Softly, softly
AMERICA MURRAY KEMPFON
New York—Democratic presidents announce themselves in language designed to stir, Repub- licans in tones designed to soothe. President Eisenhower was a success and President Hard- ing a failure with quietude; and President Roosevelt a success and President Johnson a failure with activism. We have, then, no certain historical basis for preferring the active over the passive; all we know is that the former is as often the Republican style as the latter is the Democratic one.
Mr Nixon is plainly in the tradition his party has cherished since its disturbance by Theodore Roosevelt fifty-seven years ago—alarmed out of office and calmed immediately by coming into it. The style of his inaugural speech was bound to draw the scorn it has received from persons who care about this sort of thing. But we ought not by now to be surprised if Mr Nixon's rhetoric seems to fit him rather awk- wardly; he buys his words, like his suits, off the rack. Customers get the clichés they deserve; and Mr Nixon's choice of words suggests that his deserts are rather higher than his enemies had anticipated. There is, after all, a consider- able difference between being vague in progres- sive rather than being vague in reactionary tones. Mr Nixon is clearly more content with the America the Democrats have bequeathed to him than he was as a candidate when they were disputing its inheritance.
He is unobtrusive, cautious and anxious not to be reminded of the need for exciting changes. lie will spend his Hundred Days as a transition from being inconspicuous to being taken for granted. He did not so much progress through the pitfalls of his first press conference as stand and contemplate them with grave and objective concern. He has easily made the shift from the alarms of a candidate to the complacencies of an incumbent. A question about crime in Wash- ington drew a reply suggesting that the New York Times, while its interest is always wel- come, Is rather more disturbed than more reasoned residents are. So now it is the Demo- crats who worry about the issue of law and order, as power passes to the former opposition and the new opposition assumes the property right of crying out against the erosion of ancient values.
Mr Nixon has moved with great comfort and delicacy from the time when we thought of him as always our candidate towards the moment when we think of him as having beeealways our President. His care in avoiding excitement in the transition has left him with one problem of housekeeping: on the day of his inaugura- tion, he had appointed only a hundred of the 300 persons who will occupy the most im- portant policy positions at his disposal. But he seemed unalarmed by the prospect that two- thirds of his retainers had been Mr Johnson's retainers a week before. However, although being taken for granted was a blessing to him as a public figure, it had its inconveniences as an administrator. The prospect of working for him was so unexciting that it was plain that not enough of those called wished to be chosen; be had had to canvass second choices and was already casting over thirds and fourths.
His most conspicuous appointments were already familiar ones. Professors Kissinger and Moynihan of Harvard had been brought to Washington first by President Kennedy; they represent a class which by now assumes its function to be to work for government above party. Mr Nixon may be our first President whose administration is dominated not by party politicians but by non-party civil servants; he is unlikely to be our last. The Republican style runs to caretaking. If we elect Democrats for change, we tend more and more to elect Republicans for continuity.
As representative of the civil servant class, Professor Kissinger showed a talent for taking territory quite beyond the tentative efforts of Mr Nixon's political appointees. He had already made the Office of the Presidential Assistant for National Security Affairs the admini- stration's first empire, and was reported to have
'Never mind, sir, no news is good news.' successfully raided Secretary Laird's Pentagon and Secretary Rogers's State Department for assistants who might serve to surround Profes- sor Richard Allen, now Professor Kissinger's deputy and once the main falconer for the more hawkish flights of Mr Nixon's campaign.
Mr Nixon, so often an object of disquiet, looked more and more like a steward, the con- tinuer of Mr Johnson's general policies with no desire for Mr Johnson's risks in particular per- formance. He made it clear that he wanted the times to be quiet for him; and all of us prayed that boon for him.
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