MR NIXON’S ADMINISTRATION OPENING PHASE SHOWS U.S. LED BY OPEN-MINDED MAN

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31983, 9 May 1969, Page 10

MR NIXON’S ADMINISTRATION OPENING PHASE SHOWS U.S. LED BY OPEN-MINDED MAN

(By a Washington correspondent of the “Economist") (Reprinted by arrangement) c m easuring a new President by the achievements of his first 100 days in office (Mr Nixon’s ended on April 29) arose under Democratic Presidents, beginning with Franklin Roosevelt, who used the time-limit to produce the tension and get the movement that he wanted. President Eisenhower, who offered not tension and movement but order, reassurance and peace, had no need of time-limits, nor of the grand slogans—New Deal, New Frontier, Great Society—with which three Democratic Presidents marshalled the forces of change.

“Eisenhowerism without Eisenhower” is the summingup applied by the “New York Times” to President Nixon’s opening phase and it is true as far as the emphasis on order, deliberation, caution and continuity goes. What is different is the state of the country and the violence of the forces which Mr Nixon has somehow to harness and control.

More of his problem .ill not wait. Government was also made easier for General Eisenhower by his unequalled personal authority in the country and the huge fund of public affection which he enjoyed—assets which Mr Nixon lacks. Elected by a decidedly minority vote, still a somewhat blurred, anonymous figure in the public view, he must find his efforts to do the right thing complicated at every turn by uncertainty about where his support is to come from. War Hangs Over Him Above all, the Vietnam war hangs over him. Whether a Nixon Administration will ever embark on a really bold programme of social improvement remains uncertain, but the domestic departments want more money to develop the existing programmes inherited from the Johnson Administration —which, by and large, are not being dismantled. Mr Nixon’s staff in the White House is a medley of different points of view on domestic policy, but it does include a persuasive social reform lobby lead by his Assistant for Urban Affairs, Dr Daniel Patrick Moynihan. A number of points are obvious at which Mr Nixon could make a start on measures to pacify the Negroes and other racial minorities, arrest the decay of the cities and diminish the scandals of hunger and extreme poverty, without necessarily offending his own taste by appearing to announce the millenium. But lack of money stands in the way: between them, the demands of the war and the need to arrest inflation leave him only the slightest area of choice, as the painful review of President Johnson’s Burget showed last month. More imperative still is the need to appease public hatred of the war itself. Last year showed what could happen to a government and a party that ignored this force. The November elections were followed by a lull in which public opinion, or most of it, suspended judgment until the new men had had a chance to try their hand. Mr Nixon and his advisers—both those

who would have instinctively wanted to make peace anyway and those who would have liked to attempt a military victory—are painfully aware that only a limited time remains before the odium once heaped on Mr Johnson is transferred to the new Administration.

' Some of them may hope to extend the period of grace by withdrawing some American troops with the claim that South Vietnam has been equipped to carry more of the burden and that the war can therefore be “deAmericanised.” In this way, they think, public impatience could be assuaged for a while. Others oppose this and regret all talk of it, believing that it would only encourage the North Vietnamese to toughen their demands and would make a genuine peace j harder to get. Difficult Diplomacy Mr Nixon, while he has denied that any unilateral withdrawals of troops are contemplated, has not quite ruled out the possibility that one day they may happen; presumably he cannot feel sure that he may not need to administer a sop to public opinion, even if it makes his diplomacy more difficult. Another outburst of feeling against the war would make his diplomacy more difficult anyway; indeed, the mere fact that the Communists are aware that he feels threatened by the danger of such an outburst makes it more difficulty already. How long is left to Mr Nixon before he finds himself in President Johnson’s words, “hunkered down against the storm” is a matter of guesswork. Some would allow him eight or nine months from his January inauguration, some only four or five. Luck can do something to prolong the lull or shorten it and he can do something himself to keep it in being. One or two of his own actions in foreign policy may have been influenced by this consideration. Thus, it is one way of drawing attention to his: interest in peace when; he warns the country that the; Middle East is a “powder keg” which may set off a world war and then sets in motion four-power talks to see about a Middle Eastern peace. Even his European tour in February can be seen as a way of reminding the public that the United States has other responsibilities and other preoccupations besides Vietnam. Each of these actions, like his emphasis in his public pronouncements on the contacts that he has had with the Soviet Government and on the hope of more and better talks in the future, bears the stamp of conciliation. So did his ostentatiously restrained reaction to the North Korean action against the American intelligence flights in the Sea of Japan. Fleet Moved Even the show of naval force against North Korea which followed that action was quickly modified when the Russians let it be known that they did not want powerful American fleets in the neighbourhood of Vladivostok. The fleet was moved quickly to the Yellow Sea and, when somebody pointed out that the Chinese might not like that, most of it was withdrawn from North-East Asian waters altogether. Mr Nixon is exerting himself toi avoid any more war-like incidents in distant places, both because that is what his reason tells him to do and also to calm public opinion. This does not mean that he has turned against his military establishment: indeed, it has been doing rather well in the competition for resources, having been permitted to salvage the anti-ballistic missile defence in a rationalised form and to escape the budgetary review with cuts that are trifling to the extent that they are not wholly fictitious. In the inner councils the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff seems to have gained weight, while in public the voice of the Secretary of Defence, Mr Melvin Laird, is heard with little interruption stating his harsh view of Soviet military policy and intentions, in contradiction to the Secretary of State, without any rebuke from the Pre-j sident An, intellectual climate for the Nixon Administration is hard to discern. There is nothing like the band of brains that followed John Kennedy into the White House, prodding and browbeating the executive agencies into motion on the assumption that they and the President shared the same general view of what had to be done. The relentless intimacy, the 'non-stop salty talk and the unpredictable personal relations that marked life in the White House with President Johnson are at an end. Mr Nixon is a somewhat remote chief whose personal demands on his subordinates are carefully regulated and restrained but whose communication with them is correspondingly slight. Having reactivated or established a system of committees to advise him and to channel and

co-ordinate the business that flows, between the White House and the executive departments, he uses these pieces of machinery in an orderly way, hears the cases stated, sees the fields of decision narrowed down to the minimum and then as likely as not will retire to think things over and decide alone. This apparently was the procedure followed in arriving at his tax proposals, his most important and most promising domestic action so far.

Ponderous Movement The business of getting a huge government moving in a new direction is a ponderous affair and will not always wait for the President to decide matters one by one. Mr Nixon appears to assume that until he has made his decision on a matter, policy is in suspense. But, much more likely, the department < ? bureau or desk officer concerned will be proceeding on the assumption that, since nobody has said anything about changing it, the old policy is still in force. In one field or another events may overtake the old policy and force modifications of it without the President being able to give it his attention or even, necessarily, getting to know of it until later.

Naturally there have also been cases (for instance, in the Treasury, the Department of Health, Education and Wei. fare and the Justice Department) where the new departmental heads have adopted new courses of action or pursued old ones in the absence of White House guidance. Equally, the White House staff may offer guidance itself, naturally in the form of assurances that such-and-such a course of action is what the President will want. This has happened, on the question of the guidelines for the racial integration of schools, between the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, under Mr Robert Finch, and members of the White House staff anxious that Mr Nixon’s southern political allies shall not be rebuffed by a departmental head. Mr Arthur Burns, the President’s chief counsellor on economic policy, was giving confident assurances that the tax credit for industrial investment would be retained only a day or two before the President, who had Congress and public opinion to consider, decided the contrary.

Cumbrous Process These are the drawbacks of being led by a man with an open mind. Probably a nondoctrinaire Administration is the best thing that the country could have just now, but the absence of doctrine does make the process of decision cumbrous. Mr Nixon’s appointees are a miscellany of men with different inclinations and his addiction to order and regularity has led him to be somewhat leisurely in choosing them: even now, half of his appointments are still to be made. While this slow process unfolds, domestic needs and foreign problems will not stand still. General de Gaulle’s departure provides an example. Mr Nixon’s advisers came to office with an inclination »o blame the Democrats for having been inflexible and rooted in their grudge against the General. Setting out to introduce a more practical diplomacy, they seemed almost on the way to adopting General de Gaulle’s view of how European politics could best he run. Mr Nixon joined in this process, making the conciliation of the General the central effort of his European tour. Now, even before the new attitude had taken hold properly in the State Department, the General is gone and it may be necessary to begin again at the beginning.