Flying Without a Pilot

...and a worldwide monetary crisis...

...In the past, he has either vetoed them or, when there was no chance of having the veto sustained, affixed his signature without celebrating the occasion in public...

...a depression in the automotive and housing industries...

...Yet there are times when the country needs a leader who isn't looking over his shoulder at the electronic vote board in the House of Representatives...

...The Forest Service invited bids on controlling the growth of mistletoe on 1,905 acres of the Zarembo and Kupreanof Islands of southeast Alaska...

...On May 14, for example, his most visible act of business was signing an alcoholism treatment bill into law...

...But where the programmed circuitry encounters new problems requiring high-level decisions, leadership is clearly lacking...

...It was also the day Nixon summoned conservative columnist John J. Kilpatrick to insist once more that he would not resign "under any circumstances...

...The problem was that his budget director, Roy Ash, and his new Treasury Secretary, William Simon, were warring over who would emerge as the Administration's big enchilada in economic policy...

...In point of fact, it is astonishing how little difference the impeachment proceedings have made outside the President's immediate entourage...

...Indeed, according to HEW Secretary Caspar Weinberger, he personally recommended the ceremony to the President as a means of conveying to the public "a better understanding of the way this Administration has contributed in the field of alcoholism...

...A House subcommittee said the government had spent $17 million on San Clemente and Key Biscayne...

...After 32 pages of small type, the Commerce Business Daily reached its final item: a Defense Department offer to sell an old submarine that is submerged in 35 feet of water off Imperial Beach, California...

...The Air Force informed contractors that it planned to build two corrugated-steel "storage igloos" at its Mather base in California...

...Confronted with an opposition Congress, Nixon frequently receives dozens of bills that are not exactly to his liking...

...the continuation of the sugar subsidy, over Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz' objections...

...The Army's Redstone Arsenal in Alabama sent out two notices, one to buy a high-energy laser component and the other to obtain chlorine for the Officer's Club wading pool...

...For those who never liked his beliefs in the first place, this is a welcome development...

...the sharpest quarterly decline in the gross national product in 16 years...

...Moreover, most of the government's actions on May 14 do not seem to reflect the philosophical imprint of any particular Chief Executive...

...In fact, I could not identify a single bureaucratic undertaking on that date-at least as recorded by the Commerce Business Daily, the Federal Register or even the UPI's Washington teletype-that might not have occurred under a McGovern Administration...

...Six months ago, Nixon announced plans to replace all Federal projects involving alcoholism treatment and prevention with formula grants to the states, so that the problem could be handled on a local level...

...The Bureau of Engraving and Printing went into the market for 316,922 pounds of special paper for printing tax stamps...

...The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) began developing a "conceptual model" for use in an investigation to determine why women have difficulty gaining admission to medical schools...

...The National Zoo in Washington prepared to erect a new lion and tiger house, at a cost of $2.5 million...

...the greatest rise in commodity prices in memory...

...Then, in a radio address that enunciated no new economic policy whatever, Nixon told his nationwide audience he had found "encouraging signs that the worst is behind us...

...Agencies generate their own momentum...

...Here is a microscopic slice of what the government was doing on May 14, taken from the Commerce Department's daily listing of procurement opportunities: • The Army put out specifications for new athletic fields, a commissary and a warehouse to be constructed at West Point...

...While this was not the most egregious case of "impeachment politics" yet to surface, it was nonetheless an abandonment of his own convictions in order to create some favorable news...

...One possible solution, floated for outside reaction that day, was to appoint John Dunlop, director of the expiring Cost of Living Council, as a sort of referee between the competing factions...

...What these all have in common is the President's post-Watergate incapacity to take the heat in the defense of his beliefs...

...The decision to puff the alcoholism program rather than veto it is akin to several other cases in which Nixon has been accused of "impeachment politics": the withdrawal of opposition to the chicken-farmer indemnity bill introduced by Senator James Eastland (D.-Miss...

...The House Judiciary Committee put on earphones for the first time and heard a Presidential dictabelt...

...While the cameras zoom in on the agony of the leader, agencies all over town are quietly burrowing toward their traditional objectives...

...The First Lady scoffed at a Washington Post story that she had stashed some Saudi emeralds in her bedroom safe...

...Richard M. Nixon April 29, 1974 Washington Let us test the President's proposition by examining what took place here on the third Tuesday in May...

...It was a fairly typical news day...

...From what can be learned, Nixon did spend a good deal of time May 14 working on the economy...

...Rejecting his approach, Congress rammed through an extension of the existing Federal program on alcoholism, with some formula grants tacked on for good measure...

...Yes," the President replied grimly (to use Kilpatrick's adverb), "and I intend to...

...Regardless of the merits of the alcoholism bill, Nixon was in effect giving up his view of how the government should be changed...

...about 99 per cent of what they do on any given day consists of following up on earlier decisions, which were themselves follow-ups on still earlier decisions...

...One day's listing is enough to show that the Federal clockwork is not about to stop ticking just because the President forgets to wind it...

...On the domestic side, Presidents make their mark not as caretakers of the existing machinery of government but as designers and promoters of new mechanisms...

...and the switches in position on land use and no-fault insurance...

...Kilpatrick asked him whether, in the event of an impeachment trial, he would be able to look after his own defense and still manage the affairs of the country...

...This time, on a bill he might have vetoed a year ago, he not only signed his name but made a point of gathering the Congressional sponsors around him in a formal ceremony that was open to photographers...

...When the bill reached the White House, some policy-minded officials urged a Presidential veto, pointing out that HEW witnesses had testified flatly against continuing the old system...

...16 jumps in the prime interest rate within a year...

...Considering the trend line of his prospects for survival, Nixon had every right to be grim...

...The Environmental Protection Agency set out to hire a firm of pollution investigators who will drive unmarked cars into automobile dealerships to catch mechanics suspected of illegally removing emission control devices...

...Thus we are left with the feeling that the Federal bureaucracy is being flown by a marvelously efficient automatic pilot, and the record indicates that this is true...

...In the next 10 days, however, Dun-lop's name inexplicably dropped cut of contention, and the President selected his one-time law professor, Kenneth Rush, to be the White House's new economic coordinator...

...What happens to our government when its elected chief is running one step ahead of the bloodhounds...

...But what about the rest of us...

...One of those times is when the economy goes crazy, as indicated by the following symptoms: double-digit inflation far outrunning wage increases...

...One attribute Nixon has lost of late is his determination to take the gears apart and make them do something different...