In its abandonment of outmoded conservative doctrine, the Nixon Administration has moved much more swiftly and thoroughly than did the Eisenhower Administration. General Eisenhower, the first Republican President in twenty years, not only swept out his party's lingering isolationism but also accepted Social Security and other features of the rudimentary welfare state which his Democratic predecessors had begun.
Yet in 1960 many Republicans including General Eisenhower himself could still in good conscience cling to their traditional opposition to big government, unbalanced budgets and government “interference” in the economy. That was so despite the fact that government programs and personnel had expanded inexorably during his tenure, and that the Eisenhower Administration in the recession of 1959‐60 had presided over the biggest peacetime deficit in history. As a result, the G.O.P. was almost ideologically defenseless against its take‐over by the Goldwater reactionaries four years later.
President Nixon's winning campaign provided few hints that he intended to depart in significant ways from conservative orthodoxy. But in three years, Mr. Nixon has transformed the political and ideological landscape.
He has imposed wage and price controls which until very recently had been seriously advocated only by the most liberal Democrats. He has espoused the Keynesian doctrine of government spending and has had successive budget deficits totaling nearly $100 billion. He has requested another increase of $50 billion in the national debt ceiling. He has devalued the dollar.
He has proposed welfare reform to establish a minimum guaranteed income for every family. The Federal Government has taken over the passenger side of the railroad business, heavily subsidized the merchant marine and tried to subsidize supersonic airplanes.Continue reading the main story
In foreign affairs, old shibboleths have also fallen. Nationalist China is no longer in the United Nations. President Nixon is about to journey to Peking to meet with Chinese Communist leaders. Disarmament negotiations with Russia are far advanced, and the President hopes to sign an agreement when he visits Moscow May.
To list these changes is not to condemn them. On the contrary, most of these initiatives were necessary and desirable. The damage is to the preconceptions of traditional conservatives and to the wilder notions reactionaries. After the Nixon Administration's record, Republican candidates can no longer inveigh against big government, budget deficits, government subsidies Federal regulation of the economy.
By coming to terms with several of the nation's major problems and adopting the most promising solutions—which often happened to be those advocated by their Democratic enemies—President Nixon and his colleagues have buried much more of the dead past than did the Eisenhower team. They have moved the G.O.P. closer to party of government rather than a chronic opposition which occasionally holds office by accident.
This Administration thus has narrowed the gap between the two major parties as the postwar Tory Governments narrowed it in Britain. The grand, stark alternatives no longer exist. Any Administration elected this year going to have a wage‐price policy, is going to try to have unbalanced budgets, provide subsidies and manage large social welfare programs.
So far has this process gone in three years that many commentators ask: Are there any issues between the parties? But an issueless “era of good feeling” is not in sight. As the public sector becomes more important, the issue of genuine tax reform—rather than the 1969 sham variety—becomes more urgent. The weight military expenditures becomes more onerous. Senator McGovern has stressed both of these themes.
The Nixon Administration has devised no viable strategy for the interrelated problems of epidemic poverty, the decaying inner cities and the disadvantaged minorities. The maldistribution of income among different classes is again an issue as it was briefly in the 1930's. The responsibilities of huge corporations to the environment, consumers and their own stockholders and employes are of major concern, as the influence of Ralph Nader suggests. Finally, America's post‐Vietnam foreign policy is still to be shaped.
Old issues have faded and old controversies collapsed. Their disappearance may clear the way for a more spirited and realistic dialogue among liberals, conservatives and radicals in this 1972 campaign and in the decade ahead.Continue reading the main story