The mantle of Ike
AMERICA MURRAY KEMPTON
New York—Mr Nixon's first Hundred Days have gone by as a history not of events but of the calendar. But then his life, until it turned, was one powerfully influencing the suspicion that he who proceeds too decisively after land- ing at Cannes crashes at Waterloo.
The funeral of General Eisenhower was the most conspicuous spectacle of Mr Nixon's term so far; and, if he followed the cortege with so much concentration on being unable to let it go, we may assume that he was seeking less to es- tablish a legitimacy which even he no longer questions than to understand the mystery which eluded him in life.
How had General Eisenhower managed to be the great turtle upon whose back the world sat for eight years? There are few models for the sort of President he was, and none recommen- ded by those advocates of Presidents as stew- ards of the people and leaders to their rendez- vous with destiny who have made American history the opiate of Democrats. Yet the mys- tery abides that a man who would rather relax with his friends than counsel with politicians survived without either being ruined by his friends as Grant was or assisting in the ruin of his country as Buchanan did. The effect of General Eisenhower as a President is above all else the thing Mr Nixon wants; but the General's rules for performance were very closely held, although very closely watched by Mr Nixon—as evidenced by the acuity with which, alone among observers, he once de- scribed his great commander as 'more complex and devious in the best sense of the word than most persons imagine.'
It was General Eisenhower's trick never to neglect the pieties in moments of ceremony and never to observe them in moments of decision; he never did a foolish, let alone a wicked thing, for a high-minded reason. Mr Nixon's first three months suggest that he is carefully adher- ing to that lesson of General Eisenhower's career. He has succeeded in making even those persons who distrusted him most comparatively comfortable with him; and he has especially avoided that appearance of being busy which so often leads the politician to the spectacle of
being in trouble. There are already complaints that Secretary of State Rogers speaks with, one voice and Secretary of Defence Laird speaks
with another; Mr Nixon has found that posture Which was General Eisenhower's great refuge: be is not blamed for what his administration does or does not do.
If the only shadow on an otherwise mildly- glowing performance has been the anti-ballistic missile it ought in fairness to be said for him
that his mistake in that matter came less from believing in the ABM himself than from believing that faith in weapons was so ingrained in the national piety that it required oblation even if not performance. Mr Nixon's first response to the indications of dispute about the ABM was to approve the project while cutting its appro- priation. Curiously this was not enough. The defence budget is no longer an object of piety; the President still finds himself confronted by a radical public shift in the public's view of the military services whom he had been trained since his youth in Congress to appease.
The ABM programme can hardly be salvaged now even in the diminished form he had sug- gested as an adjustment to Senate prejudices. Secretary of Defence Laird's incantations of the formulas that have served the armed services in the conquest and occupation of Congress ever since the Second World War came under the harshest questioning from Senators who hitherto had been taken for granted. One now suspects that the ABM is beaten in the Senate be- cause Congressional insiders so unitedly report that it is in grave danger. The common fault of political and intelligence observers is to be sur- prised when an established institution collapses. It was known, for example, that Senator Edward Kennedy had many more than the votes he needed to become majority whip of the Sen- ate when intimates of its Democratic members admitted that he was mounting a really strong challenge. Now those same observers tell us that the vote on the ABM is already too close to call; we may take that to mean that its opponents are at least six votes ahead.
Only the massive intervention of the President might save the programme; yet Mr Nixon watches uncomplainingly while freshman Re- publican Senators join the opposition to it; and there are already reports that he will retreat to the point of seeing the Senate refuse all appro- priations for the ABM if it will merely ratify the theory of it.
Poor Mr Johnson believed the Joint Chiefs of Staff until fewer and fewer persons believed him any longer; with Mr Johnson departed, the distrust that was so unfortunately his fell on the generals, the admirals and the air marshals. We are a people who have to blame somebody; and now it is their turn. Before long only a very brave politician will dare to announce that he will not turn his back on the Commander in Chief of the Pacific fleet.
Mr Nixon is personally brave; but we are blessed that a succession of private disasters has taught him not to be bold. He is a man who has learned to respect an obstacle when he sees one. And, if the ABM can only be salvaged by a des- perate and uncertain personal fight, Mr Nixon may be trusted not to try and salvage it.
'If people want a sense of purpose,' Harold Macmillan once told Henry Fairlie, 'they should get it from their archbishops.' With that defini- tion of the decent limits of politicians imprinted in our minds by the memory of Mr Johnson, there is real comfort in the suspicion that Mr Nixon is, at bottom, so purposeless. Miss Doris Fleeson said once that the one thing she could not forgive, in Vice-President Nixon was his inability to leave a bad situation alone. But now his disasters seem to have taught him to do that; might he not have become that immobile man we need so badly at least for a little while?
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