Weekend Reading: Walter Lippman (1968): "New Nixon" Endorsement
How remarkably easy it was for Richard Nixon in 1968 to flatter that Old Progressive Walter Lippman into servile submission!
Back in the 1980s Bob Dole expressed the Washington establishment consensus view on Ford, Carter, and Nixon: "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Evil." Here we have Walter Lippman, having been played like a kazoo by Nixon's team, endorse Evil for President in 1968.
It is hard to wade through the abstract verbal fog of Lippman's argument. But I think at the core it is: Only Nixon can--not go to China, but--put the Negroes in concentration camps should it become necessary. Humphrey cannot. And, anyway, what you do doesn't matter because there is likely to be a landslide for Nixon.
Lippmann was wrong: Nixon won by only 0.7%. It was an election in which every opinion leader who let himself be flattered into plumping for Evil had reason to wonder if his intervention had been decisive.
If our press corps is no better than it ever was, at least it is no worse:
Walter Lippman (1968): "New Nixon" Endorsement:
In the weeks that have passed since the Democratic convention in Chicago, it has become painfully clear that the Democratic Party is too disorganized to run the country. No doubt it is theoretically possible, though it is highly improbable, that Hubert Humphrey can do what Harry Trumen did in 1948. But it's getting late even for that.
Should he win by some fluke or miracle, there is still no doubt that he would go to the White House as a minority President, opposed by a great heterogeneous majority consisting of Republicans, Wallaceites and disaffected Democrats It seems to me clear that the Democratic Party today is unable to offer the country the genuine prospect of a coherent government.
All this is even more true of what George Wallace has to offer. He does not have and has never had an organized party behind him. He has only an angry crowd behind him, and if he could be elected--which he cannot be--he would be at a loss as to what to do net, not having the supporters or the program or the experienced men to form a genuine government. Wallace does not offer the country a choice, only an expression of part of the people's discontents.
This leaves us with Nixon as the one and only candidate who can be elected and shows the promise, like it or not, of being able to put together an administration to run the government. Wallace is not a real alternative to Nixon because Wallace cannot put together an administration to govern the country. Humphrey would be an alternative to Nixon were it not for the fact that the Democratic Party, as it has existed since Franklin Roosevelt's time, has come apart at the seams. It is now a disarray of discordant minorities. It has as its candidate a man who is inextricably bogged in the failures of the Johnson Administration. It would be one of the curiosities of politics if the voters chose to give a mandate to Lyndon Johnson's creature.
Neither of Nixon's two opponents is able to offer the prospect of a party sufficiently strong and united to govern the country. Thus, the actual choice before the voter does not lie among three candidates. The choice is between Nixon and some sort of abstention from the presidential contest Abstention, if I understand him correctly, is Sen. McCarthy's choice.
It is a quite respectable choice for a man who is in a special position, which is that of a professional Democratic politician who wishes to keep his party affiliation for work in the future. But abstention mens that abstainers are not going to interfere with the choice of those who do not abstain. It means that they will not make a positive choice of the President and the party which is going to govern the country in the next four years. Apart from abstaining, there is no choice but to support Nixon.
It is generally agreed that there is a movement, probably of landslide proportions, away from the liberalism of the past 40 years an toward relatively speaking, a more conservative posture at home and abroad This is not surprising and is not in itself deplorable. It does not mean that all the good things that have been accomplished will be repealed and undone. But it does mean that the virtues and ideals which conservatives cherish--particularly discipline and authority and self-reliance--will for a time prevail over the liberal alternatives of permissiveness and largesse and environmental improvement.
The liberal era has lasted for some 40 years, and if it has now provoked a reaction, it must be that it is not now working sufficiently well to command general support. Leaders of the party in power have in some considerable measure run out of ideas.
In any event, the country is turning to the conservatives, and this mans that Nixon and Spiro Agnew will almost certainly be elected. I regard the selection of Gov Agnew as a serious mistake which could have tragic consequences. But all things considered--the disintegration of the Democratic Party after the colossal mistakes of the Johnson Administration--I do not shrink from the prospect of Nixon as President. He is a very much better man today than he was 10 years ago, and I have lived too long myself tithing the men are what they are forever and ever.
Franklin Roosevelt in the White House was a quite different man after he had passed through his long illness than he was to those who had known him when he was a young man-about-town. Few who knew Mr. Truman as senator foresaw that he would preside over such great measures as the Marshall Plan and NATO. The John F. Kennedy of the Camelot legend was not visible to those who knew him in the 50s as a young Boston politician. So I do not reject the notion that there is a "new Nixon" who has outlived and outgrown the ruthless politics of his early days.
Having argued that he alone among the candidates brings with him a prospect of an administration that can govern, I go on to say that the country will need a government that can govern in the troubled days which lie ahead of us. Much as I believe in the justice and wisdom of large-scale reconstruction and reform, there remains the fact that our social order cannot conceivably be reconstructed quickly. Yet the injustices and the miseries are obviously painful. Thus there will probably remain a considerable body of irreconcilable revolutionary dissent.
There are no easy and there are no quick solutions for the discontent that will have to be dealt with, and we would be hiding our heads in the sand if we refused to believe that the country may demand and necessity may dictate the repression of uncontrollable violence.
My view is that it will be in all ways better if the conservatives are in power should these necessities arise. It would be a disaster, I think, if a man like Humphrey had to do what is against the whole grain of his nature. It would be another example of President Johnson adopting Barry Goldwater's war policy in Vietnam. It is better that Nixon should have the full authority if the repression should become necessary in order to restore peace and tranquility in the land.
It will be better that the disorganized Democrats should be on the sidelines, reforming their programs and their views and offering opposition to extremism and making themselves ready for the inevitable reaction against reaction.
There remains the agonizing problem of the Vietnamese war. There is no easy and short way out of the disaster after all the entanglements that have been created. I have been writing at the end of September, and there does not appear today any real prospect of concluding the war.
Such confidence as I have in Nixon's foreign policies rests on the belief that his greatest ambition is to elected for two terms, and that he knows just as well as anyone that if he bogged down in Vietnam, he will become as unpopular as Johnson and Humphrey are today. He must find a solution to Vietnam in order to be more than a one-term President. I think Nion's whole future will be staked on getting a cease-fire and a self-respecting withdrawal of our land forces That is the best I am able to hope form. But I see nothing better in Humphrey.
All in all we cannot deny that the near future will be difficult, and I have come to think that on the central issue of an organized government, to deal with it Nixon is the only one who may be able to produce a government that can govern.
