'Choice Seems Distasteful'

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31771, 30 August 1968, Page 11

'Choice Seems Distasteful'

, (N.Z P A .-Reuter—Copyright} CHICAGO, Aug. 29. So, after all is said and done, it is to be Nixon versus Humphrey, writes Tom Wicker, of the New York Times News Service.

After New Hampshire, after, i March 31, after Rockefeller I went out and came back in, after Oregon, after June 5 in Los Angeles—after all that, it is still Nixon versus Humphrey. In spite of all expedients, I in spite of fourth-party talk, stay-at-home schemes, extremes like voting for George Wallace—in spite of all such notions, it still is going to be Nixon versus Humphrey next November. And it is strange how distasteful the choice seems. Vice-President Humphrey, everyone knows, has a distinguished record of service to liberal causes over the years, and no-one who knows him could suggest that he is anything but a decent and intelligent man. Mr Nixon, it may not be so generally conceded, is one of the most intelligent men in American politics, with a sharp grasp of an impressive range of issues. On the question of the war, it is scarcely to be doubted that either man, as President, would move as rapidly as possible to get a negotiated settlement. This is not because of what either will say or not say in his campaign, but because once in office the full enormity of the burden the war imposes on the American spirit Budget and society will

grind him down as it has ground down President Johnson; and that will be quickly apparent to any President not grimly and unshakably determined to see bis own policies vindicated.

If anything. Mr Nixon must be given an edge here, for his greater freedom from past responsibility. On the American crisis of city and environment Mr Humphrey is almost the personification of the party, with the better record of human concern on social and economic problems. But while Mr Nixon deserves less confidence on these issues, his party, by its very nature, may offer more hope of escape from the massive “Federalising” of everything, with its accompanying impersonality, rigidity, irrelevance and misplacement of priorities. On balance, Mr Humphrey appears the better risk. So on these great issues, the Nixon-Humphrey choice seems little less inspiring than some of those Americans have been offered in the past. It is I somewhere in the indefinable, but profoundly important region beyond issues that the sense of malaise and impending decline hovers, a grim cloud on the - edge of vision. Can either of these men unify this torn, fearful, unhappy, racially smouldering people, and call forth—as the orators in Chicago and Miami Beach have endlessly pledged —the best that is in the American spirit? Can either of them somehow bridge the gulf of misunderstanding and suspicion between the children of depression and the children of afflence, between past and future, tradition and tomorrow?

Can either lead a great na-

tion to an equitable and constructive place, neither domineering nor subservient, in a world of landmarks toppling and strange forces emerging? How can Mr Nixon do any of these things, with his visible calculations of political mileage, his predilection for expedient manoeuvre, and the tone in his campaign of white reaction to black aspiration? How can Mr Humphrey so lead the country, with his immersion in the glories of an irrelevant past, his lack of intellectual discipline, and the clear indications that he is the political and spiritual creature of the Johnson Administration that so many Americans have sought to put behind them?

I Still, it is all there is. The fact is Nixon versus Humphrey, and what is important now is not to dwell on the might-have-beens and not to take counsel of justified fears, but—in an old and honourable phrase—to make do with what we have.

After all, if this is what our politics produced, it is only what the American people produced. The choices were clear, the opportunities were limitless, the leaders came forward.

the parties and the people have the nominees they deserve. and no matter who is elected in November they have no honest choice but to pledge him their best.