Nixon for President
Senator George McGovern's triumph in the New York State primary election appears to ensure that, with or without the assistance of Senator Edward Kennedy, the South Dakotan will win the Democratic nomination. He deserves tc do no less. He has fought a vigorous and shrewd campaign, and as it has progressed he has looked increasingly more impressive than Senators Muskie and Humphrey. Muskies woe-begone expression never possessed much conviction; and Hubert Humphrey, cheerful chappie though he no doubt is, has been wearing second-hand clothes throughout the campaign, and now looks distinctly like a second-hand Rose. If McGovern wins the nomination in Miami, then the best Democratic candidate will have won. He has shown many abilities in his campaign, and chief of these has been the ability to temporise and to compromise. His principles have been amenable, if not disposable, and he has displayed with great constancy a willingness — indeed an eagerness — to adapt his policies and the rhetoric which envelopes them to the harsh requirements of local politics. He has endeavoured with considerable success to present himself not only as a man for all seasons but also as a man for almost all men. Although there is something essentially soggy about his message, it is impossible not to be impressed by its catholicity: " We want to be a whole nation again. We want to be a whole, happy and contented people again — united by our love of our country and our steadfast conviction that there is no great purpose we cannot achieve if we but set our minds to it." This message does not accord particularly well with Senator McGovern's repudiation of America's "great purpose" in south-east Asia and his promise to pull out within ninety days; but no matter. If he can end the war, bring home the troops, inaugurate a new period of isolationism, and still convince the American people that there is no great purpose we cannot achieve if we set our minds to it, then good luck to him and to us all.
Supporting Senator McGovern is like buying a pig in a poke. Many will prefer this, when the alternative is to support President Nixon. There is something distinctly unlovely about the President: he looks wrong and he sounds wrong. He once operated in that twilit zone where politics and law and money seem to get too cosily mixed up. His efforts to produce a Supreme Court more to his taste have been clumsy. His promotion of General Abrams to succeed General Westmoreland as Army Chief of Staff is unsavoury. His enthusiasm for an enlarged European Economic Community is foolish. Yet he may well be the best President we have got and can hope for.
President Nixon's achievements are substantial. Whatever Senator McGovern may promise, the fact is that Nixon has already set about ending the Vietnam war and dismantling the Democratic Party's Asian policy which that war expressed. He and Dr Kissinger have sought to reach a detente with the Soviet Union and an accommodation with China. Both these great enterprises are incomplete, and on balance it is sensible to conclude that the man who began them will be the best man to conclude them. President Nixon looks, from this side of the Atlantic, to be a safer man and a sounder man to be at the head of the western nations than does Senator McGovern; and at this stage, before the campaign proper has begun but with the primary campaign at an end, the preference must be for Nixon to have his second term. This preference will be massively reinforced should the Democratic Party decide that Senator Kennedy is to be Senator McGovern's running mate, for there is nothing in Kennedy's past to suggest that he is a suitable repository of national or international confidence.
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