THE G.O.P.'S REAL MISSION

A people has to want something. What do we want now? If the highest goal we can come up with is to grow a little fatter, our days as a great nation are numbered. From that standpoint, our domestic crisis might be viewed as a God-given opportunity.

JOHN GARDNER, addressing the Republican Platform Committee in Miami Beach last week, might have added that the nation's unhappy mood has given the G.O.P. an exciting and historic chance as well. Not since 1952 has the party in power been so vulnerable. Even without an Ike like figure atop their lead elephant, the Republicans have both the opportunity and the will to reoccupy the White House in January and to re-establish credentials that they have not held since Herbert Hoover's day.

Organism for 1968. Tied up with the party's chances of winning is the larger question for the nation: how the Republicans seek to win. They could attempt to capitalize on the electorate's fears and frustrations by promising the cheap and the quick: a smaller tax bite for the middle class and a bigger night stick for the ghetto. Or they could attempt the far more demanding mission of conducting what Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer calls "the politics of realism"--of identifying the direction to be taken and setting the difficult course for the journey.

The convention begins the long process of deciding what kind of organism a party chooses to make of itself in an election year. It labels two men the most qualified of all to govern and lead the nation. It provides a platform that, even though frequently ignored, can indicate the party's direction. It can set a tone and a mood that either help or hurt its ticket.

Senator Everett Dirksen, Platform Committee chairman, set out to write a "pungent" document that "any Republican can run on." It was obviously being molded, however, with Richard Nixon's shoe size in mind. All sides represented on the committee seemed determined to avoid the acrimony of 1964. Yet the proceedings, along with other recent discussions, outlined the party's options on the year's two major issues, Viet Nam and domestic upheaval.

Phasing Out. On Viet Nam, California's Governor Ronald Reagan stood pretty much alone among prominent party men defending the hard line. He pooh-poohed the Paris peace talks as primarily Communist propaganda. He questioned the bombing limitation over North Viet Nam. In the text of his remarks before the Platform Committee, he underlined his hope that "we will fight to win."

Neither Nixon nor New York's Nelson Rockefeller appeared before the Dirksen group. In a statement sent to the committee, Nixon broke his four-month silence on Viet Nam to adopt a position close to Rockefeller's, but with few specifics. Rockefeller's stand came last month in a detailed proposal envisaging step-by-step military disengagement by Hanoi and Washington. Nixon declared: "The war must be ended." He implied that he would treat with the Viet Cong as well as with the North Vietnamese by saying that serious negotiations must include "as many as possible of the powers and interests involved."

For the interim, Nixon came out against a step-up of military activity. Instead, he called for "dramatic escalation of our efforts on the economic, political, diplomatic and psychological fronts." As the South Vietnamese forces improve in number, training and equipment, "American troops can--and should--be phased out." He did not, to be sure, turn suddenly dovish. Nor did he quarrel with Dwight Eisenhower's admonition of last week that the U.S. must render." not But it accept was a in marked "camouflaged sur contrast to Nixon's bellicose stand earlier.

No Code. Even more relevant to the campaign, and to the nation's future, is the debate over domestic issues. All the candidates are for social justice and civ ilized cities, against mass violence and individual murder. The division is over goals and methods, over what to emphasize in a period when a large ma jority of Americans are indignant and more than a little frightened. This is the sentiment to which George Wallace panders with his knock-'em-in-the-nog-gin approach to all disturbers of the peace.

Nixon, thus threatened on his right flank, apparently believed that he had to prove his toughness. Last week he called for "retribution" that is "ample, swift and sure." He acknowledged the social causes of crime -- a point Reagan was loath to concede -- but insisted: "Poverty, despair, anger and past wrongs can no longer be allowed to excuse or justify violence or crime or lawlessness." Nixon said that defense of the law was no "code word for the repression of the black American" and that preservation of order must "go hand in hand" with a "national crusade" to eliminate poverty and other basic causes of unrest. Yet Nixon, as he often does, seemed to put more emphasis on suppression of crime than on curative programs, and it is the hard approach that almost always tends to capture the headlines.

Herculean List. Nixon continues to insist that cures to social ills can be attained without heavy investment of public funds. New York Mayor John Lind say offered the contrasting view. To make civil peace, he said, "we must eliminate the hopelessness, futility and alienation from which they spring. The cost may be great, but the cost of inaction is even greater."

In writing the planks on domestic is sues, Dirksen specifically denied that the U.S. is a sick society. The statement's tone is moderate in a section headed "Crisis of the Cities" and speaks favorably -- though in relatively general terms -- of the need for progress in particular areas, such as creating jobs and providing special educational services in slum schools. The platform comes down hard on the crime issue in an attempt to strike a balance between liberal and conservative positions. It favors firearms control, for instance, but with the states having primary jurisdiction.

It fell to John Gardner, who is neither a candidate nor a delegate, to define his party's responsibility in the broadest terms. Like everyone, of course, he was for law and order, but in 1968, he seemed to be saying that the overriding issue is justice and order. The chairman of the Urban Coalition propounded a herculean list of needs, including reforms in urban planning, housing, education, race relations, income maintenance and birth-control programs. "The only cure for us," he warned, "lies in positive forward movement. It will have to be forward movement of a dramatic sort, a huge new burst of national energy."

Are Americans prepared to make the attempt? Are they willing to pay the high price -- in money, in self-restraint --for that "huge new burst"? Many think that they are not, that the dominant mood, despite factional dissent, is one of opposition to vigorous new programs of reform. It would be easy for the out party to play to this feeling. But it might turn out to be bad politics as well as bad policy. However deep the conservative mood at the moment, it may well be that by November, too strong an appeal to it would doom the Republicans by alienating too many Democrats and independents.

What the nation wants most from its politicians today is a cogent clarification of its problems, powers and opportunities. It needs to be convinced that vast efforts are just, necessary and possible. Then the parties can offer a choice of policies and men. This week in Miami Beach, the Republicans will begin to show whether they recognize their real mission in 1968.

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