The Nixon Formula

...Nixon has taken a political approach to civil rights, too, asking What implementation of the ideal will bring the most votes-In practice, this has meant diluting the voting rights act to weaken enforcement without curtailing the absolute right to vote, and rejecting busing as a means to integrate schools without repudiating equality of education The delicate question of quotas has been handled with a deft ' now you see it, now you don't" One Federal official described the Administration's technique in discussing the "Philadelphia Plan," a scheme for setting quotas in the building trades originally pushed by the White House "[They] play both sides of the street They can get points from labor by opposing quotas and letting the plan die by inaction, and from civil rights proponents by loudly defending it " And all this, as well as most everything else, Nixon can do without ever mounting a soap box, he can do it through official acts and the statements of his subordinates, who enjoy enough latitude to talk and work at cross-purposes In contrast, the Democrats have been boxed into hangups and hangovers on civil rights Since every posture becomes a principle-integration or black power, Federal guidelines or community control, color blindness or quotas-each slogan assumes the proportions of a commandment even if it contradicts another current commandment Consequently, they have had to play their cards rigidly while their adversary has been free to keep his options open The Supreme Court...

...Determined to undo the work of his patron...

...In 1968, the Republicans used cnme-in the-streets as a bludgeon to beat the soft-headed Democrats Now, after four years under the Nixon Administration, street crime is running more rampant than ever The official figures show the rate of violent-as well as other-crime steadily on the rise And yet, once more, the GOP somehow comes through as the party of law and order The reason lies in the popular perception of what causes crime To millions of Americans who are trapped in urban combat zones, crime is black, young, and tolerated by bleeding-heart liberals In the mmds of these desperately anxious city dwellers, the Republican party is the handiest counterforce to the lawbreakers and their apologists After all, the GOP is obviously not pro-black, pro-youth, or pro-liberal Democratic rhetoric strengthens the widespread impression that when liberals speak against crime they don't really mean it They spend too much time explaining the causes of crime in speeches that seem to end up excusing the criminals Most people want to see the culprits caught and punished right here and now, they are not ready to put up with perpetual personal peril until some future date when crime has been extirpated by monumental social reform They expect the party in power to talk tough, and they get little such talk from liberal Democrats As the Democratic convention drifted into American living rooms, the dominant personae sharpened the image of a party that could hardly be trusted to deal with "those people" Indeed, those people-youth, racial minorities, and bearded sociology types-crowded the television screen If they were not "the enemy," at least they looked and sounded enough like "them" and were not to be entrusted with making "them" behave The Republicans, in contrast, have been able to look like the party for law and order even though street crime and its ally, drug abuse, have flourished disastrously under Nixon The Presidential Veto...

...Nixon has fulfilled the Democrats' expectations He vetoed the Hill-Burton bill for hospital construction, education appropriations for student loans, libraries, elementary and secondary schools, and aid to handicapped students, supplementary HUD funds for urban renewal, and small-town sewer and water projects, additional medical care for veterans, a proposed ceiling on TV political spending, a grant to medical schools and hospitals to train family doctors, an appropriation to restore job training for unemployed and underemployed, a bill to make the public service an employer of last resort, inclusion of firemen in the hazardous activity retirement plan, accelerated public works, and comprehensive child development and day care Theoretically Nixon has offended everybody unemployed, underemployed, small towns, environmentalists, policemen, firemen, sick people, veterans, medical schools, hospitals, handicapped, disabled, mothers, children, unions, minorities But actually, as the game is played the only people who act offended are those who know they have been offended In his veto messages, Nixon has been careful never to deny either the needs or the rights of the many interest groups whose legislation he has rejected, pleading instead higher grounds-i e , it costs too much Nixon's veto of the child development act serves to illustrate the approach To begin with, he obscured the intent of the program, attacking it as proposing a massive chain of day care centers that would tear children from their mothers' breasts and toss them into communal institutions for rearing at a very early age and at a cost of at least $20 billion a year In fact, the bill called for about $2 billion that would be used to improve existing Headstart, pay for some home services, encourage home care with friends or neighbors, beef up presently sadly neglected day care facilities, and open a few additional ones In the confusing debate, several million working mothers (43 per cent of all mothers with children under 17 do work) lost the line of argument and the benefits of the bill as well Throughout, Nixon maintained a lofty, majestic demeanor He did not run around the country haranguing the electorate, he did not denounce mothers or children or even the idea of day care, he identified with their needs and aspirations But, befitting the President of all the nation, he played the role of conscientious administrator-such as it pained-insisting upon "fiscal responsibility" and fending off sly moves to slip us into "communal" ways of living For the Democrats to hit back effectively would have required a concerted effort on the scale of a national campaign They would have had to go back to the people and tell them what was happening on the Hill As it was, few voters knew anything about the day care controversy or Nixon's other vetoes Ironically, he has been credited with the benefits of some bills that were passed over his veto Other bills dealt exclusively with appropriations-the life blood of meaningful legislation-and were therefore a nu-merological mystery to the man in the street In any case, so far as the great American electorate is concerned, there have been no real head-on confrontations between the President and Congress-though in Washington the collisions have been many and meaningful Because Nixon has outplayed his opposition so devastatingly, the great campaign of 1972 enters its last month as a noncampaign McGov ern, having failed before the Democratic convention and after to exploit the issues, can't get started And Nixon, having campaigned ever since he took residence in the White House, has no need to get started He's simply waiting to cash in his winning cards The Democrats' only hope is that the voters will decide the President-taking the people for granted-as overplayed his hand...

...Without much effort, the President has persuaded the nation that his Democratic predecessors mired us so deeply in Asia that the Republicans would have to be given some time to pull us out Beyond thus fixing the blame, Nixon evolved a "political" solution to Vietnam that squared with the feelings of the majority of the electorate Although the country was war-weary, he realized that most people did not consider the U S engagement "immoral" nor did they want to get out "at any cost" Bearing this in mmd, he moved to reduce the number of ground troops and the draft quotas (a real relief to families with sons) while stepping up the bombardment of North Vietnam (a balm to those whose sense of national pride was hurting) With Henry Kissinger's help, the President put together a spectacular peace show, involving the Soviet Union and Communist China in stellar roles Meanwhile, back in Pans he continued to hold out dramatically tor "terms," even if they be as minimal as the release of the rows prior to a settlement Above all, he rejected the notion that Hanoi deserved to wm the war because it was physically stronger or morally purer The Democrats were a perfect foil for Nixon's ploys...

...The doubling of the unemployment rate in the last four years is the result of a recession manufactured by the Nixon Administration A conscious act and not some turn in the business cycle, this by itself should have been enough to evict the Republicans from the White House By a skillful sleight of hand, however, the GOP has managed to minimize its electoral losses on this gut issue First, the "cooling of the economy" was presented as the answer to inflation As such, it was a bitter but necessary medicme that a sick-overstuffed-nation was expected to swallow without complaint Later, when catastrophic unemployment hit several heavy industrial areas, the distress was explained as part of our disengagement from Vietnam, the passmg price of peace When prices continued to rise at a rate exceedmg that of the Johnson years, the Administration suggested that unions were responsible for both the soarmg cost of living and joblessness, smce high wages pushed prices up and made labor too expensive to employ The remedy this time was a freeze followed by controls Thus, in three consecutive acts, Nrxon managed to turn aside wrath over unemployment in the name of checking inflation, promoting peace, and restraining the unions In each case the Democrats were thrown on the defensive, appearing as hypocrites promising an end to inflation without unemployment, peace without paying the price, and strong unions without acknowledging them to be the real cause of inflation The ever-growing number of unemployed became lost as a stray statistic in the ensuing debate Civil Rights...

...Countdown'72 THE NIXON FORMULA BY GUS TYLER In politics as in poker fate deals the cards, but what a player does with his hand often determines the outcome of the game As evidence, consider how Richard Nixon has played his cards the last four years In 1968, the Democrats charged that if their opponent was elected, the following would happen 1. The war in Southeast Asia would not end 2. Unemployment would rise and inflation continue 3. The march of civil rights would be halted or possibly pushed back 4. The Supreme Court would be conservatized 5. Crime would mcrease 6. All kinds of social legislation would be vetoed-education, health, child care, housing, hospitals, job training, antipollution projects, etc The Republicans, of course, denied all this and won by a narrow margin Today it is clear that the Democrats' dire predictions have come to pass and yet-according to the polls-Nixon is so far ahead of George McGovern that, barring last-month reverses, the President may be reelected by the greatest landslide since James Monroe's 1820 sweep of all but one electoral vote This turn of events is generally attributed to the Democrats'-particularly McGovem's-ineptitude Too little credit is given to Nixon's eptitude, or skill in making the most of his hand Let's look at his plays The War...

...In the primaries, McGovern's claim to be the first dove forced Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie to "me-too" him The South Dakotan's "right from the start" boast may have "turned on" the young activists who carried his nomination, but it "turned off" millions of citizens who resented the early peace birds as disloyal Americans who had let down Uncle Sam, failed to stand by "our boys" and encouraged the Communists to go on with the war The polls show the country 2 1 for getting out of Vietnam, but is also appears to be 2 1 for doing it Nixon's way The Economy...

...President Eisenhower, Nixon resolved to make the Warren Court a Warren Berger Court to convert the tribunal from a superlegislature proclaiming human rights to an old-tashioned bench conserving property rights Although his first two nominations-element Haynsworth and C Harrold Carswell-were turned down by the Senate as unsuitable, the embarrassment was no total political loss for the Administration The South and the business community were assured that a Nixon man was not about to leave his old loyalties behind just because he was appointed to the Supreme Court Moral outrage over the proposed appointments died down quickly Even the Administration's failure to dig up the full past of its nominees has been overshadowed by McGov-ern's poor homework on Thomas Eagleton, despite that fact that the Democratic candidate did not have the investigative services of the Justice Department doing research for him The dedicated civil libertarians who worry about every mim-shppage of human rights in the courts were generally not Nixon voters to begin with And the Republicans who were disturbed by the President's final appointees are few indeed So far as the great body of voters is concerned-and that's what counts on Election Day-the new Court doesn't look bad at all It exudes the stolid image of a judiciary that knows its place and intends to keep others in their place, that is committed to the traditional virtues of a simple yesteryear Crime...