AMERICA

A man of the right

MURRAY KEMPTON

New York—Mr Nixon had been expected by now to announce a new phase in the

withdrawal of 115,000 of our troops from Vietnam. He seems to have let the execution of that promise pass in silence, the events in

Laos and Cambodia having suggested to him, perhaps, that if he keeps his force in being he may get something better than what he had been reluctantly resigned to accepting.

The history of our disasters in Vietnam would hardly, of course, have been possible without continual exhibitions of truth crushed to earth and stubbornly rising again. Cambodia, from here at least, seems just another of those triumphs of the Central Intelligence Agency in South East Asia which have until now been invariably followed by the resurgence of the conquered. Such trii umphs repeatedly offer us the delusion of im proved options, which acts powerfully on men in the field—our own and those ad- ministering our clients.

At once the Strategic Air Command argues that air power can win the war as insistently as though everything that has happened since 1954 had not proved it can't; army colonels exult in the new op- portunity to 'clobber' the Vietcong; General Thieu sends troops at best unim- pressive in South Vietnam thunderously into Cambodia. All those fantasies we gather under the heading of intelligence seem assembled to advise the President to be bold: it is impossible, therefore, not to recognise the good fortune of his natural timidity.

President Nixon sincerely advocated and supported all the actions which got his predecessors in trouble; but he protects himself against any decision which might bring trouble upon him. His statement on Laos supports everything that was done there in the past, even to reciting each argu- ment made before its overtaking by events.

But the fact that he would have done it all does not mean that he would, in any con- ceivable circumstance, do it again. If we get further into trouble, it will not be for any master plan of his.

Mr Nixon's control over his field com- manders is conspicuously taut for a President whose administrative rems are otherwise so loose. They have been heard to say that, if they lose so much as a man in Laos, they can expect small mercy from Washington. But General Thieu does not answer to the reins; his political future may depend as much on keeping the American presence as Mr Nix- on's does on relaxing it. So he has every en- couragement to adventure, not least from those American advisers who remain con- vinced that someone ought to go in even if they can't. And Mr Nixon is not the man to control him. Among the qualities he lacks is that chill hauteur of the habitual commander which made it possible for President Eisenhower simply to dismiss Syngman Rhea when they quarrelled over the President's decision to wind down the Korean war. For Mr Nixon is a man of the right. However convinced he may have become that to continue the war could mean his destruction, he still has more respect for the sullen refusal of some to recognise that the business is hopeless than he has for those others to whom it has so long been revolting. All the American administrations of his ex- perience have been marked by a certain con- tempt for the tender-minded. The struggle between the Christian and the courtier inside the self is one affecting only liberals in our government, and, in their case, has been seldom resolved in the Christian's favour.

The right, on the other hand, is assured of its advantage in morals and practicality. It never apologises.

The danger in and for Mr Nixon is that, since no part of him could imagine tempta- tion by the ideas of his enemies, he con- tinually underestimates the appeal of those ideas to others. It is very hard for him to give his due to what he conceives as the devil; and his acceptance, however grudging, of the need to abandon our Vietnamese adventure is a sign of how deep a wound the Vietcong have dealt to the national complacency whose first apostle he is.

But the stubbornness of that complacency in him is suggested by the troubles that have beset appointments to the Supreme Court.

On Monday the Senate finally approved the appointment of Judge Harold Carswell. Yet both this nomination and the previous abor- tive nomination of Judge Haynsworth evinced a contempt for the feelings of the opposition and its capacity to take reprisal for offence. Many Senators want conservative judges, and few others are unaware of the need to swallow them if they are to the smallest degree respectable. But Mr Nixon's appointments have embarrassed his supporters: the ranking Republican on the Senate judiciary committee was reduced to explaining his approval of Judge Harold Carswell as an act of deference to all those mediocre persons who also deserve a place in our government. It is curious that Mr Nixon, even if he is correct in estimating the current national temper as being obsessed with peace, quiet and comfort, should be so nonchalant about the un- changed insistence on national grandeur which accompanies these feelings even in those who hold them most keenly. He plainly wants to weaken the Supreme Court, but he seems unaware that any serious effort to damage an institution depends for success on the calculated show of reverence for it. He has at best read his constituency only half- correctly: if it wants a Supreme Court that will leave it alone, it also wants judges it can boast about.

So if Mr Nixon has still failed to establish genuine command of his country and his Establishment, it is because he is so ex- traordinarily careless for a man who has spent so much time being careful. He survived as a politician by appeasing the

right: and that habit is too strong for him now to understand that his particular need is to reach and mollify the left. He runs the country as though he had no concern for any opinion beyond the spectrum of a majority of delegates to a Republican National Con- vention. There is, it begins to be clear, more sentiment than calculation in this posture. The centre may appeal to his intelligence. but the right still touches his heart. The danger in South East Asia is not in his head but in his heart. If he is to the smallest degree at General Thieu's mercy, it . because he has so hard a time Unde rsta nding that General Thieu is wrong.