The Brooke Scenario

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At Muskie headquarters on election night, 1972, the candidate watches in stunned silence. Pennsylvania, a swing state, has already gone Republican, with surprising Nixon strength turning up in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Illinois and Ohio are slipping away from the Democrats, thanks to similar Nixon support in the cities.

Muskie remembers the day in Los Angeles, more than a year before, when he candidly told a group of black leaders that he would not choose a Negro as his running mate because, "in view of the climate in the country today, if a black man were on the ticket, we would both lose."

Subsequent polls confirmed his judgment. But his analysis applied to Democrats. How could he have foreseen that Richard Nixon would seize the chance for one more bold surprise and name Massachusetts' Edward W. Brooke, the Senate's only black member, to replace Spiro Agnew on the 1972 G.O.P. ticket? Muskie shakes his head ruefully as the NBC computer awards California to Nixon-Brooke on the basis of early returns from Oakland and Watts.

The fantasy is perhaps farfetched. Ed Brooke is not in the first rank of prospects to replace Spiro Agnew if Nixon decides next summer that the present Vice President is more of a political liability than an asset. The men most often named now are Treasury Secretary John Connally and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. But the possibility of Brooke fascinates political leaders.

By the Ears. First, there is the Nixonian instinct for the unexpected. Says Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott: "Nothing would please the President more than to take the country by the ears with something like this." Nixon respects Brooke; as President-elect, he offered him a choice of three Cabinet-level jobs: Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and chief of the United Nations delegation. Since then, Brooke has opposed the Administration on major issues--the SST, the ABM, the Haynsworth and Carswell Supreme Court nominations. Last week he announced that he will vote against confirming William Rehnquist for the court. Despite such abrasions, however, the President, as New York Senator Jacob Javits observes, "has always been intrigued by Brooke."

Nixon may sense that, with his contradictions, Brooke might make a fetching candidate. His Senate voting record rates an 88% approval from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action--higher even than Ted Kennedy's--yet he projects the image of a moderate. Cool, reflective, middleclass, he has been accused of being a NASP --the Negro equivalent of UP, the WASP.

His successful appeal to the voters of Massachusetts has far transcended racial politics; some Bay State Democrats call him "the best politician in the state,'' without excepting Kennedy. Though Massachusetts has only a 3% black population, Brooke won his Senate seat in 1966 by beating former Governor Endicott Peabody by 438,-712 votes out of nearly 2,000,000 cast.

Long Shot. In 1968 Humphrey won 85% of the black vote, with 12% going to Nixon and 3% to Wallace. With so many black votes concentrated in large northern states and in critical states in the South, if the Republican ticket next year could pull even a fraction more of the black votes away from the Democrats, it might mean the difference between winning and losing. Some white liberals as well might vote for Nixon because of Brooke.

"A sizable number of minority voters, not just blacks, would come over," Brooke observes. "I think it would make a difference in California, Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania. A black on the ticket would obviously do much more for the Republicans than for the Democrats. I think the President would gain more than he would lose."

Most Democrats doubt that Nixon will try to elect the nation's first black Vice President. But the prospect makes them uneasy. Says Frank Mankiewicz, a George McGovern campaign strategist: "Given just reasonable foreign policy success and economic improvement, I would say that ticket would end the campaign. It would be a shoo-in."

Nixon, who is sensitive about offending his rightward constituency, would undoubtedly lose some Southern white support, but those votes would probably go to George Wallace, not to the Democrats. The President might also suffer in the North, among white working-class families unhappy about busing and housing integration. At the same time a Nixon-Brooke choice would permit many voters opposed to integration to salve their consciences, voting for Nixon while simultaneously proving that they are not bigoted. Says Delano Lewis, a former Brooke aide: "It would be a stroke of Republican genius."

Brooke himself regards the prospect as "a very long shot for '72--remote." For one thing, Brooke might find it difficult to accept the nomination without some assurance that Nixon meant to pursue more liberal domestic policies. He is now making plans to get re-elected to the Senate next year. But as Hugh Scott sees it: "If it is not Agnew, Connally has the best chance. Absent Connally, Brooke would have a medium shot at it. A President who goes to Peking and to Moscow can go to Brooke."

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