The Power of the Establishment
AMERICA
From MURRAY KEMPTON
NEW YORK A_ [CHARD NIXON departed last week on a trip which will take him 23,000 miles and engage his voice on the side of no fewer than sixty-one separate and no doubt disparate Republican candidates for the Congress.
This pilgrimage is a measure of his endurance and the universal recognition that he has become harmless. He hopes still to be his party's presi- dential nominee in 1968; he is the only memory on its legs of the by now almost forgotten Republican hold on the national power; he will say anything a local candidate feels the need to have said for him; since the Democrats have de- feated him twice, they have ceased fearing and even commence to cease disliking him; he is therefore as unobtrusive as he is ubiquitous; and, since he is unnoticed, there is no danger that he can embarrass the object of his assistance. He appears, for all these reasons, to be the only Republican of national notoriety that other Republicans are glad to have come to their districts.
He refreshed himself for his voyage with a trip to Vietnam; and just before departing, he was invited to the Overseas Press Club here to give a report on his observations. His smile across the room at one intruder at this stance seemed un- expectedly beseeching. The first thought was that he was crying for mercy; but he must long ago have given up expecting mercy from anywhere on earth; a man who has so doggedly followed his star without ever asking quarter from history hardly begs it from journalists. But then one understood: he was speaking on Vietnam; he has counted the prospective roll of delegates at the Republican convention; and he knows what the rest of us will be surprised to discover the year after next—that the Goldwater people will have the votes to nominate the next Republican presidential candidate. He must therefore make them believe that he is the man to stand up to Mao Tse-tung; and he stands very much in need of the assistance of any dove removed enough from common sense to think Richard Nixon a screaming hawk. The smile then is a plea for misunderstanding.
It cannot be granted, try though one will. Nixon has only to say that, in negotiations, 'we must be quite precise and, by being precise, I mean,' for us to know that in his company, as always, we are blessedly free of the menace of the definite.
We must, he said, quarantine shipments to North Vietnam—and `by quarantine, I mean something precise; we must impose an economic quarantine and do so without running the risk of a confrontation with the Soviet Union. . . . We must bomb any strategic targets that can be hit without too great a risk of civilian casualties.' On the one hand, he explained, the USSR has displaced Communist China in the affections of Ho Chi Minh, and on the other 'a major French diplomat' told him that the men around Ho are more Peking- than Moscow-orientated. One left a man who will consider any option which does not involve any risk.
He will endure, one thinks, to be recognised and rather well liked as a landmark in the history of quiet, determined desperation, and as the symbol of an opposition inhibited by the habit
of defeat from presenting any visible alternative to what is established.
President Johnson has now become one of many incumbent office-holders in the United States in the unhappy possession of the dis- approval of a majority of the vote sampled in his cdnstituency. Ordinarily such a canvass would be a cause for alarm to him; yet he need only look at the circumstances of other candi- dates in a similar state of discomfort to see that such things have become irrelevant in our politics. The typical American incumbent is more and more a man who is rejected by most of the voters and accepted by most of the pro- fessionals in both parties. Mr Nixon, in the vague sense he conveys of appreciating that we are governed by his betters, is typical of the opposition everywhere in America.
It has been noticed already that Governor Brown of California, only last spring the object of the apparently unappeasable discontent of his constituents, is recovering nicely and can expect re-election. Governor Rockefeller of New York, whose case has seemed terminal even longer, seems suddenly healthy again and no one, par- ticularly among his Democratic opponents, expects him to be beaten. The Democratic con- vention to nominate a candidate for Governor of New York had every aspect of the consummation of a suicide pact. Governor Rockefeller will run against Frank O'Connor, a gentle and apologetic man, who is invariably sincere and never more so than when he is expressing agreement with his detractors. Mr O'Connor began with a vast lead in the polls; all science indicated that he would be the next Governor of New York; and every habit instructed the delegates who would nominate him that he was a loser.
No Democrat who held an office of the smallest comfort and honour could be persuaded to risk it by running with Mr O'Connor on the party's state ticket. The only debate in the cor- ridors of the convention headquarters in Buffalo was between persons identifying themselves as surrogates for Vice-President Humphrey, who accused Senator Robert Kennedy of sabotaging the ticket, and persons assigned by Senator Ken- nedy to attend the funeral rites, who replied that he had told everyone what would happen and that no one had listened to him. The campaign had not even begun and already there echoed the universal disclaimer: 'Thou canst not say I did it.' The Democrats so long ago ceased tc hope to elect a Governor of New York that it has become difficult for them even to notice their candidate. Frank O'Connor's face was visible in Buffalo not as one who conquers but as one who solicits.
And, still, a frighteningly small proportion of the state's voters has indicated that it wants Governor Rockefeller re-elected; one is per- suaded that he will win only because those voters are now confronted by an alternative with even less claim on their imagination and even greater peril to their comfort. The Democrats of New York State are what the habit of defeat finally produces: a political party which does not think itself fit to govern.
We are, according to the complaints of our prophets and the findings of our opinion samples, a people restless, discontented and ready for political revolt. And yet there is no sign that we shall do anything about this uneasiness if we really do feel it. There has fallen even upon the opposition the sense that - the establishment, wherever it is, is permanent. We are in one of those periods in our politics for which the only plausible definition is Belloc's: Always keep a hold of nurse
For fear of finding something worse.
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