The Issue of McGovern

MARCHING forth from Miami Beach last July, George McGovern and his men believed that by Oct. 1 they would be closing in on Richard Nixon, savaging him with the war and that Democratic standby, the economy. Most of all, the McGovernites calculated, the issue of 1972 would be Nixon the man--the old "tricky" image, the used-car dealer, the walking credibility crisis. The irony is that the election so far is turning not on Nixon's character and credibility but on McGovern's.

The problem incenses and bewilders McGovern. He told a LIFE interviewer, "Inside, I've been alternately weeping and boiling. The quality I treasure most is my credibility." All last week McGovern's frustration seemed to mount. His rhetoric took on a new stridence, a tendency toward verbal overkill that was at odds with the image of plain-spoken reason he had earlier cultivated. At times there were notes of self-righteousness and occasional self-pity.

His dominant theme was Government corruption. Where earlier he had called Nixon's the most corrupt Administration since Warren Harding, he now called it "the most corrupt in the history of the U.S." The evidence, said McGovern, was everywhere--in the Russian wheat deal, in the President's $10 million in secret campaign contributions, in the ITT affair and the Watergate bugging. Then he broadened his definition to include the war in Viet Nam, which he said "corrupts our principles." Nixon's Supreme Court nominations, he went on, corrupt the Constitution and were "the worst Supreme Court appointments in history." Watching it all, James Reston of the New York Times recalled Andrew Jackson's supposed remark at the Battle of New Orleans: "Better elevate them guns a little lower." McGovern may have been correct in his anger at the absence of indignation in the U.S. (see TIME ESSAY). But overstatement only promised to diminish his credibility further.

In Chicago McGovern charged that the Republicans were funneling money to groups in the city's Spanish-speaking community to tell people that they had nothing to gain from either party, and thus reduce voter registration. Then McGovern added that four years ago the G.O.P. gave funds to black militants for the same purpose. When reporters asked the basis of his charge, McGovern said that he heard it from "reliable people." What organizations received the money? "I'm not going to divulge that." Finally a reporter suggested that the unsubstantiated allegation smacked of McCarthyism, and McGovern answered: "The difference is that this is the truth. Joe McCarthy lied to us." Later, a McGovern operative did attempt to document the charge at least in part.

Light. Only twice last week did McGovern abandon his slashing attacks on Nixon to set forth some proposals of his own. In New York, he detailed a program for combating crime with gun-control laws, additional foot patrolmen, tenant patrols, a "national light-the-streets" plan and other ideas. In Cleveland he turned to foreign policy (see following story). This week, in a half-hour national television address, he will spell out his specific plan for getting the U.S. out of Viet Nam. It will come almost exactly four years after Nixon's campaign speech in which he declared, "Those who have had a chance for four years and could not produce peace should not be given another chance."

In a speech before United Press International editors in Washington last week, McGovern gave three possible explanations for why his campaign still lags far behind in the polls: "First, a failure by me to communicate my real character and veracity to the voters; second, a masterful political selling job by Mr. Nixon; third, a possible inability by some of the press to bring the same critical examination to the two candidates."

McGovern perhaps is correct in criticizing the press for focusing considerable attention on his earlier staff squabbles without probing very deeply into Nixon's bland and often hermetically sealed operations. Sometimes the chaotic openness and candor of the McGovern campaign has perhaps invited stories about dissension, while the Nixon noncampaign has too often reduced reporters to press-release journalism.

Undeniably there has also been a zigzag effect in the press. Many reporters who were taken aback by McGovern's success in the primaries wrote admiringly of him then, speculating about the deep sources of discontent that he had tapped, but grew more critical and skeptical after the convention.

McGovern's own behavior is also very much to blame, and that fact is most damagingly symbolized by what the numerically minded Chinese would undoubtedly call "The Failure of the Double Thousands." His $1,000-per-person revenue sharing plan, first offered, then withdrawn, left him in the double jeopardy of seeming both unwise and wishy-washy, although he spiritedly argued last week that a mature leader must have the right to change his mind. Other items fell into place, leaving the impression of just another politician with his moistened finger to the wind. The purity of his stand on Viet Nam made it all the worse when he recently allowed that Lyndon Johnson had only inherited the war. McGovern initially denied then admitted that he had given Pierre Salinger instructions for a mission to the North Vietnamese in Paris. Both Nixon's and McGovern's advisers agree that the Thomas Eagleton affair did the most to undermine the Democrat's image. McGovern let the debacle run on for days, first pledging "1,000% " support for Eagleton, then dropping hints to reporters that Eagleton would be replaced--a performance disastrously at odds with McGovern's pledge that he would never be the sort of politician who "says one thing to the press in public and something else in private."

In his U.P.I, speech last week, McGovern continued to insist that "I handled the matter of Senator Eagleton's candidacy with compassion and with genuine concern for the best interests of the nation. The nation can ill afford to debate this issue while death stalks the face of Indochina and our nation deteriorates under the worst leadership in our history." At week's end, after crowds in Des Moines and Kansas City, Mo., gave him his warmest receptions of the campaign, McGoyern flew on to Eagleton's home town of St. Louis, where he joined his former running mate and delivered a feeling apologia. "If there were mistakes," he said, "they were honest mistakes of the heart." Dropping his strident tones, McGovern spoke eloquently of his vision of the presidency and the nation, of his conception of "the moral leadership worthy of a great people."

The Republican strategy this year has long been obvious. In the manner of any incumbent with a solid lead, Nixon means to let McGovern stew in his own frustrations, to make McGovern himself the issue as long as possible. The race this fall has in fact been no campaign at all in the customary sense. The Republican President scarcely seems a candidate; the man who barely gained a 43.4% plurality in 1968 sits now in distant, almost imperial self-satisfaction while the polls promise landslides.

Last week, in a surprise news conference, Nixon casually dismissed Mc-Govern's corruption charges. "I think the responsible members of the Democratic Party will be turned off by this kind of campaigning," he said. "I am not going to dignify such comments." Politically he did not need to.

One White House aide, surveying the campaign, offered this analysis: "McGovern's the issue, and he's only got five weeks. I don't think he can do it. If the people keep focusing on McGovern, then we win by 20 [points]. If they vote on how we've handled the economy over the last four years, then we might lose the election. The housewife certainly doesn't think we've been too hot on that. We're not 28 points ahead. McGovern is 28 points behind. There's no way the old man can win an election by more than 55% against a strong Democrat. You've got to have someone against you like McGovern."

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