The American Scene
More Nixon, most Democrats
Denis Brogan
There is a general lesson to be drawn from the recent debacle of the official Democratic candidate. There will never again, I suggest, be a candidate chosen from a state so remote from the economic realities of American life as South Dakota. It may be there will never be a candidate again from the slightly more relevant state of Arizona. The professional politicians Will go in the future, as they have usually tried to go in the past, for states which are intrinsically politically strong even if the candidate is weak. To nominate a weak candidate from a nearly empty state is asking for disaster, and disaster was Provided.
There are, however, some very odd Phenomena associated with the ambiguous triumph of Mr Nixon. First of all, it is a very personal triumph — even more Personal than the triumph of Mr Truman in 1948. The separation in the American mind of voting for Mr Nixon and voting for the Republican Party has been extremely dramatic. There was a victorious Presidential candidate who either did not try to have, or did not succeed in acquiring, a coat-tail long enough to bring in some new senators and some new congressmen to offset the overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress. It may be that American politics have settled into _a new pattern with a permanent Democratic majority in each House of Congress; but the provision of a plausible Democratic candidate for the presidency remains a gamble, and one in which the Democrats have been extremely unlucky. It was the murders of President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and the dedication of President Johnson to the old rules of Politics that made Nixon possible. We may assume that the hankering for the simple rural politician, the simple rural crandidate, is over. Most Americans now e in urban areas — slums or smart Suburbs; they don't live in the simple ;arinlands which produced George McGovern. It is in many ways, maybe, a deplorable state of affairs. The late Senator b that Kennedy said of George McGovern at he was the only totally honest Senator and Bobby Kennedy did not e:c. elude himself from this rather pejorative _levy of the Upper House. Not only has Senator McGovern lost all political plausibility. His campaign rather suggested n_ e had even failed to preserve his attractive if ineffectual political virginity. It is back to real politics now. And that means politics which were practised successfully by the Kennedy machine, and Were practised by President Nixon. „_ The next four years in the United States is 12ay not be at all edifying. President Nixon a Quaker. Must we assume, therefore, _`", at he is a man of the highest moral standards We can assume that there Will be a great deal of buck passing, and not very much money will be wasted, as far as it can be helped, on kindness to the unfortunate, the idle, the disreputable — in general, to the poor. And this means that the group which was most faithful to the old Democratic Party — the Blacks, or, as I am sure many of Mr Nixon's supporters say, the niggers — may be in for a rough ride.
A great deal will depend, of course, on the continued success of Dr Kissinger; also on making a deal with the communists in Vietnam, in making a peace of a kind, "all saved but honour." I am inclined to think that Dr Kissinger and President Nixon have fairly good reasons to believe that a deal of some kind can be imposed by Washington on the defenders of Christian civilisation in South Vietnam and by Moscow and Peking on the defenders of the proletariat in North Vietnam. The result Will be a defeat for that policy of the United States on which so much money and blood have been wasted.
We don't really know yet, what the effect of peace in Vietnam will be. Wall Street on the whole is in favour of peace, and has been so for quite a long time. There are areas, including President Nixon's home base of southern California where peace, or at any rate a reduction of armaments, would be and will be very unpopular. But possibly Mr Nixon, who after all cannot run again for president, will sacrifice the interests of " the Sunny Southland." And if a boom is on the way, as it may well be, people will not look this gift horse in the mouth in, let us say, Illinois, whatever they may do in Orange County, California.
What does this mean in American and world contexts? Congress, in its present frame of mind, seems determined to spend a good deal of Federal money on what may be called relief or philanthropy or charity — or folly. The interests of the great economic forces behind Mr Nixon are not necessarily those which would occur to an old fashioned Quaker of 1700. They may wery well appeal to Quakers of a more recent vintage who still believe that, roughly speaking, virtue is not its own reward but that economic virtue is rewarded. The poor you have always with you, and that is their fault.
Democrats have plenty of immediate troubles. Their finances must be in a very bad way. They have lost two successive presidential elections, and that cuts off supplies from business interests who think they might be wasting their money if they spend it in supporting the Democratic Party at all. On the other hand, if the boom does not really come off, or if its bloom goes off very soon, Mr Nixon may be in the position of several presidents in modern times who have had to take the rap for economic disasters for which they were only in part responsible. Then, a revival of the old Roosevelt coalition might possibly be brought off, and possibly brought off by the greatest dynasty in modern America, the Kennedy clan.
There is a point which it is perhaps unkind to stress, but which it is also foolish to ignore. The completeness of President Nixon's triumph in 1972 cannot conceal the fact that he is not a popular triumphator. People trusted his sense, including his sense of his own interests, more than they did George McGovern's sense of American or his own interests; but it Was a very tepid support arid would not stand much wear and tear if things went wrong. There are some highly competent people in the Nixon cabinet; there are some adroit people — perhaps too many of them — in the Nixon White House. But nothing in the White House inspires, as far as I can judge, any warm affection or admiration or even trust. It may seem absurd to suggest that a Quaker president does not inspire trust, but such is the sad fact about Richard Milhous Nixon.
Will peace and prosperity (and President Nixon may get both, and in a sense has deserved both) heal all economic wounds and make possible the re-creation of a Republican Party that has a natural majority, as the Democrats have had for so long? It is very hard to believe in this national majority if one contemplates the conspicuous failure of the Republican congressional campaign of 1972; and the alliance of the least attractive elements of the Deep South with some of the least attractive elements of the Golden State of California may not stand much wear and tear if for other reasons things go wrong, e.g. if there is a real ideological quarrel which makes the United States have to choose between Communist China and Communist Russia. The Dick Nixon who saved the republic round 1950 from the Reds, may possibly be forced to back one set of Reds against another; and what for some people — in California anyway — will be much worse, will be forced to abandon that eminent Methodist couple, Chiang Kai-shek and his wife. However, Mr Nixon has shown in the past a moral flexibility worthy of Cardinal Dubois or, if you like, of the great Duke of Wellington: for if the Duke could swallow Catholic emancipation, then surely that eminent Irish Quaker, Richard Milhous Nixon, can easily swallow two kinds of Communists, and more if more are to be on the market.
It is to our interest that the Nixon administration should succeed, should make peace, should keep the peace, and should become fairly solvent (although a great many intelligent Americans think it is not likely to remain solvent). It is also to our interest that ." Europe" should succeed, even though this will annoy Mr Peter Shore. It is just possible that the Democratic Party has in fact turned the tide against itself by its recent follies, and it is just possible that a new party will appear as the Republican Party did in 1856. But frankly, I expect the oldest of the American parties still to be in business in the bicentennial year of the foundation of the Republic.
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