AMERICA
Mr Nixon in trouble
MURRAY KEMPTON
New York—If the President reads the public mood aright, he is at the moment surrounded by politicians whose careers are even more dependent on the shifts and changes in voters' opinions than is his own. Six months ago, he seemed popular enough to suggest
to the Republicans that he might by him- self win them the Congress this autumn; now his party has abandoned that hope, and many of its candidates in the populated areas seem about to abandon him.
Governor Rhodes of Ohio, who is run- ning for the Senate, has already warned that even the small increases in unemploy- ment which appear so tolerable to the President make his own campaign difficult and threaten a new surge towards that pre- judice of the voters against the Republicans as the party of stagnation which has pro- duced so many of its past disasters. Mr Nixon is all too used to the distrust of the eastern Republicans: the adopted chal- lengers to Democratic incumbents in Con- necticut and New Jersey have already asso- ciated themselves with the opposition to Judge Carswell. But Governor Rhodes is something else. Ohio is a state upon which the Republicans are absolutely dependent; they have not in' this century won an elec- tion in which they lost that state: it is not a precinct where a Republican president ought to feel comfortable when hearing him- self disavowed.
Mr Nixon. desnite so many obvious ero- sions elsewhere, does seem to have held and even improved his ground in the south. Ws coolness towards further integration of the schools has immensely heartened that region's segregationists, and the southern governors talk of Washington now, if not with affection. certainly with considerable apnreciation of its usefulness. Mr Nixon's Attorney-General finds himself on the south's side in criticising the over-zealous-
ness of federal ilidges—incl.,,ling. incidant-
ally. the President's new Chief iustice. The south's militancy of tone is rising as is its level of violence; sheriffs and aroused citi- zens are rougher than they have been since 1964 Mr Nixon's anger at the Senate for rebuffing Judge Carswell seems to have struck a key in the south, although less loud than he expected.
All in all, his efforts to outbid George Wallace must be recognised as his mnst successful foray in politics in the past six months: in point of fact. they constitute his only visible effort. Mr Wallace is trying to get himself re-elected Governor of Ala- bama. a much chancier enternrise than any- one had expected it to be. Still. Mr Nixon's hopes of being able to eliminate Wallace and inherit his constituency remain dependent on the outcome of an election over which he has no real control. Mr Wallace is one of those candidates who will have to be beaten in Alabama before familiars of that state will believe he can be: and even with- out him, the southern resistance has other governors, less abk to do mischief in the north but solid enough in their own con- stituencies, to hold the deep southern states for an independent party. Mr Nixon plainly has a southern strategy, but the south is by no means united on a Nixon strategy; it is not a segment of the population he can trust much.
There, as everywhere in the country, the President still represents principles which in the abstract command a majority but in the particular debar him from the trust and loyalty he'needs. He represents a hard line on the young, the black and the criminal; and even those who feel softer suspect that the President's atttude fits the public temper. Last week, for example, a Columbia Broad- casting System poll of public attitudes found three-quarters of those sampled opposed to demonstrations by extremist groups against the government and 55 per cent said that newspapers and broadcasters should not be permitted to report news stories considered by the government to be damaging to the national interest. But polls on abstract mat- ters always go that way. The Bill of Rights indeed seems to be a trifle more popular than it was in the 'fifties or perhaps even in 1789: Americans are against the Bill of Rights whenever they are asked about it, , but they seem generally speaking to jog along with it pretty contentedly; and if the President and Vice President are successful in their attacks upon it, they will be the first of our politicians not to turn out damaged afterwards.
In any case, Mr Nixon's harmony with the public mood in the abstract has not assisted him in achieving popular confidence in his capacity for handling those things which trouble it in the concrete. South-East Asia is clearly more dangerous and only dubiously more promising than it was a year ago; the economy is spotty; and the criminal element is more active than ever. The most tangible public attitude seems to be, from Mr Nixon's point of view, not quite unbalanced enough between those who rebel and those who would repress them. Judge Julius Hoffman is at best a figure of mixed general respect; yet Mr Nixon established a solid identification by inviting Judge Hoffman to the White House after the judge had run his course against the 'Chicago seven', and this response has been consoli- dated by the Justice Department's choice of Mr Hoffman to preside over the next trial of a rebel band and to inflict no doubt measureless embarrassments in the process.
The President, then, operates upon the assumption that his America is a large sub- urb whose plea that it wants only to con- tinue its old ways undisturbed is truly heartfelt. We cannot with safety say that 'Tell me your inmost quotations from the works of Chairman Mao.' he is not right; but his diminution in the polls might indicate his error: If it does, he has, fortunately for his peace of mind. but less fortunately for his future, protected himself from advisers who might tell him of his danger. This is not entirely his fault; when he came to office he had the sense to acquire one or two persons who had credentials as to knowledge of those points of unrest which could produce peril for him. Unfortunately they have turned out to be better courtiers than anything else: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the most conspicuous, seems to be one of those servants who con- ceives it his function, when his master is vaguely troubled by conscience, to hasten to set his anxieties to rest. His memoranda, with their emphasis on the usefulness of benign neglect of the Negro problem and their fixed contempt for liberals, are precisely what is needed by a president who would prefer to do nothing and needs an am- bassador from the other shore to tell him he is right.
Perhaps, drifting with no visible alter- ation in his contentment, he will travel through these rapids; he may be a better judge than all the others. But for the first time since his inauguration the shrewdest campaigners in his own party do not seem to think so.
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