What Will He Do the Next Four Years?
EVEN as they pulled voting levers in massive numbers for him, Americans had no way of knowing just where Richard Nixon intended to lead them. After 26 years in politics, including four in the merciless glare of national attention that always focuses on the White House, he remained one of the most unpredictable and ineluctable men in public life. The politician who had always been off and running toward the next race had won the ultimate victory. He could stop now. But what would he do with his triumph?
The past was not illuminating. Nixon had reversed himself too often as circumstances dictated or opportunities beckoned. His shrewdly protective campaign had concentrated far more upon what he would not do than on what he expected to do. Yet there he was, the small-town boy from Whittier, so often in the past seeming insecure and introspective, so often tormented by self-proclaimed crises and ridiculed by scoffing critics, now vindicated by the only standard a democratic leader and professional politician appreciates: an overwhelming victory at the polls. He held unchallengeable control of the Executive Branch and had been handed a rare chance to shape the nation's future in his own fashion.
The fact that Richard Nixon need no longer worry about appealing to masses of voters was either scary or hopeful, depending upon the angle of view. Radicals and some liberals professed to have nightmares of an "unleashed" Nixon, finally free to throw dissenters into jails and to nuke Hanoi if it did not knuckle under. Conservatives held visions of a sturdy figure checking the tide of permissiveness, defending the work ethic against welfare loafers. Some moderates saw in Nixon's record the hope that he would now turn to the nation's neglected social ills; they cited his dramatic initiatives in traveling to Moscow and Peking, and his application of wage and price controls as evidence of his capacity for change.
Actually, all of those prophecies may well miss the mark. After studying the past period, calculating fiscal limitations and sounding out their sources in all of the Government's major departments and the White House, TIME Washington correspondents discovered little evidence that, having initiated historic breakthroughs in foreign relations, Nixon would now carve out a program of domestic achievement that was equally impressive. Officials, of course, would not necessarily talk with freedom about future programs just before the election, even if they knew of any. The evidence is not conclusive for another reason: a lame duck President's concern about how history will rate him may yet produce surprises.
One of Nixon's own final televised campaign speeches, billed as a "Look to the Future," did not provide sure clues either. Much of it was devoted to clarifying his view of the touchy final negotiations for ending the Viet Nam War and his renewed pledge that "our children can be the first generation in this century to escape the scourge of war." His remarks on the domestic future were couched in vague terms about the need for Americans to achieve "more kindness in our relations with each other" and "to find a new zest in the pursuit of excellence." But then Nixon all along had deliberately failed to outline programs and obviously was not going to take the chance of getting specific in the final phases of a winning campaign. In his speech, his only domestic promise was "I will do all in my power to avoid the need for new taxes," and he ruled out any new program "that would violate that pledge." He said that he intended "to shift more responsibility and power back to the states and localities, and most important, to the people."
Relying on civic-minded citizens to resolve social problems through the lowest levels of government is, of course, sweet-sounding democratic theory. Indeed, one innovation in Nixon's New American Revolution was this goal of localizing some responsibilities. Nixon's only enacted measure to promote that shift has been general revenue sharing, under which some $5.3 billion of federal tax money is being reverted to states and cities this year for them to spend as they see fit. Spread thinly everywhere, including suburbia (where it will often be used to reduce local taxes), this will not provide the resources for any sizable community to meet such needs as better mass transportation, improved housing, nonpolluting waste disposal, and better schools. Nixon is expected to press for congressional approval of "special" revenue sharing, targeted at easing specific problems, but apparently this would supplant the larger federal grants already serving similar purposes.
Yet when Nixon predicted in his speech that his localized approach would be attacked as "a retreat from federal responsibilities," he was right ,because to a large extent, it is. Washington stepped into many of the social programs it has launched precisely because states and cities had been unwilling or unable to handle them. Many of the lingering Great Society programs have indeed proved to be ineffective or wasteful and need to be weeded out; most of the ills they were meant to remedy have grown worse.
But the nation's states and cities, many of them impoverished, are even less equipped to deal with them now. It is naive to expect that without outside pressure a city dependent upon a mining industry will, for example, check pollution, or a racially divided community will integrate its schools. The lowest common denominator is often local prejudice. Even many liberals, on the other hand, have been shaken in their traditional faith in federal intervention as an effective agent in dealing with a range of social problems, and Nixon's approach evidently is in tune with the majority's present temper.
Nixon's praise of decentralization is also intended to make a virtue out of what he considers a necessity. Given his Administration's continued commitment to high defense spending and opposition to higher taxes, there is no money available for new or expanded social services. Nixon, the advocate of fiscal prudence, has in fact run up the largest federal deficit of any President since F.D.R., who was fighting both a depression and a world war. Although the fault is not entirely Nixon's, he heads into his second term confined by a fiscal squeeze that will sharply delimit domestic policy. So far he has issued no major requests for new initiatives from his departments to improve on his disappointing first-term domestic record. Indeed, only one instruction has gone out: prepare to tighten your belts.
More specifically, TIME correspondents report the following prospects in areas of pressing domestic concern:
THE ECONOMY. Nixon won many votes by his promise not to raise taxes in his second term, which he hedged later by placing the blame for any forthcoming hike on high spending by a Democratic Congress. Yet most economists see no way to avoid tax increases. If more government services are shifted to state and local governments, they too will be forced to raise taxes ,which would go against another Nixon campaign pitch, the pledge to try to relieve local property taxes. Trying to hold down the current federal budget under $250 billion, Nixon is expected to operate the national economy at less than its full capacity, thus countering inflation at the risk of higher unemployment. This might enable him to lift wage and price controls, but he is not likely to do so until after the period of heavy labor bargaining next year, when many major contracts expire.
DEFENSE. In the face of McGovern's attack on Nixon's defense budget, the President's Pentagon outlays have become almost sacrosanct. Despite the presumably imminent end of the Viet Nam War and the SALT I agreements on limiting new nuclear weapons, the defense budget will rise rather than decline. It will reach at least $76.5 billion in fiscal 1973, an increase of $1.3 billion in expenditures over last year.
This is partly because of higher military pay, needed to give another vote-pulling Nixon campaign promise some hope of fulfillment: ending the draft by creating an all-volunteer military force. It is also dictated by Nixon's insistence on improving existing nuclear weapons and building such new systems as the Trident submarine and the B-1 bomber.
RACE. Nixon shows little evident interest in America's most serious continuing challenge: race relations. He feels no political obligation to blacks, who again voted overwhelmingly Democratic. While apparently retreating from school integration, Nixon offers no plan to help blacks move into white neighborhoods and thus alter racial housing and school-district patterns. He is expected to appoint more blacks to Government posts, perhaps even the Cabinet, which might make a significant symbolic point but could have little practical effect. While the ghettos have not been burning, racial discontent remains a potentially explosive problem.
THE COURT. Almost as disquieting and perhaps of even longer-lasting effect has been Nixon's indifference to the need to appoint men of the highest legal standards to the Supreme Court. After Congress quite properly rejected two of his appointees and forced him to raise his sights, he successfully elevated men who, although better, were of uneven quality. They share his constitutional philosophy, voting as a bloc in 53 out of 70 of the court's recent nine-man decisions. Nixon quite likely will be able to make more appointments in his next term: William O. Douglas is 74, Thurgood Marshall is in shaky health at 64, William Brennan, 66, has talked of retirement. A great need in the emerging Nixon court is for sharp intellects who can write good law; the court is short on intellectual conscience and independent scholarship.
CRIME. Street crime is one social problem that is most fittingly a local responsibility. But because it is one that bothers many people the most, Nixon has campaigned hard on the issue so hard, in fact, that he has made it a White House concern. There can be endless arguments over selective statistics. Based on an FBI index of seven serious crimes, the annual rise in the crime rate has dropped sharply from as much as 17% in the 1960s to 1% this year. Yet there have been more than 6,000,000 such crimes committed in the past 12 months, compared with 4,500,000 in L.B.J.'s last year, an increase of fully one-third under Nixon.
He has pumped some $1.5 billion into state and local law-enforcement agencies, although much of it has gone for riot-control gear and other unproductive frills. Far more effective has been the Administration's drive against organized crime. This is expected to continue, as is a new emphasis on antitrust prosecutions, including jail terms for corporate price fixers, and new attention to such white-collar criminals as stock manipulators, tax dodgers and perpetrators of consumer frauds.
DRUGS. This is the domestic front on which Nixon has been most effective. His drive against the importation of her-oin has been tough. He has increased federal funds for drug-abuse prevention from $112 million in his first year to $714 million this year. The total should approach $ 1 billion next year.
ENVIRONMENT. The first President to face environmental issues seriously, Nixon took up the challenge with ringing rhetoric and some admirable action. He put fragmented activities into a new Environmental Protection Agency, gave it a vigorous director in William Ruckelshaus. Nixon proposed commendable measures ranging from air-pollution control to wiser land use. He stopped a cross-Florida barge canal and an Everglades jetport, rushed new measures to create more parks.
But as the recession grew, environmental concerns began to be balanced against business interests and the costs of protective measures that were often too heedlessly demanded by ecological crusaders. The Administration supported the SST, more offshore oil drilling, and fought some air and water cleanup proposals made by Democratic Senators. Nixon's credibility on environmental issues was hurt by his veto of a really rigorous, and expensive, $24.7 billion bill to clean up the nation's waters by 1985. Congress overrode the veto, but whether Nixon will spend the money is in doubt.
ENERGY. Although environmentalists may object, a major Nixon aim is a matter of genuine national urgency: to find new fuel and electrical-energy sources for the U.S. This will include support of oil supertankers, an Alaskan pipeline, nuclear breeder-reactor plants, more offshore drilling.
HEALTH. Nixon never seriously pushed any general improvement of health services, although this was one of the goals of his proposed "revolution." The Administration did not follow up its proposal to enact a comprehensive health insurance plan that would heavily rely on private insurance carriers and employers. Nixon is expected to propose this again, however, if only to counter a more sweeping plan by Senator Edward Kennedy that would require a greater financial role by Government.
WELFARE. Welfare reform is another of Nixon's first-term priorities that have been unfulfilled, again partly because he seemed to want a political issue more than a fairly compromised law. It is sure to become once more an issue of contention between the President and Congress. Despite his campaign denunciation of McGovern's abandoned $1,000-per-person income guarantee, Nixon's plan embraces the minimum-income principle, although on a far more modest scale. Just where to place that income floor may remain a topic for argument. Nixon's decisive re-election may reinforce his desire to make the work requirements more stringent.
EDUCATION. Nixon's highly political manipulation of the school-busing issue has thrown a huge question mark over the future of school integration, just at a time when it began to affect large Northern cities. New York City, for example, has recently seen some anti-integration scenes just as ugly as that in which white mothers in Little Rock jeered black youngsters 15 painful years ago. Nixon has proposed upgrading deficient neighborhood schools instead, but he has vetoed as too expensive legislation that might help do that.
Nixon heads into his last term under a cloud of partisan acrimony engendered by the charges and counter-charges growing out of the Watergate political-espionage investigations. A criminal trial, several civil suits, a Senate committee investigation led by Democrats, all may poison the atmosphere. The highly protective and pugnacious White House domestic staff seems more adept at political infighting than at helping the President govern by conciliating contending factions.
Nixon's final flurry of legislative vetoes, ostensibly to check federal spending, makes a second-term honeymoon with Congress highly unlikely. Despite Nixon's huge win, each elected legislator feels that he, too, has earned a mandate of his own. Too often Nixon was either overantagonistic toward Congress or blithely aloof concerning the fate of his legislation; he sorely needs to improve on his 1972 record of winning only 65% of the votes on which he took a clear stand (the lowest percentage since President Eisenhower's record in 1960) and on his taking such a position on only 81 votes, the smallest number since such an accounting began in the 1950s.
Since questions of illegal activity have arisen in the Watergate case and in the handling of Nixon campaign funds, one way to help clear the contentious air would be to place the Justice Department in less partisan hands. The practice of having such political operators as Robert Kennedy serving as John Kennedy's Attorney General and John Mitchell doing the same for Nixon makes the department suspect, as in the G.O.P.-ITT controversy. There are rumors, in fact, that Mitchell's man Richard Kleindienst may be eased out of his attorney generalship after a decent interval in the next Administration. One name mentioned so far as a successor, however, would hardly conciliate Democrats; it is that of John Ehrlichman, Nixon's aggressive adviser on domestic affairs. Also suggested has been Clark MacGregor, Nixon's campaign manager.
Other changes are expected in Cabinet positions. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird has made clear to reporters his intention to leave; New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, once a bitter Nixon critic, is rumored to be a possible successor. George Romney has announced his imminent departure as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Assistant Secretary Samuel Jackson, a black, might give blacks more hope for racially enlightened housing policies; Donald Rumsfeld, director of the Cost of Living Council, has been mentioned too. Also expected to leave, although there has been little talk of who might replace them, are Labor Secretary James Hodgson and Transportation Secretary John Volpe.
One of the most intriguing personnel situations involves foreign policy; Kissinger has completely overshadowed Secretary of State William Rogers. Yet the loyal Rogers shows few public signs of frustration over this and might stay on, although he would likely accept an appointment to the Supreme Court. In that case, Kissinger might move over to State, formalizing in that department the kind of harddriving, fast decision-making he instituted in the White House. Most likely to remain in their posts are Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz, Commerce Secretary Peter Peterson, Interior Secretary Rogers Morton, Treasury Secretary George Shultz and HEW Secretary Elliot Richardson, although the last-named is seen as another prospect for State if Rogers leaves.
There are signs that Nixon may call upon some intellectual outsiders in a search for advice on domestic affairs. A meeting of such men with Ehrlichman was recently postponed. They consisted mainly of conservatives and one-time liberals apparently disillusioned with the Federal Government's ability to solve social problems and concerned about enhancing individual initiative as well as individual rights. They have upheld American institutions against bitter attack from the left over the past few years. Among them were Political Scientist Martin Diamond, an advocate of what he calls the "Madisonian constitutional system" and a onetime worker for Socialist Norman Thomas; Sociologist Robert Nisbet, who contends that the nation's universities have become too politicized; Harvard Government Professor Edward Banfield (The Unheavenly City), an opponent of more and bigger urban projects by Government; Economist Murray Weidenbaum, who helped formulate Nixon's revenue-sharing bill but has opposed many Nixon proposals; and Irving Kristol, an academic and co-editor of The Public Interest magazine, who urges "combination of the reforming spirit with the conservative ideal."
Still, the evidence is that in his second term as in his first, Nixon will primarily pursue his own instinctive bent and concentrate on the grander game of global diplomacy, where he can make a greater difference much more quickly. He demonstrated that in his first term, with the brilliant assistance of Henry Kissinger, setting the nation on a course of new cooperation with the two dominant Communist powers after years of enmity. Nixon is expected to build on that base, seeking new agreements in arms control and trade with the Soviet Union, probably granting diplomatic recognition to China and opening new trade opportunities with it.
The first task, of course, will be to disengage from Nixon's one glaring foreign policy failure: his inability to end more quickly U.S. involvement in the Viet Nam War. That may still require a disproportionate share of White House attention. Once a cease-fire is signed, the effort to preserve the peace and help arrange a new government in Saigon may prove to be protracted and painful.
Yet Nixon has other world priorities in mind. He wants to refocus attention on Europe, and will probably travel there again to mend fences with neglected U.S. friends. There will be tough negotiations with the Russians on whether both nations will withdraw troops from Europe and whether new arrangements for European security can be created. Probably of even greater urgency will be Nixon's efforts to force a reform of international monetary machinery. Sticky, too, will be his attempt to open new avenues for the U.S. to compete more favorably in world trade, especially with Europe's Common Market and with Japan.
Certainly, in an atomic age, peace must be the first priority of every U.S. President. Nixon undoubtedly is right in expecting history to rate him highly if he advances that goal. Yet in devoting so much of his energy and Government resources to that task, he runs the risk of a different historical judgment. While Nixon's overwhelming victory suggests that the majority of Americans are more than content with their lot, the problems have not disappeared, the decay of the cities, the welfare mess, the unwieldy and often unfair tax system, the creaking disability of Government on all levels, the economic as well as moral stresses on American society. Nor would the demands of the black minority, while relatively muffled now, be indefinitely stilled.
Nixon's vast mandate was among other things a vote for the general competence he has often shown in office, and the promise of more of it in more areas. The voters were asking Nixon, finally unfettered by any worry about how he might fare in another election, not merely to maintain the status quo, but to demonstrate now his capacity for leadership at home as well as abroad.
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