"The Idea Is to Cool It a Little"

IN much of the land it seems a time to forget, and even to forgive. People still speak of the dog days, as they did in more innocent years when the "long hot summer" had not yet assumed ominous overtones. Always barring some sudden eruption, the U.S. is once again in an estival moment of lassitude and languishing spirits. Classic enmities and provincial disputes seem to blur in the sweltering July sun. Pitcher Denny McLain is back in Tiger Stadium. Richard Nixon played host last week to a reunion of his Whittier College class of '34. Leigh Steinberg, the moderate new student-body president at protest-prone Berkeley, said he opposes the Viet Nam War but that most of his fellows are "sick of confrontation." The Columbia News, a rural Georgia weekly, observed: "As long as there have been sweaty, hot summers, there have been cases of the blahs. We all get them, but somehow they seem worse this year."

There is a sense of anticlimax after the disturbing events of spring. The Nixon Administration has matched the national mood: the President and his people are trying to conciliate American differences and lower the rhetorical temperature of the Administration.

Says one Nixon staffer: "The idea is to cool it a little. The idea is to avoid anything that somebody can blame on the Administration, to dissipate some of the discord. But I don't detect any basically different approach that means anything terrifically significant--just a tone where the President would hope his leadership is followed."

Spiro Agnew, the Administration's house curmudgeon, opened his office to newsmen and television cameras, beaming broadly as he gave his blessing to products meant to spoof him--Spiro Agnew T shirts, Spiro Agnew watches modeled on the Mickey Mouse design (TIME, July 6). Instead of fuming, Agnew co-opted the satire: advance payments and royalties from the manufacturers will go to a charity supporting American Indian children and to an organization of families of American servicemen taken prisoner or missing in Southeast Asia. "The real reason I'm here," Agnew joked on the Tonight Show, "is that the other night I saw Mickey Mouse on television, and I'm here to ask for equal time." Agnew is getting plenty of equal time: he wrote a piece recently for the New York Times editorial page, and this fall he may fill in for Paul Harvey on the conservative commentator's radio show.

Bellicose Face. As it turns out, Agnew has good reason to project a new image of mellowness. TIME Correspondent Hays Gorey, who has traveled widely around the U.S. in recent weeks, concludes that in many parts of the country even conservative Republicans, including numerous candidates who acknowledge that Agnew is a fantastically successful party fund raiser, openly express their view that any further extension of the Agnew polemics will hurt the party rather than help it. "There is now a widespread feeling," Gorey reports, "that no one is all right and no one all wrong. There is a new willingness to admit that the other guy has a point and that name-calling only makes things worse."

There were other signs within the Administration, other marks of recognition that a blustering tone in matters foreign and domestic might have outlived its usefulness. Secretary of State William Rogers made it known that he feels the Administration put too bellicose a face on its Cambodian incursion (see box, following page). The most refreshing turn-around came from Attorney General John Mitchell, who held his first press conference in a year and came across with a display of wit and charm that belied his longstanding tough-guy persona.

Getting Through. The new John Mitchell was well aware that he was performing new tricks. "If there has been any change of tone," he said, "it has been in the recognition that what we have been saying in the Department of Justice and other parts of the Government has not been getting through to the students on the campuses." He vowed to press hard for the 18-year-old vote. Two weeks before, he made a civil libertarian's plea to the Texas bar association: "Given our times, we cannot expect political demonstrations to be conducted like prayer meetings. We must expect language that may incite hostility or may be obscene. This is because the First Amendment protects all of us, including men and women who choose to be unruly, unreasonable and impolite."

The President, landing in 90DEG-plus heat at Louisville's Standiford Field, headed right for the fence in a style reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson, plunging into the crowd with genuine enthusiasm. "I always like to come back to the heart of America," he exulted over a borrowed bullhorn. At the All-Star game in Cincinnati, he fulfilled a fan's fantasy straight from George Plimpton's Out of My League: he pitched two clean strikes, one to each of the two major league team captains, and then cheerfully tossed three more baseballs up into the stands. Just before game time he predicted a National League victory; after twelve innings he was proved right by a 5-4 score.

Northeast Philosophy. It is the season not for bombast but for baseball, and Richard Nixon knows it as well as the undershirted beer drinker stashed before his television set second-guessing the Sunday doubleheader. Jim Westover, who handles a nightly four-hour telephone talk show on WEE1 radio in Boston, describes his recent callers this way: "They're awfully sick of the big issues. They just love to talk of something simple and homespun and amusing and highly inconsequential."

All passion is not spent, only suspended. After noting the phenomenon of the blahs, The Columbia News went on to observe: "It seems Middle America is taking a breather in its fight against war, the hippies and the economy to gain some strength for perhaps an all-out assault this fall." The nation's vacationing students appear ready to try one last time to work within the system for reform, but if they lose in November, the old story of violent unrest may well unreel anew. The Administration's moves to end dual school systems in the South have muted some criticism from blacks, but angered some former Nixon supporters. Last week South Carolina's Senator Strom Thurmond, once a defender of Richard Nixon against the Wallaceites, accused the President of following a "Northeast philosophy." Said he: "I can only conclude that a group of liberal advisers around the President are misleading him, and that their advice will bring disruption to the nation."

Ultimately, the question is whether the time of the blahs, of exhaustion with the great issues of the anguished day, will end in a sorely needed new era of good feeling--or whether it is merely prelude to one more groggy round of national crisis.

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