Avoiding the Dewey Syndrome

Haunted by the memory of 1960, Richard Nixon long ago determined to stop at some point in the 1968 campaign for a final stock taking. What was being done wrong? What could be done better? Last week his advisers from all over the country converged on Key Biscayne, Fla., for such an inventory and came up with a startling conclusion: Nothing was wrong, and hardly anything could be done better.*

Even so, no one at the top of Nixon's campaign organization appears susceptible to the much feared Dewey Syndrome of overconfidence. Indeed, the word from Biscayne Bay was to push even harder in what Nixon calls "Operation Extra Effort" or a "three-week blitz." Placing unprecedented emphasis on electronic campaigning, Nixon will buy ten quarter hours of network radio, take an hour of prime-time TV for a rally at Madison Square Garden Oct. 31, and purchase four full hours of prime time for a TV telethon from Los Angeles on election eve (two hours for the East, two for the West).

Monster in the Woods. There is only one thing that worries the Nixon people now--the imponderable Wallace Factor. "You look at this Wallace thing," says one close adviser. "It's like sitting by the campfire knowing there's a monster out there in the woods. But you don't know how big it is." The nagging anxiety is that there may be hidden Wallace supporters who are ashamed enough of their vote to shy away from pollsters, but who are not ashamed enough to shy away from the polling booths. "We can't be sure the polls are picking up all his strength," remarks one adviser. The opposite, of course, could also be true; many people who now say they are for Wallace might, when faced with the thought of "President Wallace," revert to their original party loyalties.

For a long time Nixon publicly ignored Wallace, reasoning that any notice he gave him would only boost the Alabamian's prestige. Now he attacks Wallace directly, reminding his listeners that Wallace could put Humphrey into the White House by taking potential votes away from the Republicans.

Nixon still heavily stresses the law-and-order issue. Unless he is elected, he said last week, the number of crimes will double in the next four years. But in Boston, where he canceled an open meeting because of the fear of hecklers, he deplored the "hate" vote. He said: "Simply to allow the American people to vent that hatred as they vote for Nixon--to do so because they are voting against somebody else--that isn't enough. We don't want to win it that way."

Meanwhile, Spiro T. Agnew veered more sharply to the right in a deliberate effort to woo Wallaceites to Nixon. At times, except for his flat Baltimore accent, Agnew indeed could almost have changed places with Wallace. In Woodbridge, N.J., he attacked "phony intellectuals who don't understand what we mean by hard work and patriotism." Probably not even Wallace would have said, however, as Agnew did in Detroit, that "if you've seen one ghetto area, you've seen them all." Certainly few could have matched his airy defense of the established order. "You may give us your symptoms." he informed dissenters. "We will make the diagnosis. And we the Establishment--for which I make no apologies for being a part of--will implement the cure." Agnew's campaign role has obviously been worked out by Nixon headquarters, but some strategists were worrying about how he was playing it. No one can out-Wallace Wallace.

Real Difficult. Last week even Wallace had difficulty being Wallace. Campaigning in the Far West, he lost not only his audiences but his much treasured aplomb in the face of heckling. He nearly exploded with rage when a large group in San Diego made fun of him in a mass put-on. When he began his usual line on Communists, the hecklers obligingly chanted "Kill the Commies! Kill the Commies!" When he talked about law and order, they were just as ready with cheers for the "Police! Police!"

The Western audiences, unlike those in the rest of the country, seemed neither outraged nor converted by Wallace's standard spiel--just bored. Perhaps it is because the racial and ethnic abrasions that Wallace feeds on elsewhere are less important in the more fluid and open society of the West. The people who live there have no difficulty voting for conservatives like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, or voting against open-housing measures. But many seem to find it difficult to accept Wallace's radicalism, with its unabashed divisions between "them" and "us." At any rate, Wallace, the master of noise and turmoil, was unnerved by the unaccustomed silence. "It's real difficult for me to speak to an orderly crowd," he confessed to 3,500 aerospace workers near Los Angeles. "It really throws me, if you want to know the truth."

Despite such signs of malaise over Wallace, the Nixon camp was determined not to become complacent about the monster in the woods. It was equally determined to fight him to the finish.

* Nixon has won the overwhelming support of the nation's press. By the end of last week, 483 daily papers with a total circulation of 20.7 million had come out for him editorially; this week, LIFE endorses him. Humphrey, by contrast, has been endorsed by 93 newspapers with a circulation of 3.9 million.

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