Nation: WHAT PRESIDENT

NIXON HUMPHREY

WOULD BE LIKE

FOR most of this long election year, the “real” Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey have eluded the most studious candidate watchers. As Humphrey whirled about the country, occasionally switching positions or contradicting himself, it sometimes seemed as if there were too many of him to pin down. Nixon tiptoed over the hustings, scrupulously avoiding mistakes and evading debate, sometimes giving the impression that there was too little of him to pin down. The most important question for voters, of course, is what kind of President each would make.

There can be no certain advance test of how a man will conduct the presidency. But educated prophecy is possible on the basis of the candidates’ personalities and policies, and indeed even on the basis of their performances on the current campaign trail.

All through the campaign, antagonists from both ends of the political spectrum insisted that there were really no fundamental differences between the two. But there are. Despite their kindred pasts (small towns, occasional hard times) and similar attitudes about party loyalty (intense and constant), the contrasts go deep. In the White House, they would become highly visible.

Efficiency. Of the two, Nixon is by far the better organizer and administrator. He has given serious thought to making government perform more efficiently. He would be likely to insist on high performance by subordinates, just as he has done to excellent effect with his campaign organization. Humphrey has pointed out a number of times that the Bible is unconcerned with efficiency but deeply involved with compassion. On the day-to-day operating level, Humphrey could be expected to concern himself with more trivia than Nixon, to spread himself thinner, to put up with more intramural disorder.

In an era of huge, unwieldy government, when translating policy into reality is one of the most difficult problems of all, Nixon’s mechanical approach may be more promising. Yet efficiency is a means, not an end, and can become meaningless in the absence of a creative policy—and worthy policymakers. Despite his image as a hardheaded selector of talented men, Nixon chose the mediocre Spiro Agnew as running mate to avoid antagonizing Southern Republicans, while Humphrey picked the better-qualified Edmund Muskie. “Agnew is not a racist,” said Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, last week. Then, in an extraordinary burst of candor, he added: “I hope I’m right. I hope for the good of the country I’m right.” Nixon, too, must be hoping for a better show from Agnew. He himself now regrets his choice—although in public he must continue to defend it. In retrospect, he looks longingly at respected public figures such as John Gardner, who might well have been available.

Public Relations. In the kind of high-level public relations a President must practice in order to lead, Humphrey would doubtless be more expansive, more the teacher and preacher of the two. He wears his emotions proudly, like an H.H.H. campaign button. The tears come almost as easily as the ideas. Nixon is far more buttoned up. Not since his “last press conference” in 1962 has what George Wallace calls Nixon’s “antiseptic, touch-me-not bubble” really been broken. Humphrey’s attitude might move people, and at times bore or embarrass them; Nixon’s attitude might chill people, but at times impress or convince them.

Sometimes, as even his friends admit, Humphrey has more solutions than there are problems. He could be counted on to goad the Congress—and the public—to try new programs, to spend more money, to experiment. Nixon is likely to be cautious about innovation. “Hope is fragile,” he said recently, “and too easily shattered by the disappointment that inevitably follows on promises unkept and unkeepable.”

Social Justice. The crucial problem for the next President, regardless of his methods, will be to move the country closer to social justice while restoring civil amity. Humphrey talks grandly of a “Marshall Plan for the cities.” He endorses the multibillion-dollar proposals of the Kerner Commission, which include massive programs for rehabilitation, education and the creation of more jobs. While he concedes that the private sector and lower levels of government must be encouraged to participate, Humphrey would doubtless try to fall back on federal action and resources whenever necessary.

Nixon agrees on the goals, but insists that the Great Society approach has failed. He stresses decentralization of power—which is becoming an increasingly important issue. He wants increased reliance on state and local government and private enterprise. He would give industry financial incentives to create jobs and provide housing. He talks of giving Negroes “a piece of the action” by fostering “black capitalism” through tax benefits and similar means. Law and Order. Both candidates promise higher Social Security benefits. Both stress the importance of improving education. Both argue for reform of the welfare system. Both would use federal resources to strengthen the police, the courts and the penal system to fight crime. Yet Humphrey is willing to acknowledge that all of this will cost public money while Nixon generally stresses the need for economies. Humphrey contends that the best long-range solution to crime and disorder is the amelioration of social and economic in equities. Nixon says that the connection between poverty and crime has been “grossly exaggerated” and generally takes a tough-cop approach. Where Humphrey defends libertarian Supreme Court decisions on criminal procedure, Nixon condemns them for weakening the nation’s “peace forces” and promises to appoint “strict constructionists” to the bench.

Which approach would succeed? The new Congress—particularly the House —is likely to be more conservative in makeup than its most recent predecessors. Thus Humphrey’s expensive innovations would probably fare badly, while Nixon would probably be in a better position to translate . his proposals into programs, particularly if he kept the price tags reasonable.

Leadership. The nation as a whole is in an ambivalent frame of mind. The hyperactive, personalized presidency symbolized by Lyndon Johnson has exhausted many Americans to the point where they may welcome an impersonal low-silhouette leadership that turns the wheels and pushes the buttons, and never mind the inspiration. At the same time, many also seem to be searching for strong leadership worthy of public trust and capable of galvanizing the country. Both major-party candidates promise to heal the nation’s wounds. Yet Nixon and Agnew have restricted their principal appeal to the white and relatively affluent, while Humphrey and Muskie, though aiming at a broader audience, seem to be failing to get through to enough whites.

It is open to question whether either Humphrey or Nixon can come into office with enough public confidence to lead effectively at the outset. Only in the last month has Humphrey begun to restore his credentials as an independent figure free of Johnson’s shadow. His diffuseness, his gabbiness, his disorganization still raise doubts about his discipline. Yet he is a warm and thoroughly dedicated man whose crusading spirit can be catching. And on the critical questions of race and crime, Humphrey has managed to sound both calm and responsible. “If I go down,” he has said, “I’ll go down with the right flags flying.”

Nixon has occasionally given the impression that he will hoist any ensign to stay afloat. His talking around issues, his careful, yes-but positions, his tendency to shrillness on the crime problem and military preparedness combine to convey calculation rather than conviction. Victory in the election, of course, might bring him the inner certainty that he still sometimes appears to lack.

Foreign Policy. There seems to be little to choose between the two in their attitudes toward the rest of the world as spelled out during the campaign. Both Nixon and Humphrey have endorsed “de-Americanization” of the Viet Nam war and probably would work for a settlement along very similar lines. They both agree that the U.S. must guard against overcommitment abroad, and they believe that the country’s whole international role must be reappraised. Nixon, bringing in a new team and having no responsibility for the decisions of the last eight years, might find it easier to innovate in this area. In the past, both have been tough where Communism, domestic or foreign, was concerned. Yet both promise to press negotiations with the Russians over disarmament and other issues. Nixon, however, has reverted to a harder line since the suppression of Czechoslovakia, and now insists that a major U.S. arms buildup is necessary before talks with the Russians can become serious. Humphrey seems more anxious to get on with pending business like the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

Nixon is apt to be a shrewder and more adroit diplomat-in-chief than Humphrey, whose impetuosity and trustfulness could prove to be serious liabilities. Humphrey often seems too ready to believe the last person he has talked to and too easily impressed by foreign leaders. Though Nixon has never been particularly popular among America’s allies (or foes), he would be cooler, more concerned with basic geopolitics than with the feeling of the moment.

Growth. Regardless of the specific problem, both must be considered pragmatists. Each stands at his party’s center after more than two decades in national politics. Both have shown great capacity for growth. Nixon started out in 1946 as a follower of Harold Stassen, applauding the Minnesotan’s “campaign to liberalize the Republican Party.” Stassen gave the young congressional candidate a hand that year, but a decade later tried to have him dumped as Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate. In the interim, Nixon acquired a gut fighter’s reputation that softened only after his forced retirement by defeats for the presidency in 1960 and the California governorship in 1962. Now he enjoys the active support of such diverse Republicans as Barry Goldwater and Jacob Javits, Strom Thurmond and Nelson Rockefeller.

Humphrey began as the mayor of Minneapolis, soon possessed an exaggerated reputation as a radical. Eventually he chose to fight liberal fights from the front bench, sacrificing individualism for advancement in the Sen ate and then to the vice presidency, losing old friends and associations and gaining new ones along the way. Now he has the backing of George Meanv and Henry Ford, Lyndon Johnson and Edward Kennedy, Richard Daley and George Ball.

Nixon, born in California and self-exiled to New York, really seems more at home between the coasts than on them.

At the same time, he has become a kind of middle-class everyman, relatively devoid of regional associations. Humphrey retains a geographic identification with Minnesota that is more traditional in American politicians.

The “real” man? In common with oth ers who have devoted much of their adult lives to politics, Humphrey and Nixon are like geological formations, created, stratum upon stratum, by deposits of history and evolution—their own and the world’s—over decades.

Sometimes they bear the scars of fiery eruptions, more often the erosion lines etched by adaptation and compromise. Next January, one of them will have the opportunity to begin his greatest period of growth.