St. George Prepares to Face the Dragon
The fecundity of the unexpected far exceeds the statesman's prudence.
--Proudhon
WITH a cool, shrewd assurance that astounded and dismayed longtime professionals in their party, the neophyte legioris of George McGovern polished off a political miracle in the cramped but controlled atmosphere of Miami Beach's convention hall. The outsiders had barged through the gates of reform to lift the "prairie populist" from national obscurity to the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 18 amazing months. Exuberant only in the early morning hours of their champion's victorious entrance into the hall, they promptly and euphorically vowed to perform a second miracle: the defeat of Richard Nixon. That challenge is not only to the Republican President; it confronts the nation with a historic choice on the kind of society to which it aspires.
In his Messianic drive to unseat Nixon, the minister's son from South Dakota faces even greater handicaps than he did in his astonishing march to the nomination. Although his party suffered no humiliation similar to the one caused by the street violence and turbulence of the 1968 Chicago convention, it emerged from Miami Beach badly split over McGovern's brand of populism and the reformist zeal of his insurgents in taking party control away from its veteran power brokers. At the same time, national approval of Richard Nixon's conduct as President is running at 56%, and a preconvention Gallup poll puts him 16% ahead of McGovern in a two-way race. His sensational summitry has earned widespread praise, even from Democrats. Nixon has skillfully used his presidential powers to take action that could attract traditional Democratic blocs to his side, including his stand against busing and abortion and in favor of aid to parochial schools and relief of the property tax. He moved, however belatedly, to control inflation, and he may yet achieve a ceasefire in Viet Nam before Election Day. History too is on Nixon's side; no incumbent President since Herbert Hoover has lost a bid for a second term.
These formidable facts do not terrify either McGovern or the unorthodox, relatively inexperienced but toughly pragmatic men guiding his campaign. They claim that the conventional political wisdom about the self-interest of various voting blocs, whether labor, blacks, Jews, affluent suburbanites or white-collar professionals is no longer true, and that the blocs are merging into broader concerns that cut across the usual lines, and that regional affiliations are largely losing their meaning. There is a restless, undefinable yearning for change, they say, and it is producing what McGovern termed in his acceptance speech a political ferment comparable to "the eras of Jefferson, Jackson and Roosevelt." "We're just trying to ride the waves that are coming in," explains one of McGovern's top theorists, Fred Dutton, a lawyer who advised both John and Robert Kennedy.
Facelessness. More specifically, Dutton claims that suburbanites and union members now find a new bond in their common concern about "instability, facelessness and congestion" in U.S. society. "Psychic problems are rapidly outpacing economic concerns." The blue-collar workers are "increasingly young, black and female," he argues, and this means that "their concerns are not at all what George Meany thinks they are." Thus, despite the open animosity of AFL-CIO President Meany and other labor leaders, the McGovern staff feels that the Senator can attract rank and file worker support. Dutton also expects McGovern to tap sufficiently a general resentment against the powerlessness of individuals and the power of big Government, business and labor so as to cut into traditional Republican strength in the suburbs, claiming "That's where the battlefield is."
Less dependent upon the old coalitions and seeking to appeal to what Florida Governor Reubin Askew called in the keynote speech "a coalition of protest," the nominee's advisers see his specific proposals as part of an attempt to respond to the same kind of discontent and desire for change that Alabama Governor George Wallace so bitingly articulated but did not satisfy. Thus, a basic thrust of the McGovern campaign will be to portray Nixon as the champion of bigness--citing, for example, the Administration's coziness with ITT officials--and as the most prominent representative of a political system that voters want to change. With the Administration depicted as deceptive, secretive and unwilling to "level with the people," the McGovern advisers feel that their man, who speaks both bluntly and softly, will provide an effective contrast in character and style with Nixon and will appear more sincere.
The McGovern campaign will thus be directed as much to creating a mood of candor and receptivity to new ideas as to pushing specific proposals. Ironically, it will be similar to the personality-oriented, almost evangelical appeal for faith in a candidate that was unsuccessful for Edmund Muskie. McGovern said in his acceptance speech that he had already benefited from "a faith that can move mountains."
As the choice between Nixon and McGovern becomes clearer, the McGovern strategists predict, their man will pick up the support of the Old Guard Democrats whose egos are now bruised, as well as many of the Independents, whose votes can be decisive. It is when general themes are translated into proposals for action that a campaign risks alienating many voters, and McGovern has been unusually bold--if sometimes confusing--in detailing his programs. The McGovern advisers contend that they have studies showing that his call for a $32 billion cut in the defense budget and his plans for redistributing wealth by shifting the tax burden is far more popular than is generally thought. They feel that Nixon is in a bind when he praises the arms limitations of the SALT agreements but at the same time asks for more defense money. The key to acceptance of tax changes, they say, is "the breakoff point" between those who will pay the same or less and those who will pay more. They now say that only families earning at least $20,000 will face higher taxes.
Yet many of the McGovern tax proposals are still in flux, and many analysts believe that he will have to hit at least the upper middle class taxpayers harder than this $20,000 dividing point suggests if his various spending programs are to be feasible. His call for the elimination of tax loopholes has not yet focused on precisely which ones would be axed; many of them benefit many more taxpayers than just the wealthy. Moreover, his proposals for a stiff rise (as much as $17 billion) in corporate taxes could limit business investment, expansion and dividends. The prospect frightens Wall Street, where a stock market decline is feared. Certainly there are millions of voters who may not have high incomes now but aspire to the kind of wealth McGovern's tax program would limit. There also are many who can be persuaded that defense cuts endanger national security.
Only the campaign and the election can prove whether McGovern's proposals are acceptable to the majority. The issues of 1972 alone will present voters with one of the clearest choices between candidates they have been offered since F.D.R. ran on his New Deal innovations against Alf Landon in 1936.
Yet it was organization, more than issues, that brought McGovern his nomination, and his army of enthusiastic grass-roots volunteers face an immensely more difficult task in organizing and canvassing a nation than they did in taking on primary states in sequence. So far, only about 15 key organizers are set to go. There is a strong network of massive manpower available at lower levels, however, in about 35 states, where McGovern's superb organizations blitzed delegate caucuses and primary elections. The McGovern staff is trying to bring local candidates and professional politicians into his cause and will offer cooperative candidates the aid of this volunteer pool in their campaigns for lesser offices. The young enthusiasts will readily work with the regular Democratic organizations, Campaign Manager Gary Hart says, if they are wanted --and they will move in anyway even if they are not (see box, page 10). He concedes, however, that they are not tough enough to contend with the outright opposition of rough ward captains in a place like Chicago if it should develop.
New Ballpark. Hart & Co. are placing much of their hopes for victory in a massive registration drive among the some 25 million young people between 18 and 24 who will be eligible to vote for the first time, partly because of the new 18-year-old voting age. The drive will be helped by a 1970 congressional act that outlaws residency requirements longer than 30 days in presidential elections. Those two legal changes mean, says Dutton, that "the shape of the ballpark has changed; past patterns are no longer valid." A study by Student Vote, a nonpartisan group trying to mobilize young voters, claims that if only half of the 25 million vote and just 60% of them choose McGovern, this would swing to McGovern six states (Tennessee, Alaska, California, Missouri, New Jersey and Ohio) that went Republican in 1968. If he held the Humphrey states, a shaky assumption, and added the six's 118 electoral votes, he would defeat Nixon.
There are, of course, multiple possibilities of error in such calculations. At the moment, for example, Illinois seems beyond McGovern's grasp without cooperation from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Texas, which went for Humphrey, looks ripe for Nixon because of McGovern's liberalism and the blunt opposition of John Connally, the Texas Democrat who has defected to the Republican Administration.
The Republicans will be moving just as energetically as the McGovern forc es to marshal volunteers for similar get-out-the-vote drives. They will use their ample funding to dominate television and print appeals. Nixon is expected to wage a relatively dignified, "I am the President" campaign, avoiding the shrill law-and-order pitch that backfired in the 1970 congressional elections. He could come across as both more stable and wiser than McGovern.
Republicans and Administration spokesmen like Connally are already assailing McGovern as a radical whose policies are out of step with the majority of Americans. After the nomination, Connally conferred with the President at San Clemente, then termed McGovern's proposal on welfare reform "the height of fiscal irresponsibility," his defense cuts "a retreat from responsibility," and his world views "all too isolationist in character." To promise as
McGovern did in Miami Beach that he would get every U.S. prisoner out of Viet Nam within 90 days of his inauguration, Connally said, was not only unfair because it would be beyond his power to achieve but also "sabotages the efforts of this Administration and the peace negotiations in Paris." McGovern bases the promise on his acceptance of Hanoi's word that the prisoners will be released once the U.S. withdraws.
Nevertheless, as the more candid Republican strategists study the McGovern phenomenon, they are not at all as euphoric about the prospect of taking him on as they once professed to be. As a highly partisan observer of the McGovern operation in Miami Beach, Interior Secretary Rogers C.B. Morton was impressed. Said he: "I came down here to take back the word that this is a force to be reckoned with--and you'd better believe it. There is a great unknown out there."
What will be tested is the McGovern thesis of the nature of the forces now influencing American voters. Certainly, there is widespread discontent and a feeling of frustration at the inability of individuals to affect national institutions, including Government. The McGovern drive has convincingly demonstrated that people outside organized politics can band together and take over a national party. But whether the yearning for change goes beyond individual desires for a better economic break and a wish to end the Viet Nam War is far from certain.
There may not be any decisive sentiment to fundamentally alter the U.S. economic and political system. The disgust with Viet Nam may not extend to the broader isolationist mood that McGovern's defense policies and even his acceptance theme, "Come home, America," suggest. Perhaps all of the conventional political blocs still wield decisive electoral power--and are moving away from the Democratic Party. Or, even if McGovern is riding a movement as pervasive as his ardent advisers envision, the national electorate could find him inadequate to lead it.
In a year of political surprises, no one can be certain precisely what gravities are pulling the nation in which political directions. Only the campaign --and perhaps some totally unforeseen events--will determine whether McGovern comes closest to reading the compass right. But the candid observation of McGovern's theorist Dutton is difficult to dispute. Says he: "The contest is between two candidates representing the classic WASP culture, competing in an atmosphere of volatility, unpredictability and alienation. It will be one of the most exciting roller-coaster rides ever."
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