What Nixon Might Have Said

The President's harsh campaign line --in effect denouncing the Democrats as the party of permissiveness and charging them with being soft on violence --was typified in his Phoenix speech. In it, he leaned heavily on the incident during which his car was stoned by a mob in San Jose. Telecast again by the Republican National Committee on election eve, it became the party's campaign windup. Though the President sees things differently, there is considerable evidence that the speech did Republican candidates more harm than good. To many voters, the whole approach evidently suggested the rhetoric of the stump politician, not the reasoning of a President who must lead a nation. It is possible to imagine that the speech, without being "above politics," might have been more productive if Nixon had said something like this:

MY fellow Americans, in a less critical time for our country, the temptation would be great to exploit the San Jose incident for partisan purposes. But we have gone beyond the point where social unrest and violence can be so used. It is not enough merely to denounce violence--everyone denounces it. There is no point in uttering angry words however justified --America is already afflicted by too much anger. It would be easy, indeed, to blame the disturbance at San Jose and others like it on a climate of permissiveness created by my political opponents. Even if I did so successfully, however, the success would be only political and short-run. The long-run effect would be to perpetuate the divisions and the animosities that trouble our country's life. I know that the vast majority in both parties are opposed to violence and disruption with equal firmness. Sowing suspicion, fanning fear and inflaming hatreds are not acceptable substitutes for the art of persuasion.

Tonight I want to persuade you to vote Republican, not because we are more patriotic, or more virtuous, or more opposed to violence than others, but because this Administration has considerable achievements to its credit and they deserve support. We have brought home many Americans, and intend to bring home more, from the throes of a tragic war. By standing firm, this Administration placed America in the role of mediator rather than of intruder during the crisis in Jordan. We are negotiating with Russia to limit strategic arms production. At home, we have taken in hand the difficult, unpopular, but necessary task of halting inflation. We have proposed major reforms in welfare, Selective Service and revenue sharing. We want to do more--much more.

This cannot be accomplished, however, by Americans vying with each other to show who can be more tough-minded or questioning each other's motives. Recriminations between conservatives and liberals are largely futile. In one sense of our American tradition, we are all conservatives; in another, we are all liberals. We Republicans feel that the Democratic-liberal approach has been tried for a decade and that it is time to try something else. At the same time, we recognize that we have much to learn from one another. We must pool our ideas, combine our inventiveness and, without abandoning our principles, join together to solve the problems before us.

You have your vote. You have faith in this great country. Use that vote and that faith to help this Administration turn the nation away from hatred, chaos and division, away from fixing blame for problems and toward solving them.

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