGovern program, measuring out their caustic remarks in daily doses...

...It would draw a vivid contrast between McGovern and his supporters on the one hand, and middle-of-the-road Democrats and independents on the other...

...The Court's reapportionment decisions substituted suburban hegemony in state legislatures for traditional rural dominance...

...This would also serve to establish a properly lofty tone for the campaign...

...Nine days earlier, much to Nixon's delight, the Democrats had nominated George McGovern as their Presidential candidate...

...So the President felt the time had come to brief close associates on his current political course...

...We have determined that this funding scheme invidiously discriminates against the poor because it makes the quality of a child's education a function of the wealth of his parents and neighbors...

...In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court unanimously held segregation in the schools inconsistent with Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of equal protection to citizens of all colors...

...Moreover, the situation could be reassessed in mid-October following the World Series, when the average voter first takes a serious interest in the campaign...

...The President has surrounded himself for the most part with hard-working, cautious, practical, efficient men who jump when he says jump...

...Frankly, we have taken a close look at what McGovern has done and we're doing the same thing," a Nixon operative told me...

...Since, years ago, Nixon had consulted a New York doctor about his own problems in a quasi-psychiatric setting, he had no desire to press the matter unduly, lest it rebound against him...

...In a further effort to woo defectors, the Nixon campaign would be geared to the "issues" and not Democratic personalities or party loyalties...

...This, the President realized, was not without its risks: Look at what happened to Tom Dewey and his magisterial low-profile...

...The President has called the signals from the Oval Office, passing them on first through John Mitchell and then, after Martha complained, through Bob Haldeman and Clark MacGregor...

...As autumn approaches, he is shooting his cuffs less in the crowds and learning to enjoy it more...

...In the case of citizens who have been placed in what the White House has labeled the "heritage group," the letter is apt to be signed by a Nixon supporter with the same heritage as the recipient...

...Sooner or later, Nixon recognized, Eagleton's secret would come to light...

...It is easy enough to detect their contempt for their rivals, and easier still to gauge their abiding ambition to retain power in their own hands...

...As they see it, the TV potential for merchandising the President through commercial spots is pretty much saturated...

...And when the time came for him to issue an accounting to the (mostly) satisfied stockholders, he did so with the precision of a well-prepared annual report...

...To retain the Presidency, Nixon has to secure the balance of his strength from the 228 electoral votes distributed among the eight most populous states: California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey...

...political history...

...Accordingly, after the ham and poached eggs had been cleared away, he spelled out his plan for the team...

...The same 35 —joined on suitably august occasions by the President himself?would laud the Administration record and, for the benefit of such journals as the New York Times, occasionally drop hints of fresh initiatives in a second Nixon Administration...

...Recognizing as we must that the right to an education in our public schools is a fundamental interest which cannot be conditioned on wealth, we can discern no compelling state purpose necessitating the present method of financing...

...Kissinger could be sent around the world once or twice before the elections...

...A heavy slice of the funds is being spent for computerized telephone and direct-mail operations...

...Despite his insurmountable lead in the polls, the President is unwilling to let any potential donors off the hook by coasting to a victory...

...The courts may have done it again on the tangled topic of school financing...

...In 1968, Nixon split these states down the middle with Hubert Humphrey...

...criminal justice...

...This year, McGovern could win six of the eight and still finish out of the money, assuming the President held on to his base...

...In our legalistic society, the courts almost routinely compel the rest of us to confront issues and institutional practices we prefer to ignore...

...Day-to-day campaign tactics are being devised by a group Nixon is fond of referring to as "the political people," whose formal title is "The Committee for the Reelection of the President...

...This Nixon small-state base, the base that supported him in 1960 and again in 1968, saddles McGovern with a 200-vote handicap in a contest where the winning side needs 270 electoral votes...

...As direct-mail waxes, television advertising wanes...

...But as campaign managers they are an uncommonly dull, inbred lot and, to me, appear singularly lacking in strong convictions...

...Nor does the performance breathe fire when the main character takes the spotlight...

...That, however, does not add up to what the columnist Walter Lipp-mann once described as a "public philosophy...

...It is interesting to note, the chairman concluded, that the research department has definitely ascertained that George Mc-Govern, a dissident minor stockholder, seeks to bankrupt the company after first dishonoring its credit in world markets...

...Qualified parties may, by making proper application, secure a prospectus...

...It lists 350 full-time salaried employes and nearly 300 volunteers, making it the largest, most elaborate campaign organization in U.S...

...About half of this amount is being allocated to a Republican grassroots registration and get-out-the-vote drive...

...Although the $8 million comes close to the ceiling imposed by the new Federal election law, the Nixon managers doubt they would have spent much more for television ads without any ceiling at all...

...But Nixon wants to win big, and the way to do that, he believes, is to harass McGovern at every turn...

...We have concluded, therefore, that such a system cannot with...

...As far as outsiders can tell, Nixon is content with these arrangements...

...From its inception, the Committee has served as the political arm of the White House...

...From the start, the President stressed that an affirmative theme would be struck—a theme that, hopefully, would not drive Democrats away from the Nixon cause...

...W^shington^USA CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington There is a distinct corporate flavor to Richard Nixon's drive to crush George Mc-Govern in November and hold the White House, in the words of the current Republican chant, "four more years...

...Timing is crucial in the art of politics: Some days before the breakfast, Nixon was privately informed that McGovern's then running mate, Tom Eagleton...

...Great emphasis would be placed on the improved economic climate (1973-model cars could cost no more than 1972 models, at least until after the election), and on the President's efforts to lessen world tensions (Dr...

...Everything is falling into place—just as he said it would last July 21, that warm and sunny Friday in Washington when he asked members of his Cabinet, his faithful allies on Capitol Hill, and the biggies on the White House staff to breakfast in the state dining room...

...But, all in all, it was probably the best course...

...That smugness, I believe, is rooted in Nixon's premise that he is certain to win nearly all the Southern and Border states, the Rocky Mountain states and most of the farm belt...

...In its great days under Earl Warren the Supreme Court dragged into the open police brutality, tainted evidence and other defects of U.S...

...If Colson could do that to his grandmother, just imagine what the chairman of the board could do to McGovern...

...It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that the Nixon campaign team invariably imparts to its productions the metallic quality that was evident in the squads of youngsters shipped into Miami Beach last month to serve as a built-in cheering section for the Republican National Convention...