Fair Game

...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN The Year of the Bore Friends of liberal—that is, Labor—inclination with whom I talked during a brief visit to England several weeks ago showed little interest in the American Presidential campaign Not that they aren't aware of the issues They are old enough and well informed enough to know the quality of Richard Nixon, they speak of him in the same distasteful terms as my liberal friends in this country And of course they prefer George McGovern, of whom they speak with the same wistfulness and resignation as many of his domestic supporters "A decent man but but Their attitude is thus not so differ ent from the prevailing mood at home Nor is it very different from the attitude of the British Left today toward its own nation's politics I encountered no admiration for the Tories and scant enthusiasm for Labor's current leadership There seems to be a realization—present, I am assured, on the Continent as well—that second-raters are in stalled everywhere and that life could nevertheless be worse The indifference abroad to our election is not difficult to understand The issues taking up the most newspaper space since the conventions have concerned scandals involving Republican hirelings and higher-ups The stench is strong, but hardly sufficient to trouble the nostrils of Europeans What is the Watergate to Londoners...

...After all, who in this country cares about the misdeeds that Gaullist officials were recently shown to have been committing all these years...

...What are gram profits to Parisians...

...Indeed, the finaglings of the President's men do not seem especially distressing even to our own citizenry As for Amen ca's social and economic problems?inflation, unemployment, crime, etc —why should such matters be expected to raise the blood pressure of foreigners, they have their own problems along those lines The Charms of Mediocrity But I think something more ba sic is afoot m Europe, as m America, a kind ot positive longing tor the mediocre People have known harder and more frightening times, they are uneasy about abrupt change and wary of innovation They are, for now at least, quite capable of resisting charisma in any form, for it has a way of bringing the unexpected and that, they suspect, is likely to be unwelcome It has become a commonplace to observe that the very existence of American power was a root cause of our being drawn into Vietnam, and that it has determined our behavior there ever since Our power continues to be exhibited in the relentless, scarcely comprehensible bombing by which the Nixon Administration is attempting to insure our departure "with honor," rather like a proud drunk who is deter mined to leave the saloon m a shambles before he is finally kicked out Barbaric Yet, like a wound that stops hurting after a while simply because the pam has dulled the nerves, it has been displaced in the public consciousness by new assaults of violence that seem more threatening to most Americans and Europeans The Arrogance of Impotence The airplane hijackings, letter bombs, shootings, random assassinations, and incidental casualties arouse far greater insecurity in the West than the ongoing ravagement of Vietnam One diverted passenger plane captures more attention than a fleet of bombers, one explosive device in an envelope triggers more concern than a ton of TNT dropped on Hanoi In addition, the antics of General Idi Amin in Uganda have served to remind us again that power can be exercised most cruelly even where it is most tenuously held Petty despots are often as murderous as moguls, revolutionaries as vicious as reactionaries From Bengal to Belfast, we have been receiving lessons m the arrogance of impotence One reaction to random violence is a demand for more elaborate security measures, such as frisking us harmless passengers at airports (No, there's nothing romantic in having a security guard pat one's thighs and armpits—at least not the guard who patted mine ) And every spate of killings on the streets brings a call for more police and sterner measures against criminals There may come a tune when these outcries will take the form of an invitation to a strong man Al though some overwrought persons seem to believe that he is already among us and his name is Spiro Agnew, at the moment the preference seems to be for merely safe men, not unduly strong ones, for conventional men possessed of no extravagant notions, Right or Left, with no touch of glamor From England to the Soviet Un ion, from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, in democracies as m dictatorships, leadership today is being exercised by persons distinguished mainly by their want of distinction Gray men None of them threatens sudden change, few so much as promise gradual and needed reforms The cries for instant action come now from the outlaws of the world, Irish Republicans, Palestinian exiles, Croatian nationalists—and terror accompanies them The age of giants has receded in the West It is as if all Europe were marking time, cautiously digesting a generation or two of overrapid change in so many areas The excitements of the 1960s, which stimulated all those juices, were exceedingly hard on the digestive system The Edward Heaths and Erich Honeckers are Europe's bicarbonate of soda Leonid Brezhnev, too, despite some Middle East power plays and East European heavy-handedness, is having an analgesic effect on the Continent Richard Nixon belongs with these men His faults are numerous—innate and apparently incurable dishonesty being the most troublesome of them—and I do not doubt that he is capable of great mischief But up to this point he has moved with care His Administration's genuinely innovative proposals have been put forward with no unsettling show of brilliance Even those who expected the worst of him must concede that he has not proved to be an adventurist, he is a safer man than we feared he would be, at least for people who do not happen to live in Vietnam So, what America's voters know is that the Nixon years have been relatively quiet The campuses are not in uproar, the events of 1968 were not repeated in 1972, the nation is not as torn as it was a few years ago A superficial accounting, to be sure, but people tend to vote on what they see and feel, not on what wiser persons tell them lies below the surface Voters' spirits do not quicken this year to exhortations to get the country moving again, movement is precisely what the nation, and much of the West, does not want The attraction of George Wallace, I believe, had less to do with his alleged populism than with his promises to put down troublemakers of a certain age and race There exists a powerful craving in America for peace—not peace in Vietnam but on our own streets In fact, the famous national turnabout on Indochina had less to do with compassion for the Vietnamese or revulsion with the dictatorship in the South than with perturbation over the commotion in this country College students seem to have been affected by the pacification process of the past few years as much as everyone else The Fear of Change Thus it comes about that George McGovern, the candidate of peace, is on his way to defeat partly be cause he, more than Nixon, seems a threat to the electorate Mild fellow though he visibly is, he rather than the President is identified with elements that challenge, m the name of Liberation or Equality or Social Justice, the ordered state ot things Nixon, even as he bombs Indochina, stands as the enemy of the unruly, the beneficiary of our desire for tranquility He was a bore during his oat-sewing days, today, wrapped up to his receding hairline in the toga of the Presidency, he is the preeminent bore of our age Exactly what the hour seems to require There are tides in the affairs of Presidents Just as there was a time for a Roosevelt and a time for an Eisenhower and a time for a Kennedy, this appears to be the time for a Nixon The President may cause palpitations among civil libertarians, intellectuals and spokes men for the disadvantaged, but he evidently has a most soothing effect on the sensibilities of ordinary folks Without doubt, in a few years the tide will turn This country, and other countries as well, will be ready for a new surge, forward, backward, sideways—some action to loose the national store of energy And then, if we are fortunate, we will find leaders suited to the time Perhaps George McGovern will be among them, yet politics being what it is, he had better not count on it For what he has tried to do this year, albeit haltingly, he has earned our gratitude...