torn braden
Nixon's liberalism' brings popularity
Washington Something
very odd is suggested by trie
political polls which show that
President Nixon as of now
can defeat any of his
prospective opponents. Surely
the oddity cannot have escaped
the attention of Richard
Nixon, returned now to this
steaming hot city after the most
successful summer of his term.
The oddity must be looked
at against the fact that when the
summer began the polls were
all against the President. They
showed Sen. Muskie could beat
him and that Senators
Kennedy and Humphrey might
beat him. But now-as one of
the President's key aides
remarked, prior to packing up
at San Clemente "Things are
looking up." Why?
Three major events have
marked the Presidential
summer. First, there was Henry
Kissinger's trip to China and
the announcement that the
President would travel there to
meet with Chou En-lai.
Second, there was the
announcement of wage and
price controls.
Third was the signing of the
treaty recognizing the status
quo in Germany.
These three events are the
only possible reason for the
dramatic turnaround in the
polls and these three events
x arthur hoppc
'P W&The day youth
seized power
Once 18-year olds had been
given the right to vote, the
grave question arose as where
they ought to go to do it.
College students were the
basic problem. Should they
vote in the college
communities where they lived
nine months of the year? Or
should they be required to vote
at home, where their parents
could give them a good
tal king-to on the way to the
polls?
Needless to say, virtually
every public official over 30,
from Attorney General
Mitchell on down, favored the
latter course. And there were
dire predictions that in small
college communities, students
could actually take over the
city government if allowed to
vote locally.
But the courts heaven help
us all! ruled for some reason
that students lived where they
were rather than where they
were from. And thus the direst
of the dire predictions came
true.
Typical, perhaps, was the
case of the little town of
Hopeville, home of Si wash
University.
The university numbered
27,618 students, all of whom,
according to the citizens of
Hopeville were majoring in sex,
drugs and treason.
Hopeville, on the other had,
mustered only 1,214 registered
voters, all of whom, according
to the students, were engaged
in connivery, price-fixing and
persecuting the young.
Thus it was a bitter
campaign between the
incumbent mayor, Swinburne
Sweeny, and 18-year old Fidel
Hackensack. Naturally,
Hackensack and his Youth
Ticket were swept into office
by a vote of 27,618 to 1214.
The residents of Hopeville
immediately bolted their
doors, barred their windows
and waited to be murdered in
their beds.
But nothing of the sort
happened. Instead, Fidel and
his young supporters held a
triumphant session of the City
Council. "At last we have the
power to create the kind of
community we've always
wanted!" crowed Fidel.
And, oh. they passed a lot
of new laws! Like, man, they
banned cars and provided free
bicycles and planted flowers in
all the vacant lots and held
daily free concerts on Main
street and made littering a
felony and said everybody
could do anything they wanted
as long as they didn't hurt
anyone else and
Well, after a few weeks, the
citizens of Hopeville emerged
cautiously from their homes to
find a clean, beautiful, joyous,
free-spirited community. To
their surprise, they rather liked
it
"Confidentially," said
ex-Mayor Sweeney, who was
soon sporting a small beard,
"what I like best is not having
to worry about things going
wrong."
And, of course, things did
go wrong. The City Fire
Department burned down and
the City Sewer System backed
up and the City Treasury,
among other things, went dry.
Of course, each student had
a different idea about what
should be done to remedy each
crisis. So this required long,
dull meetings that lasted for
hours and hours and hours.
After six months, Fidel and
his youthful fellow officials
announced en masse that they
were dropping out. A special
election was called. Nobody
ran for any office. The final
results were 1214 write-in
ballots for Fidel and 27,618
write-in ballots for Sweeny. So
things returned to normal.
As Fidel said in his hour of
happy defeat, "Creating ideal
communities is one thing; city
government is another."
TCopyright Chronical Publishing Co.
have one thing in common. It
is that they mark an activist
President, with a style nearer
to Franklin Roosevelt than
Dwight Eisenhower, and a set
of beliefs more pragmatic than
conservative.
Indeed all of the things that
the President did over the
summer would have maddened
conservatives within his own
party only a few years ago.
The trip to China and
wage-price controls represent a
total break with conservative
ideology. The Berlin Accords
have so far passed unnoticed
by the right wing. It is
astonishing that less than 25
years after the Berlin uprising,
nobody has accused the
President of surrendering the
John Foster Dulles doctrine of
"rolling back the Iron
Curtain."
In short, the oddity is that
as the President has departed
conservative ideology, he has
grown more popular.
Democrats are running around
in circles trying to find some
reason for criticizing policies
they were recently
recommending. Conservatives
within the President's party
can be put off with a few
remarks against busing
schoolchildren. In any event,
they have nowhere else to go.
The polls suggest the oddity
and the oddity suggests the
future. Having found the road
to popularity, Mr. Nixon is
not likely to seek any other
path. From now until election
time, we shall be watching an
activist President "doing
something" about the nation's
problems and making all those
Democratic speeches about
"drifting" exceedingly out of
date.
For example, something is
surely in the wind respecting
an early settlement in Vietnam.
Mr. Nixon cannot go before
the electorate next year with
any prospect of success unless
he can first get American
combat troops out of Vietnam.
The betting here is that he will
do so; that his doing so is in
some way tied to his China
trip, and that the China trip
will take place much sooner
than anyone has
suggested perhaps as soon as
mid-October.
And why not? President
Thieu has made a farce out of
President Nixon's promise to
give a free and democratic
government a chance to survive
in South Vietnam. If the
President cannot deal with
South Vietnamese, the North
Vietnamese are at hand.
Perhaps, the oddity
suggested by the polls reflects
another oddity, a national
misjudgment of Richard
Nixon. He made a name for
himself as a conservative
ideologue when it was highly
popular to be a conservative
ideo'ogue. Along the way he
has dropped an occasional hint
about the inner man. For
example, he once listed
Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin
Roosevelt and Woodrow
Wilson among Presidents he
most admired. That should
have given us the clue that we
were dealing with a man who
cares a lot more about
practicality than about
principle.
Copyright 1971, Los Angeles Times.
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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1971
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
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