Mr. Nixon in Power
Chapman, William
Ax. Nixon in Power Nixon in the White House: The rustration of Power, by Rowland vans, Jr. and Robert D. Novak. Ran- om House. 431 pp. $8.95. Reviewed by William Chapman If it accomplishes...
...In a neg- ative sense, this may result from fol- lowing the first rule of good journal- ism: If there's nothing there, don't in- vent it...
...Nixon never chose between these hopelessly conflicting approaches...
...If he was certain of anything it was that nobody gets paid for nothing...
...I don't know what the President believes in," Romney is quoted as saying...
...The quotation is from The- odore H. White's book, The Making of the President, 1968...
...Why is one antitrust policy enunciated within the Justice Depart- ment while another is urged by the Commerce Department and the White House...
...Reviewed by William Chapman If it accomplishes nothing else, Evans and Novak's analysis of President ixon's reign to date recalls to our tention a fascinating and illuminat- g comment which Mr...
...In 1968, he said em- phatically that whatever welfare re- forms he proposed, they would not in- clude direct cash payments as income maintenance for the poor...
...Attorney General John N. Mitchell was permitted to propose a scheme which would have gutted the Voting Rights Act, the most successful civil rights bill of the decade...
...Nixon's remark explains so much about his Presidency that per- haps it should be chiseled above the door of the West Wing of the White House...
...But that is no surprise...
...Why is the sacred economic game plan abandoned over- night in favor of the New Economic Policy...
...The illumination of chronic inatten- tion to domestic affairs is the most valuable contribution of this admirable and frequently fascinating book...
...The 1967 comment is illuminating because it explains the seemingly in- explicable zigs and zags, the sudden 180-degree changes in policy, that have characterized the Nixon approach to domestic affairs...
...So President Nixon remains the same one-dimen- sional figure that other analysts have found and described before...
...At least, no one could say the President wasn't paying attention on that policy...
...Nixon came to office determined to shake the shirkers off the welfare rolls...
...All you need is a competent Cabinet to run the country at home...
...One of the most un- equivocal actions Mr...
...Maybe he doesn't believe in anything...
...You need a President for foreign pol- icy...
...I'm not going to have a guar- anteed annual income...
...Nix- on decided otherwise, spelling out clearly that Congress was not high on his list of priorities as his new admin- istration began...
...There is, for example, the case of welfare reform...
...In this instance, policy- making was too important to be left to the policy-makers...
...But when the poverty bill was in danger of being gutted in the House, the President stayed on the sidelines, besieged by op- posing arguments within the White House staff, keeping himself out of the battle...
...Once in office, he set a schedule of troop withdrawals which he has followed and scaled down the land warfare with a measured con- sistency lacking in the conduct, or non- conduct, of domestic affairs...
...One suspects they subscribe to the view of President Nixon ex- pressed in an astonishing quotation at- tributed to George Romney who, as Secretary of Housing and Urban De- velopment, found his efforts to help the cities and integrate the suburbs opposed at the White House...
...The President's Congressional liaison staff adopts the altogether sensible strategy of trying to be friends with a Dem- ocratic Congress, hoping to salvage what it can from the difficult im- passes...
...Once it was suitably draped out in Republi- can rhetoric, it was happily cham- pioned by the President...
...Why do diametrically opposed statements on school busing appear al- most simultaneously in a Justice De- partment brief and from the White House...
...Nixon came to the White House with no definite plan to end the war in Vietnam, they report, his campaign claims notwithstanding...
...Nixon uttered lore than a year before assuming of- :e: "I've always thought this country >uld run itself domestically without a President...
...There was one exception to Mr...
...It is somehow surprising that two such diligent reporters, men who have known and watched Mr...
...If Evans and Novak's analysis is correct, the plan's genesis was a Moynihan pro- posal which simply slipped by early ex- amination in the White House...
...He is, the authors report, a rather shy and intro- spective man, rarely at ease with any- one outside a small circle of intimates...
...Probably not...
...Nothing, he insisted, was to be said or done by his Administration which would irritate his Southern con- stituency...
...Machi- avellian deviousness...
...When the anti-ballistic missile was in danger, he "applied ev- ery last ounce of pressure available to the executive branch...
...Overseas is where the action is...
...Just before his Administration got underway, Mel- vin Laird, soon to become Secretary of Defense, and Bryce Harlow, later to be the top liaison man on the Hill,pleaded with Mr...
...Evans and Novak have tracked down this theme and documented it well...
...Nixon took was an instruction to his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman: "Establish and en- force a policy in this Administration that no statements are to be made by any official that might alienate the South...
...Nixon said that in November, 1967, at a time when the ghetto riots were fresh in our memory, when "urban guerrilla" actions were considered seriously by serious young men, and when a Pres- idential commission was discovering that this nation was separating into two nations, one black and one white...
...Nixon for so many years, still regard him as mysteri- ous and, perhaps unintentionally, pre- sent him as a man lacking in substance and deeply-held convictions...
...Domestically, the country could run itself...
...Nixon in Power Nixon in the White House: The rustration of Power, by Rowland vans, Jr...
...Only when a foreign affairs issue en- veloped Congress did he appear to pay close attention...
...Evans and Novak are experts at the mechanics of pol- itics and government, and they make no pretense at biography...
...Nixon just wasn't paying attention...
...Instead, he simply tried to ignore Congress, except to use it on occasion as a whipping boy...
...Nixon to begin with a State of the Union address to ad- vance his concept of the office...
...Robert Finch, one of his clos- est friends and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, was rudely overruled on the school desegregation guidelines...
...There is no new comprehension here of Nixon the man...
...to be or- dered around...
...Nix- on's indifferent attitude toward domes- tic policy...
...The authors of Nixon in the White House have produced so many examples that the evidence is overwhelming...
...Until they prove them- selves incompetent or too independent, the David Kennedys and Wally Hick- els can handle things...
...At the same time, the men in the White House regard Congress as a hostile camp "not to be negotiated with on equal terms but...
...Bored with such trivia, Mr...
...Harry Dent was given carte blanche to guard the Southern flank throughout the Ad- ministration...
...Of President Nixon's handling of foreign affairs they add little in the way of new facts or new understand- ing...
...Once in of- fice, he declared, "Look, one thing is certain...
...He simply does not feel there is much a President can do for this coun- try internally...
...Calculated deception...
...There had been no sudden new comprehension of poverty, no overnight ideological commitment to assured security...
...Within months, under Patrick Moy- nihan's influence, he was sending to Congress a welfare plan that included a guaranteed income plan...
...One is left with the impression that the Adminis- tration's single most important domes- tic program was a fluke...
Vol. 35 • November 1971 • No. 11
