All of the People, Some of the Time

LESS THAN one year ago the joyous shouts of "Four more years!" were permeating the air as the Nixon Youth celebrated its leader's victory. But the slogan which once rang with a nauseating finality for McGovern supporters and those disillusioned by both candidates now twists into irony, Nov. 7, 1972, was only a preliminary verdict, merely eliminating George McGovern and Sargent Shriver. The fates of Richard M. Nixon and Spiro T. Agnew, the Republican ticket of 1972, still await the decisions of courts in Maryland and Washington D.C.

All of this points to the absurdity of Theodore White's instant historical analysis in his fourth book on presidential elections since 1960. He has unsuccessfully attempted to crystalize the liquid, flowing, unresolved events of the 1972 election into hard-core analysis.

In his first book. White conceded that "though later historians would tell the story of the quest for power... in more precise terms with greater wealth of established fact, there might, nonetheless, be some permanent value in the effort of a contemporary reporter to catch the mood and the strains, the weariness, elation and uncertainties of the men who sought to lead America..." But here again White has failed. For while George McGovern was completely open to close, critical interrogation and analysis, Richard Nixon, the man who was finally made President and thus supposedly the central subject of the book, was hidden behind a personal security more stringent than his national security.

This is the key to the elusive quality of the '72 election--the President was no longer under the public scrutiny. What is most important to remember here is that the overall political strategy of the Republicans was to have Nixon run not as an individual, but as the institution of the President. The Committee for the Re-Election of the President, and not the Republican Party, ran the campaign, claiming they would "get politics the hell out of the White House and across the street" (Little did they know the irony of this statement--that the politics would not make it all the way across, and would end up in the gutter.)

But CREEP, too, was strongly tied to the President, Nixon the man would maintain a low-key profile, and they would exploit his carefully publicized role as President. The beauty of this strategy lay in the tight "security in the national interest" the President controlled to keep his nastier acts from the public eye. So detente was played up, the bombings of Cambodia were to remain a secret, and the employment of 15,000 to 20,000 Thai mercenaries in Laos, in direct violation of congressional edict, would not be officially revealed until Ambassador Godley testified before Congress while Watergate, too, was under investigation by the Senate.

INSTEAD of analyzing the President's role in the election from this point of view. White decided that would be too hostile (besides, he might have to take off his white gloves and do some nitty-gritty investigative work: better to talk to the President in the quiet atmosphere of the oval office--easier too):

I had the choice, as a reporter, of writing about him from afar--in which case, his rhetoric and public posture made him the most inviting target at which a liberal might wing his eloquence. Or I could pursue him, seek personal contact in order to measure the man I was writing about. This second choice, of course, carried with it an obligation to respect his privacy--and, even more, an obligation to try to understand. I chose the second course...

In respecting Richard Nixon's "privacy," White fails to do justice to the title of journalist.

The attempts to "understand" Nixon are almost as poor as White's ignorance of the ruthless politician. One would do better to read My Six Crises or watch a Nixon speech on television.

Traditionally, The Making of the President has included the loser on a smaller scale. But in 1972 the Democratic primaries, the convention, and the party's failed attempts for the presidency make up a substantial part of the book. McGovern's grass roots campaign had about it an electricity unrivaled in recent years, something The Making of the President 1972 explores from beginning to end with the best reportorial skill.

But the final analysis is weak--White thinks McGovern failed to read the public mood--a mood which, according to him, no longer trusted the post-world-war liberal dogma of the Democrats.

White doesn't see McGovern's radical shift from this stance. His myopic evaluation of the campaign can be summed up in this brief passage: "Mr. McGovern persisted in the Lincolnian tradition of hoping an appeal to the better angels of people's nature might summon them to new visions; Mr. Nixon proposed to deal with Americans as they are." White thinks that if the full Watergate story had been known, the public would still have chosen Nixon. This curious thinking leads to the inevitable conclusion that the secretive Nixon and White, who ignores this man, think that the American people "as they are," are quite dumb.

ONE OF THE most telling stories of the 1972 elections come from the voter statistics of Pat Caddell '72, McGovern's chief pollster. Those statistics show that in 19 of the 42 states which had either gubernatorial or senatorial elections, more people voted for those secondary offices than for the president. In other words, many people went to vote, but did not bother to vote for either of the candidates for president. In 23 states the total combined votes for the presidential candidates was less than in 1968, despite the new youth vote. While the percentage of those eligible to vote who actually do vote has dropped steadily in the last four presidential elections, the 1972 election showed a much sharper drop.

Theodore White sees these statistics as a growing trend of mistrust in central authority. Nixon, he believes, would fullfill the hope for decentralization. But White has become something of a central figure himself, closely tied to men who have sought and gained the office of the presidency, with all of its attendant power. As an historian he has made two inexcusable mistakes--of being too close to his subject, both personally and temporally. And so he, like Nixon in '72, is trying to fool the people. The election--and the book points out at least one thing: you can do that only some of the time, and even then you're likely to get caught in the end.