Box Score on Reform

If ours is not to be an age of revolution, it must be an age for reform.

EXPRESSED early in his Administration by President Nixon and often repeated since, this aspiration may become one principal gauge by which the Nixon presidency is measured in the future. For an essentially conservative President, he has shown surprising willingness to embrace innovation. The Administration's drastic new plan for overhauling foreign aid is the latest example. Taken together, the reform proposals represent a remarkable formula for progress, and if they came to fruition would mark the Nixon era as one that instituted major changes on the American scene. Nothing much has happened yet, but the plans can be credited at least with stimulating public discussion, an inevitable first step toward acceptance.

There have been some concrete successes. Nixon is well on the way to achieving a historic reconstruction of the postal service, ending its status as a quadrennial patronage prize and placing it in the hands of a semi-independent corporation. He has made Selective Service more equitable. He has reorganized the key decision-making and administrative apparatus of the White House. In foreign and military affairs, Nixon has formulated and begun to accomplish a gradual but potentially significant pullback in both commitments and forces --a more realistic alignment of policy with power. Other reforms, however, have faltered. Among them:

WELFARE. In a bold move that could drastically alter government's attitude and obligations toward the nation's poor, the Administration has proposed scrapping the chaotic jumble of federally assisted state welfare programs. Replacing them would be a uniform federal program based on the pioneering concept that the U.S. should assure every poor family a specified minimum annual income. The family-assistance bill is languishing in the Senate Finance Committee, partly because it was technically deficient as first proposed. It has been attacked by liberal Democrats who want the income level raised. Most Republicans on the committee also oppose it, and as of last week the President was still unable to change their minds.

REVENUE SHARING. A cornerstone of the Administration's concept of a "New Federalism," the plan would give the states an automatic share of federal tax revenues. This would theoretically enable government functions to be performed more effectively at lower levels. The bill has not even had committee hearings. Chairman Wilbur Mills of the House Ways and Means Committee objects to it because he does not believe the Federal Government should give grants to states without attaching controls over how the money is used. The committee's ranking Republican, Wisconsin's John Byrnes also opposes the measure.

BLACK CAPITALISM. One of the few Nixon programs that blacks in particular could embrace, it sought to encourage private business and financial firms to support and invest in black-run enterprises. Nothing much has come of it, and the Administration has even stopped talking about it as an urgent goal. The reasons are multiple: the economic recession, the reluctance of bankers to extend funds, the shortage of experienced black businessmen and the lack of practical Administration leverage.

PHILADELPHIA PLAN. Designed to help blacks break into some of the restrictive trade unions, the Philadelphia Plan accepted the controversial idea that government can set racial quotas for construction workers on projects it finances. It was tried with much publicity in Philadelphia, but it has become mired in litigation. Even the Administration admits that there has been little progress.

ELECTORAL COLLEGE. Although he has shifted ground on just how it ought to be achieved, Nixon has endorsed the abandonment of the Electoral College. After a constitutional amendment providing for direct popular election of the President and Vice President passed the House, Nixon supported that approach. But last week the measure was left in limbo in the Senate when its supporters could not muster a two-thirds majority to cut off a low-key filibuster against it. One reason was that Nixon declined to do any lobbying, even among Republicans, to support the change.

EARLY EDUCATION. Last year Nixon announced that the Administration would commit itself to finding new means of attacking social ills by concentrating attention on the very young. The central idea was that the first five years of life are crucial and that educational and health programs must be devised for needy children. The implication was that the focus of previous Administrations on Head Start and elementary school aid for children in poverty areas was worthwhile but too late for maximum effectiveness. Partly because of a lack of energetic follow-through, one of the few results has been the creation of an Office of Child Development in HEW.

In its efforts to sell the reforms, the Administration has shown both ineptness and lack of zeal. Nixon's legislative aides tend to frame many of these issues into a them-v.-us contest as they antagonize rather than persuade the lawmakers. They seem to disdain the kind of backroom manipulation so necessary to effect compromise instead of deadlock. Nixon the Reformer himself often displays a distinct lack of enthusiasm and effort after introducing proposals, perhaps because of his curiously aloof style of leadership, perhaps because he is trying not to antagonize conservatives unduly.

Yet setbacks obviously cannot be blamed wholly on the Administration. Nixon faces tough resistance in an opposition-controlled Congress; Liberal Democrats seem to be automatically suspicious of anything he proposes, even an idea close to one they have long promoted. At the same time, innovations are often opposed on ideological grounds by conservatives of both parties--and by Washington's entrenched bureaucrats.

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