The 39th Doge

CONTRARY to some opinions, it is not true that if you have seen one Vice President, you have seen them all. But the question of what kind of a Veep Spiro T. Agnew will make is more than usually clouded. At the beginning of the campaign, he made anonymity an asset. A joking reference to "What's-His-Name" warmed an audience up. The admission that Agnew w.as "not exactly a household word" carried a nice touch of modesty. By the end of the campaign, many Republican strategists wished that Agnew had remained What's-His-Name. The Vice President-elect had become not only a figure of comedy and controversy but also a decided liability. "Sure I think he hurt us," said a Nixon aide on Election Eve. "Don't you?"

Originally viewed in the Nixon camp as a hard-working but unobtrusive No. 2 man, the Maryland Governor was indeed industrious. He was anything but unobtrusive. In three months, "Agnewism" became virtually a synonym of "malapropism," and Democrats got good mileage out of such comments as "If you've seen one slum, you've seen them all." A Democratic TV commercial consisted of the simple legend "Agnew for Vice President?"--and nearly 30 seconds of laughter.

Forgotten Strengths. Chosen to assure Nixon Southern support at Miami Beach, Agnew was assigned the task of appealing to the potential Wallace vote. He began the drive with the standard spiel on law and order, but as the weeks passed, he grew progressively more abrasive. At times, except for the accent, he might have been mistaken for Wallace himself, making use of such Wallace-like expressions as "phony intellectual." In the end, though Agnew may have hurt Nixon overall, he appears to have helped him win critically important Border states.

More alarmed than they readily admitted by Agnew's clumsiness, Nixon aides gradually de-emphasized his role in the campaign. Increasingly, his rallies were held in suburbs, where he felt most at home, or in small cities. To eliminate, or at least minimize, his now famous bloopers, he held few press conferences and granted few interviews.

While Edmund Muskie sat with Hubert Humphrey in a pre-election TV talkathon from Los Angeles, Richard Nixon conducted his own four-hour program without the help of his running mate. To make sure that Agnew did not feel slighted, however, Nixon was almost comically extravagant in his praise. The Marylander, said Nixon, "is a man with brains. He's a man of very great courage. He doesn't wilt under fire." Meanwhile, Agnew campaigned in Virginia, then flew home to Maryland, where he relaxed on Election Day on the golf course, and gave a party in Government House, the official mansion, for 150 campaign workers.

Most people--including, it sometimes seemed, the vice-presidential candidate himself--lost sight of Agnew's strengths during the campaign. A relatively progressive, pragmatic Governor, he has shown skill in administration and a taste for innovation. His proposal for uniform national-welfare payments certainly deserves consideration as a practical means of stopping the flow of rural poor, white as well as black, to big-city slums. While he is appallingly insensitive and callous, few can deny Agnew's personal decency and quiet sense of humor. Most independent observers agree that the New York Times made much out of little in charging that his Maryland financial dealings made him unfit for the Vice-Presidency. And despite his harsh indictments of black rioters and looters, his record on race relations has in general been sensible.

Surprise. Still, the campaign left many uneasy doubts about Agnew. Though he said before his nomination that he would delegate important domestic chores to his Vice President, Nixon is unlikely in the near future to give Agnew more than symbols of power. Nixon, suggested some of his lieutenants, had expected far better from Agnew and was surprised by his performance. Even before the votes were tabulated, Nixon staffers were speculating about the name of the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1972.

The first Vice President, John Adams, once compared himself to "a mere Doge of Venice." Thomas Marshall, the 28th, said that "the Vice President is like a man in a cataleptic state: He cannot speak; he cannot move; he suffers no pain; and yet he is perfectly conscious of everything that is going on about him." That classic view of the office has changed drastically, partly because the chief executive's job has become so burdensome that genuine help from the Vice President might be highly useful, but more obviously, because John Kennedy's assassination has dramatized the fact that the Vice President really must be considered the President's heir. Both Agnew and Nixon now face the challenge of erasing the doubts about the 39th Vice President and preparing him for the potential role his office is designed to fill.

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