Nixon in the Land of Cotton

...they receive the necessary political backing and money from him and from his campaign committee But Nixon's courage has failed him m the moment of his triumph For the President fears what might happen should he throw his full support behind the GOP candidates in the South and elsewhere in the nation—as he did in 1970?only to discover that his efforts have again fallen short of attaining a Senate majority for the Republicans In that event it is possible, in fact likely, that such hoary Senate committee chairmen as Herman Talmadge of Georgia, John McClellan of Ar kansas, and James Eastland and John Stennis of Mississippi would find some way of retaliating against the White House for having, after all, tried to deprive them of their powerful positions Moreover, during the course of the first Nixon Administration these Senators frequently kept Nixon's chestnuts from getting too badly burned Some Presidential causes, notably the efforts to place Clement Haynsworth and Harrold Carswell on the Supreme Court, proved hopeless Nevertheless, the loyal support of many Southern Democrats usually held the anti-Nixon liberals at bay Now Nixon feels compelled to return those favors The problem is that from the standpoint of his junior Republican brethren, the Nixon operations in the South are not merely passive and benign All too often, they carry the wallop of an underwater political torpedo For example, in Alabama Winton (Red) Blount, the former Nixon Postmaster General (and still, to Wallace, "the darling of the country club set"), is pitted in a tight contest with veteran Senator John Sparkman At the same time, according to the polls, McGovern can count on 15-25 per cent of the pop ular vote in Alabama which, as a result of local Democratic political wars, will necessarily be subdivided between two sets of Presidential electors The Nixon forces are conducting a well-financed and therefore effective canvassing drive throughout the state In the process, the Nixon canvassers have been able to identify a considerable bloc of voters who intend to back Nixon and Sparkman It is clear that the crunch will come for Blount on Election Day when the Nixomtes draw their full canvassed vote to the polls, as they intend to do, whether or not these voters prefer Blount or Sparkman Similar situations will occur else where in the South In a bid to save himself, Blount has had all his billboards taken down and replaced with others that read "A Vote for Blount Is a Vote Against the McGovern-Sparkman Team ' It remains to be seen how many Alabamians accept this dubious proposition—made more dubious by Sparkman's strenuous efforts to emphasize his compatability with the White House on many issues Whether or not Alabamians buy the line, Nixon does not As he sees it, a Blount victory would bring a very junior Republican to the Senate and William Proxmire of Wisconsin would take Sparkman's place as chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Com mittee Unlike Sparkman, Proxmire jogs to work each morning, pausing on the way for a swim, all the while keeping his mental faculties trained on potential ways of encumbering Richard Nixon But suppose a sufficient number of Republicans win Senate seats so that John Tower of Texas instead of Proxmire, becomes chairman'' That is not part of the new Nixon Southern strategy because some GOP chairmen, like Charles Percy of Illinois, could prove more troublesome than their Democratic counter-Darts And besides, if the Republicans captured the Senate there would be no one to blame when things went wrong—as, m Washington, they are often apt to do...

...Washington-USA NIXON IN THE LAND OF COTTON BY ANDREW J GLASS Washington George Wallace doesn't believe in professional polling techniques When the Alabama Governor wants to measure the public pulse, he has himself wheeled into a no-frills Montgomery barbershop where even the shoeshine boy tells him what is on his mind Of course, Southern states differ from one another and Southern minds do not all think alike Yet there is something to be said for the Wallace method in trying to fathom political realities in the South During a recent reporting trip through the region, I used a similar system Between interviews with "informed sources," I would occasionally slip into a pair of work pants and an old shirt, stop at a roadside tavern, and sip a few beers at the bar The ensuing discussions of Presidential politics sometimes turned out as flat and cold as the beer Nixon has it What's the point of fussing'' Now, Saturday night, there's going to be a hell of a football game at I thought one such impromptu exchange had ended when the man sitting next to me, a white construction worker m his late 20s who weighed at least 250 pounds, walked away from the bar But, as it happened, he soon reclaimed his stool, having m the meantime summoned My Mama's Hungry Eyes from the juke box "Bet you don't know who's going to be President in 1976," he said "Spiro Agnew," I ventured, assuming that my companion viewed the Vice President as Richard Nixon's legitimate spiritual heir " Agnew...

...Agnew'' Psheew' I'm telling you who it's going to be It's going to be that fellow, urn, George Kennedy From our subsequent conversation it was apparent that his Freudian slip had been a connection of George Wallace with Teddy Kennedy, and that McGovern's first name could have been Sigmund for all he cared His attraction to the Kennedy legend was as real that night as the droll chorus of Merle Haggard's tune playing on the juke box Mama never had the luxuries she wanted,/ But it wasn't cause daddy didn't try Wallace's recognition of this phenomenon is one reason why, despite his poor physical condition, he recently asked Kennedy to dine with him and his family at the Governor's Mansion Since I was traveling with the senator from Massachusetts at the time, I attended the dinner After it was over, I told Kennedy about my encounter with the burly construction worker, he was also surprised that the worker had favored him over Vice President Agnew Meanwhile, back m 1972, Richard Nixon is reweaving his own Southern strategy It has less to do with the image of a President above campaign politics that he has spun for the mass media—and, let us not forget, the American people?than with a coldly realistic assessment of his future relations with Congress The more significant aspect of Nixon's October 12 swing through Atlanta, however, was not visible to the television cameras They were limited to providing the picture the President wanted of his motorcade passing through cheering throngs as the bands played and, high on the rooftops, giant paper shredding machines tossed tons of manufactured confetti into the air Presumably, Nixon was pleased by the results of his one-day Southern swing The network correspondents, though, were frustrated because they could not report the political realities on the tube without being accused of injecting bias into their accounts (Indeed, it appears that for the rest of the campaign television news will remain tied, Atlanta-style, to whatever the camera sees Besides being incomplete, this kind of coverage can prove somewhat mindless For instance, when ever McGovern returns to Washington for a short respite from the hustings, network crews establish an around-the-clock vigil at his home?perhaps m the hope that he will come out and howl at the moon about what Nixon is doing to him ) In any event, even if you couldn't know it from the videotapes the most vital fact about the President's visit was who was not there—like Fletcher Thompson, the conservative Georgia congressman and now Republican Senate candidate Nixon is running miles ahead in Georgia, where Thompson is in a close race with a political unknown and could certainly use a helpful push forward from the leader of his party, the captain of the team But Nixon is going to remain aloof, not only from Thompson but also from the other GOP candidates in the South, all of whom are eager to utilize the prospect of a Nixon sweep to build the foundations of a permanent two-party system in the Deep South I asked Ronald Ziegler, the White House news secretary, why neither Thompson nor any of the other regional candidates had been invited to bask in the reflected glory of the Nixon presence while the President was in Atlanta (for his sole projected campaign appearance in the South) That wasn't the purpose of the trip, Ziegler replied One could just as easily imagine an Imperial Palace spokesman informing the Roman press that it wasn't Emperor Nero's purpose to summon the fire brigade Nixon knows, of course, that the more he identifies himself with the Republican party in the South, the more he jeopardizes his Presidential standing Yet there is more to all this than pure Nixonian greed for every vote he can get or, as the President prefers to put it in briefing his associates, "the necessity for a personal mandate " Nixon assumes that he will be President for the next four years, and he is concerned about his relations with the Senate during his anticipated second Administration The GOP needs to make a net gain of five seats on November 7 to wrest majority control of the Senate As it happens, there are exactly five GOP candidates running m the South this year They stand a fair chance of being elected on their leader's coattails provided, that is...