AGNEW: ASSET OR LIABILITY? REPUBLICANS DISCUSSING VICE-PRESIDENTS FUTURE

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32640, 23 June 1971, Page 18

AGNEW: ASSET OR LIABILITY? REPUBLICANS DISCUSSING VICE-PRESIDENTS FUTURE

(From the Washington. D.C. office of the "Economist") (Reprinted from the “Economist" by arrangement)

The deepening mystery over the political fate of Vice-President Agnew offered up another clue this month when some of-his closest political friends began passing word around Washington that neither Mr Agnew nor his wife was enjoying the office very much or had any interest in his seeking re-election in 1972. According to these reports Mr Agnew, who never earned a great deal of money in an undistinguished legal career before entering public life, wants to utilise his fame to acquire some financial security in the next few years. Consequently, they say, Mr Agnew, if asked his personal wishes by President Nixon, will choose political retirement.

All such conversation sounds suspiciously like protective coloration against the increasing prospect that Mr Nixon may select a new, less abrasive running mate in 1972. Mr Agnew has always been quite apprehensive over the ignominy of being dumped from the ticket. But whether or not Mr Agnew really does yearn for private life, his peculiar political career has been in a state of decline since his uproarious campaigning during the 1970 mid-term congressional elections.

Republican party has made clear that it too will be outraged if Mr Agnew is dropped. But this is more than counteracted by a growing feeling in the party’s left and centrist wings that Mr Agnew is a dreadful impediment for the troubled Mr Nixon to carry into the 1972 campaign. Mr Fred Schwen?;el, a veteran Congressman rom lowa, has said privately that his staunchly Republican state will go Democratic if Mr Agnew is on the ticket again. Mr Tom Railsback, a promising and moderate Congressman from Illinois, has said privately that Mr Agnew would complicate the task of carrying this vital state for Mr Nixon. The list of such privately expressed opinions is long and well known by the White House. Thus Mr Nixon and his principal political adviser, the Attorney-General, Mr Mitchell, have to measure Mr Agnew’s impact: will it hurt more to keep him on the ticket or to dump him? Ever since the 1970 election, Mr Mitchell has made it quite clear in private conversation that Mr Agnew’s fate will be determined cold-bloodedly on that basis. Now in the past month or so, there are hints that the White House is coming to feel that the minus for Mr Agnew is starting to outweigh the plus. Certainly Mr Agnew’s imprudent attack on the policy towards China did not win him any friends at the White House. Contrary to much gossip in the cocktail circuit, this was definitely not a Nixon ploy to placate the right Rather, it could have been the indiscretion that will sink Mr Agnew. If Mr Agnew goes, the successor would almost surely not be Mr Connally, the conservative Texas Democrat who became Secretary of the Treasury with Immediate speculation that he would be Mr Agnew’s replacement. The idea of a Democratic Vice-President and heir apparent no matter how conservative, is simply

unthinkable. Nor would Mr Nixon select one of the liberal Republican critics of his war policy, such as Senator Percy of Illinois or Senator Hatfield of Oregon, whom he so passionately dislikes. One very reactionary White House aide has been privately talking about Governor Rockefeller of New York as Mr Agnew’s successor, but this defies credibility, even though Mr Rockefeller has moved to the right of late and patched up his ancient feud with Mr Nixon. His selection, heaped on top of a purge of Mr Agnew, would be just too much for the Republican conservatives to swallow in one gulp. Likely choices More probably, if Mr Agnew goes, his successor would be a moderate conservative unlikely to offend the right but acceptable to the left and the centre. One example might be Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee, though his small physical stature and boyish looks are not quite what Mr Nixon may be looking for. More likely is Senator Robert Taft, jun.. of Ohio, a moderate conservative with an impeccable Republican name. Mr Taft is fully as boring as was his famous father but lacks the elder Taft’s ferocious intellectuality. Even so, he would lose Mr Nixon no votes, which may well be the criterion for 1972.

Peculiar performance Indeed, Mr Agnew’s performance in the most peculiar office of the American system has been unusually peculiar. The Constitution provides only two duties for the Vice-President: to succeed the President in the event of his death or disability and to preside over the Senate (providing the decisive vote in the rare event of a tie). Over the last generation, however, the duties have been expanded to include chairmanship of intergovernmental committees of some substance. Thus the three Vice-Presidents preceding Mr Agnew—Mr Humphrey, Mr Johnson and Mr Nixon—were kept busy at governmental tasks that were at least marginally useful. Not so Mr Agnew: he has regressed to the old style of Vice-President who keeps far away from the governmental process. Nor has he interested himself, as Mr Humphrey did, in the affairs of the Senate.

It may all depend on Mr Nixon’s political fortunes in mid-1972. If the economy does not perk up by then and if Mr Nixon’s ratings in the opinion polls remain as unimpressive as they are today, Mr Agnew might be one burden too many to carry and his end might be decreed. If, on the other hand, the economy and the Nixon popularity pick up. the President may well go along with Mr Agnew for a second term. Assuming that the present talk about Mr Agnew’s desire for retirement is just self-protection, the Vice-President had better be praying for fair weather, both economic and political.

What Mr Agnew has occupied himself with of course, is the political campaign circuit and the exercise of rhetoric. Since mid-1969, he has unleashed an unremitting barrage of words attacking the communications media, radicals, dissenters, liberals, critics of the war and progressive Republicans, making himself the darling of the potent right wing of the Republican party. No previous Vice - President ever approached Mr Agnew's record for raising millions of dollars for the party across the country, a performance that endears him even to party leaders (in Pennsylvania and Ohio, for example) who flinch at his overheated language. Mr Agnew’s role as a party minstrel would seem to secure his place on the 1972 presidential ticket. But midway through 1970’s congressional campaign, top officials in the White House began having second thoughts about whether Mr Agnew was doing more damage than good; after the election, they tended to blame him for the unsatisfactory election results. Shortly after that, senior staff at the White House advised Mr Agnew that he might be well advised to relax his rhetoric and lower his profile, concentrating on positive statements in favour of the Nixon legislative programme. Back to old style Mr Agnew followed that formula glumly for a bit but, speaking in Boston on March 18, he could no longer restrain himself and unleashed an attack on one of his favourite targets, the Columbia Broadcasting System. Since then, he has been the Agnew of old, delighting partisan Republicans who pay $lOO and upwards for an evening of polemics. Returning to his old style was Mr Agnew’s own decision, without consultation with or approval from the White House, and represents in part a political ploy by the Vice-President. In the months immediately following the 1970 election, his aides felt that he was losing the devoted support of his basic conservative constituency. Hence, his return to strident oratory is an attempt to make his support from the right so inflexible that to dump him from the 1972 ticket would be unthinkable, a ploy hardly consistent with the present suggestions that Mr Agnew really wants to leave public life. But even if his harsh rhetoric were not politically advantageous, there is little doubt Mr Agnew would sooner or later have abandoned the low profile. Put simply, he adores the roar of the crowd and is entranced with the multisyllabic sound of his own words. Moreover, after a political career marked by eclectic ideological convictions, Mr Agnew has finally settled somewhere well to the right He is now so immersed in reactionary dogma that Mr Nixon's attempts to open a dialogue with Communist China genuinely shocked and horrified him. Apostasy on China Mr Agnew’s ideological consistency, including his apostasy on the China policy, has won him vigorous support on the right as was calculated. Last week the publication of the American Conservative Union declared: “The time has come to say what should not have to be said at all: the dumping of Vice President Spiro Agnew from the 1972 Republican ticket would be unacceptable to American Conservatives.” The far right wing of the