Trying to Hate Dick

IT IS ONE of the major frustrations of this year of Frustration Politics that Richard Nixon is so hard to hate.

Like drowning men, panicky voters have clutched at a Nixon-Bogeyman image as the last plausible rationalization for caring about the 1968 electoral system. Maybe there is no one to vote for this year, but at least there are Nixon and Wallace to vote against. Angry students, ready to blow up all three candidates, have been enticed back in Humphrey campaign offices, which had shrewdly re-named themselves "Stop Nixon Headquarters."

At first, Nixon seemed to play into the bogeyman role. The scenario was all too clear: there was the smiling Nixon at the Republican convention, Strom Thurmond on one side and Spiro Agnew on the other. There was the soulless Nixon, emerging with "official stands" on things like war and racism after consulting the public opinion polls. There was the unified-party Nixon, steam-rolling John Lindsay, Edward Brooke, Ronald Reagen together into one big, happy, featureless group of supporters. And worst of all, there was the Machiavellian Nixon, keenly aware that even though his moves alienated the blacks and the kids, it was neither the kids nor the blacks that had the precious votes.

With this less-than-heroic image, Richard Nixon arrived in Boston last Friday. For a while, every detail of his campaign day seemed to fit the expected loathsome pattern. Nixon had cancelled plans for a public rally on the Common; instead of bothering with the hecklers, he would give a pep talk to campaign workers inside the snug Somerset hotel, and then answer questions from a careful ethnic mix of six New England citizens.

Inside the rally room at the Somerset, all the familiar aspects of the New-Nixon machine went on display. Super-cool Nixon press aides quietly hustled local reporters out of the way in order to get the New York Times photographers and writers up near the front. "Papers with 10,000 to 25,000 circulation in the front row," said a steely-eyed young lady with a Press Aide badge. "You smaller papers in the back."

THE NIXON ORGANIZATION had done its best to mend the busted local fences left in the wake of the Miami convention. A pre-speech press release lauded Massachusetts' great and progressive colleges, with their concerned and alienated students. Painfully aware that the Nixon-Agnew "law and order" appeal wasn't going over so well in Massachusetts, party bosses had imported four Negroes, complete with frisbie-sized "Nixon's The One" buttons, to sit in the audience. On the stage, Senator Edward Brooke and black Congressional candidate Allen Freeman added a liberal touch.

The speechmaking began, with more local-fence mending. Venerable Leverett Saltonstall waved to the cheering party workers and blessed Richard Nixon. Brooke said it was "a great day for Massachusetts." "We love you, Pat and Dick," he cooed. Then Volpe came on, telling about Nixon's visit to the Commonwealth in 1952. "We took a drive through East Boston then," Volpe said. Immediate cheers from the East Boston delegation.

All the while, efficient Nixon press workers had been herding stragglers out of the central aisle of the rally room. And with a sudden cry from Volpe ("Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the United States,") Richard M. Nixon made his entrance.

Richard Nixon has kept his suntan, and he has tried very hard to get enough rest, but suntan and rest cannot conceal the fact that Richard Nixon is an unattractive man. As he strolled up the center aisle of the Somerset, wisps of curly black Nixon hair were barely visible between the shoulders of the tall secret service men who surrounded the candidate. When Nixon finally reached the stage, he stood alone, unconcealed, pathetic.

The pictures of Richard Nixon's disembodied head that appear in newspapers might suggest that he is a fat man. The flapping jowls are unpleasant in the pictures, and even more horrifying when seen live. But when the fleshy head is connected to the rest of Nixon's body, the result is a grotesque caricature. Nixon is thin, almost frail. His head emerges from neckless, hunched shoulders; he looks like a younger Ed Sullivan. His feet dangle like a marionette's encased in tiny black shoes. His arms are held close to his side, except when they balloon out in stilted Victory gestures.

As the wizened puppet moved across the stage, he fit the bogeyman pattern, and his first few words confirmed the image. At first he told a few forced jokes about Humphrey ("he talks about a debate--why, he is a debate"), did some buttering-up of the locals ("I am grateful to be John Volpe's friend"), and then took a tentative swing into the platitudes of The Nixon Speech--the same one he has used since the convention.

BUT MIDWAY into the standard oratory, the image began to change. Nixon made some self-effacing comments: "It's a good thing I'm running for President and not in a beauty contest." This was not Lyndon Johnson; Nixon would not make photographers take his "good" profile. More important, a semi-believable note of humility also began to creep into the bombast of Nixon's "united party--we're going to win" oratory.

The bombast, of course, was still there. "All the Republican leaders--Lindsay and Rockefeller and Romney and Percy--are all behind us, and we know we're going to win." The predictions of national victory too. But there were other notes. "We know that many people are voting against in this election. We don't want that. There's too much hate, and it shouldn't be vented in an election. We want people to vote for."

By the time he had left town. Nixon had admitted the things that angry students had yelled all along. Kids don't like him, he sadly realized, and black people probably thought he didn't like them. The unexpected admission and the apparent sincerity were disconcerting. Students in the audience, scrambling to preserve the bogeyman image, come up with tortuous explanations. All this humble business was a big show, they said. Nixon's just trying to fool us.

Perhaps he was. If so, he did a good job. And in doing a good job, he caused a lot more frustration. For those at the rally all the satisfaction of voting against the hated Nixon was gone. Maybe the simplest solution is ostrich-like ignorance: if you want to hate him, don't see him.