THE POLITICS OF POLARIZATION

TO lower our voices would be a simple thing," Richard Nixon proclaimed last January after taking the oath of office as President. Before the October antiwar Moratorium, he insisted that "under no circumstances" would he be affected by it. Yet now he has, in effect, abandoned his above-the-battle position. Nixon took the field against his critics in his Nov. 3 plea to "the silent majority" for backing of his Viet Nam policy, and last week he ordered Vice President Spiro.Agnew into the fray to mount an extraordinary--and sometimes alarming--assault on network television's handling of the news (see following story).

What brought on the Agnew attack? In the past, the Administration has avowed that his salvos have had only tacit, after-the-fact approval from the White House. This one had its genesis in Richard Nixon's office on the morn ing after his Viet Nam speech, when the President read the news summary edited for him by Speechwriter Pat Buchanan--and concluded that the TV commentators had chopped him up. "There was fairly widespread dismay and unhappiness around here," says one White House aide wryly. The incoming mail showed that some of the President's supporters were just as upset, so Nixon sent Agnew into the breach.

Months before, the Vice President had turned down an invitation to speak at the Midwestern Regional Republican Conference in Des Moines. Last week, just two days before the meeting was to begin, Agnew suddenly reinvited himself. The conference chairman hastily hired the Fort Des Moines Hotel ballroom and scheduled Agnew as the klieg-light speaker. Agnew's words were written by Buchanan, who is a hard-line conservative, and vetted in the upper echelons of Nixon's personal staff.

"The President has felt that the time has come when he could no longer try to hold everybody in the tent," a top aide explains. The Administration now seems committed to the politics of polarization. Viet Nam is the touchstone of division, the litmus test of loyalty. Nixon's aim is to demonstrate to Hanoi that the protesters do not speak for the American public, and so gain time and leverage for his plan for a gradual U.S. disengagement from Viet Nam. In the process, the Administration is splitting conservatives from liberals, drawing a line between dissenters and Americans who are sick of dissent--more so than of the war itself.

Presidential Aide Clark Mollenhoff told the Des Moines Register that the speech reflected concern that the Administration is not "getting through to the public"--not just on Viet Nam, but also on such issues as the Safeguard ABM and the nomination of Judge Clement Haynsworth to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Haynsworth question is especially vexing to Nixon right now, since he faces almost certain defeat when the nomination comes to a vote in the Senate this week. In each of these controversies, Mollenhoff contended, newspapers, magazines and television news reports have "distorted" the facts and failed to give the Administration's case a fair hearing.

The newly strenuous notes of partisanship were sounded on other fronts. George Romney, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, cheered Agnew as the "champion of the old culture that values historic and democratic principles." In Milwaukee, Attorney General John Mitchell blamed public mistrust of Government primarily on "the deception which was practiced over the last few years" by the Johnson Administration. Transportation Secretary John Volpe drove well off his official road to damn a majority of the organizers of last week's renewed antiwar protest as "Communist or Communist-inspired."

Masterly Performance. While Agnew and Nixon's Cabinet circuit riders were spreading a tough evangelical line from a multitude of pulpits, Nixon himself --contented with public response to his Viet Nam speech and buoyed by pro-Administration demonstrations--stuck with gentler preaching to the converted. On the 51st anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I, Nixon visited patients at a Washington veterans' hospital. Then, on the eve of M-day II, he invited Senators and Representatives from both parties to the White House to thank them for Capitol Hill support. A House resolution introduced by Democrat Jim Wright of Texas backs the President broadly "in his efforts to negotiate a just peace" and specifically in the details of his policy; it now has 309 sponsors. Fifty-nine Senators have signed a letter to the U.S. delegation in Paris that is less explicit but also praises Nixon for seeking "a just peace."

The President came up with an effective way to underscore his appeal for unity, thus further isolating his critics. Normally a President speaks to Congress only on formal occasions--to deliver a State of the Union address or a momentous special message. Last week, on less than 24 hours' notice, Nixon arrived to address the House for twelve minutes without notes, invoking the bipartisan spirit of U.S. foreign policy that had prevailed in his own days as a Representative during the Truman Administration. He declared: "When the security of America is involved, when the lives of our young men are involved, we are not Democrats, we are not Republicans, we are Americans." That statement drew heavy applause and loud cheers, though party spirit has not been an issue on Viet Nam and though the question of whether the war is indeed crucial to U.S. security is at the heart of the debate and transcends party lines.

"I believe that we will achieve a just peace in Viet Nam," he went on. "I cannot tell you the date, but I do know this: that when peace comes it will come because of the support that we have received, not just from Republicans, but from Democrats, from Americans in this House, in the other body [the Senate] and throughout the nation." Nixon's speech, delivered as the peace demonstrators assembled for the first of their marches in Washington, was in many ways more persuasive and candid than his TV address to the nation. As he left Washington to watch the Apollo 12 launch at Cape Kennedy (see THE MOON, p. 28), the President was visibly and understandably pleased with himself.

Altered Mood. While shrill contentiousness is something of a novelty in the Nixon Administration, it is scarcely a tactic new to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Franklin Roosevelt rounded on "economic royalists" and Harry Truman on the "do-nothing 80th Republican Congress" in deliberate attempts to polarize the U.S. electorate, and both were critical of what was said about them in print. Now, as then, the news media tend to be thin-skinned and quick to rush to their own defense.

There is nothing wrong with a President's attacking his detractors; what is unsettling about Nixon's current offensive is the weapons he has chosen and the way he does battle. In his Viet Nam speech he honored the patriotism of his critics--and then impugned it by remarking: "North Viet Nam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that." While there is much room for thoughtful criticism of television news, Agnew's blast was partisan and intemperate, and left a certain impression that the issue would never have been raised had the networks backed the President. Dean Burch, newly confirmed head of the Federal Communications Commission, raised doubts about the preservation of the agency's traditional independence of the Executive Branch when he enthusiastically applauded Agnew's attack.

In the short run, Nixon's politics of polarization are paying off. What will happen in the longer haul is more problematical, both at home and vis-a-vis Hanoi. He argues that dissent weakens the U.S. bargaining position. But not only is he stimulating dissent among many moderates and on the left by his new belligerence, he also risks stirring up the hard-line right to renewed cries of "Not peace--victory!" He may exacerbate the tensions of a nation distraught and confused as it has not been since the Depression. That danger augurs ill for both his presidency and the American people, and could in the end make a compromise settlement in Viet Nam more difficult for Americans to understand and accept.

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