Essay: THOSE LITTLE-DISCUSSED CAMPAIGN ISSUES

THE 1960s began with a summons to national excellence and moral grandeur. Eight years later, Americans are divided, dispirited and disillusioned. The 1968 presidential campaign might have reawakened the quest for greatness. Instead, the electorate’s fears have dominated everything. Equally fearful of losing, the candidates have failed to articulate any new sense of national purpose and direction.

It is too glib to say that the candidates have dodged the issues. George Wallace has artfully exploited white fears of black progress; in that unsavory sense, he has indeed confronted the nation’s No. 1 agony—race relations. Richard Nixon rightly boasts that he has spoken on 167 issues, and Hubert Humphrey laughingly admits that he is criticized for having more solutions than there are problems. But quantity is no true gauge. The candidates have not yet spoken explicitly and specifically about scores of basic issues that go to the heart of America’s future. They have not revealed a definitive set of priorities for applying the nation’s resources to its problems. They have not even produced much eloquent, let alone elevated language, no memorable line that is worthy of becoming a cliché.

This year’s campaign, like many before it, has become a clash over personalities—and that is all to the good, as far as it goes. To vote wisely for a presidential candidate is basically to judge his strength of character. Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey have at least conveyed a clear choice between quite different styles and attitudes. All the same, both potential Presidents have been disturbingly imprecise even about the major issues of war and race, to say nothing of lesser problems. As a result, their true policies often seem equally vague to many voters. Not that taking hard positions on hard problems is easy; more and more national problems have grown so complicated that solutions stump and split the most informed experts. Moreover, a candidate must simplify such problems for the public, and inevitably risk turning complexities into divisive emotions.

Nixon and Humphrey have both assigned volunteer experts to the thankless task of turning out thoughtful if largely unread position papers on all sorts of topics: black capitalism, the problems of aging, rural redevelopment. But most are aimed at small special-interest groups, and if the press reports them, such pronouncements usually wind up in puny paragraphs between the obituaries and the recipes. Above all, candidates give short shrift to many issues because the people themselves are uninterested. Talk about the gold outflow or trade protectionism makes audiences nod and yawn. It is a political axiom, and one of democracy’s dilemmas, that only one issue per campaign, or two or three at most, can grab and hold the public.

This raises the question of why there is such a big fuss over the lack of televised debates. Obviously, a confrontation between personalities would be revealing and possibly decisive. But even if the candidates met headon, what would they talk about? The answer should be: plenty. At least five categories of issues cry out for deeper discussion.

One: National Security. What must we do to protect ourselves and promote world peace?

Looking beyond Viet Nam and the “honorable settlement” that both Nixon and Humphrey have called for, what of the future? Nixon does not disagree with Humphrey’s argument that the U.S. “cannot play the role of global gendarme.” But neither man clearly explains just how the U.S. should defend its foreign allies and interests. To draw a specific perimeter of defense would obviously encourage aggressors to grab anything on the other side of the line. Still, the candidates could at least specify which areas they regard as vital to American security, while just as clearly reserving a right to move elsewhere, if need be.

Happily, both men emphasize that primary responsibility for protecting foreign countries should be shifted to regional groupings of the countries themselves—a subject crucial to U.S. policy in Southeast Asia after the Viet Nam war ceases. Humphrey says, for example, that Asia’s regional defense should be led by Japan and India. But many exposed allies will be unable to protect themselves until they achieve political and economic stability—and that will require foreign aid. The Vice President advocates more U.S. economic aid, while Nixon hopes to hold it down by giving aid to fewer countries and inducing affluent allies to carry more of the burden. He overlooks the fact that France, Britain and several other European countries already divert larger shares of their national incomes to foreign aid than the U.S.’s .6%. The U.S. certainly can give more. In addition, says French Editor-Publisher Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the U.S. should improve its world position by far greater use of its potentially strongest weapon, “intellectual leadership.”

Humphrey and Nixon disagree significantly on the longer-term issues of defense spending, disarmament and the draft. Nixon wants to invest more in missiles to increase the U.S.’s narrowing lead over the Soviets, while Humphrey emphasizes that one of his chief concerns would be to close a disarmament deal with Moscow. Nixon favors spending $3 billion or more to build a professional army that would do away with the need for a peacetime draft. Humphrey is for a lottery draft.

One of the first strategic decisions facing the next President will be whether or not to construct a “thick” defensive network of anti-ballistic missiles that might cost $40 billion. Humphrey doubts the wisdom of doing that; Nixon has expressed no firm position. Another national concern is the nuclear nonproliferation treaty—an attempt to stop other countries, including some erratic new ones in Asia and Africa, from building and brandishing atomic bombs. To prevent such possible nuclear blackmail, Humphrey urges quick U.S. ratification of the treaty. Nixon has called for a delay because of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. His critics point out that Nixon’s strategy might delay ratification by other countries or kill the treaty entirely.

Two: The Quality of Life. How can the Government help Americans to become better educated, healthier, perhaps even happier?

National security—self-preservation—also means providing more Americans with minimum standards of U.S. life. The Government could wage a campaign to lower the nation’s relatively high rate of infant mortality (22.1 per 1,000 live births) and raise U.S. life expectancy (average for white males: 67.6 years, lower than in 17 less affluent countries). This could involve new laws to improve traffic safety and industrial safety, to tighten gun controls, to increase prenatal care and Medicare, and further subsidize research into heart disease, cancer and the other big killers. The candidates have touched on some of this in secondary speeches. For example, Humphrey strongly favors registration of guns, and Nixon hedges on that issue.

Both have talked quite a bit about education, but have concentrated on quantity rather than quality. Nixon pledges “a significant increase in federal aid” for education. Humphrey, using the corny phrase “educational minimum wage,” says the Government should guarantee an education for every deserving youngster, from age four through college. But neither man has deeply examined what kind of new education the U.S. should have to equip the young for an age of radical change that quickly outdates conventional schooling. They could at least talk more about the educational pressures that now bother many Americans—the cry for community control of urban public schools, the need to make universities less impersonal and courses more relevant to life and work.

Three: The Cities. How can we salvage the slums and make the American metropolis more livable?

Nixon wisely wants private business to take a bigger role in razing the ghettos and building a base of black capitalism (TIME, Oct. 18). He would use tax incentives to attract private investment, claiming this would require “little or no Government money.” His argument runs the risk of rationalizing congressional cuts in urban spending, and it overlooks the fact that tax incentives are a drain on the Treasury.

Humphrey says that he might try tax incentives, but his grander scheme is “a Marshall Plan for the Cities.” Typically, this is a Humphrey idea with an old-fashioned label, the real merit of which is obscured by his rather vague and blustery descriptions of it. His plan generally envisions an urban development bank with assets some day of about $200 billion, which is more than the combined total of the nation’s 50 largest banks. The funds would come from a public sale of bonds and an initial federal appropriation of $50 million in “seed money.” The bank would make loans not only to rebuilding projects in the cities but also to regional development corporations in the countryside.

In fact, rural redevelopment is crucial to solving urban congestion, unemployment and spiraling welfare costs. Almost one-fifth of rural adults are unemployed, and they will continue to swell the city slums in search of work unless they can find jobs back home. To help them and others, Humphrey and Nixon have each proposed a computerized job-information network to match job seekers with available jobs anywhere in the U.S.

The candidates have been far less specific on the overall issue of U.S. poverty. They agree that the welfare system is a demeaning, self-defeating mess, but they have no substantial proposals for reform. Nixon writes off the provocative idea of a guaranteed annual income. Humphrey has an “open mind” about it, but has not endorsed it. As for the growing physical degradation of U.S. cities, air and water, millions of Americans impatiently await a master plan for cleaning up the environment that goes far beyond the Government’s piecemeal antipollution efforts and Lady Bird Johnson’s well-intentioned beautification campaign. So far, the 1968 candidates’ remarks about the environment have been fairly routine.

Four: The Economy. How can we protect our money and make our wealth grow?

The nation faces some difficult choices. Should it fight inflation with mildly recessionary methods that might cut back on jobs? Should it maintain the 10% surtax beyond its scheduled expiration next July? Should there be more or less Government regulation of business?

Broadly, Humphrey favors a high level of Government involvement in the economy and near-full employment even at the cost of rising prices. He also seems willing to continue the surtax, if the money is needed for social purposes and the economy is robust enough to pay the bill.

Humphrey pledges to continue the neo-Keynesian policies that have helped stimulate the nation to 71 years of unprecedented growth in jobs, wages and production. On all these subjects, Nixon leans to almost the opposite pole. He points to the dangerous 4.3% rate of inflation and the bad (though improving) balance of payments, and promises to correct them by slowing down federal spending.

Five: Big Government and the Individual. How can the citizen achieve a greater voice in the decisions that affect him?

The most important hidden issue of the campaign, and a primary cause of the national malaise, is the pervasive feeling that big, impersonal Government is too deeply involved in everybody’s private life, and that almost nobody can control it or even influence it, except on Election Day. Among the major irritants: the draft, federal moves to enforce desegregation, and scores of Government programs run by unresponsive bureaucrats without citizen participation and often without voter consent. Particularly among the young, there is a real debate over whether election politics truly reflect the public will—and how to improve “participatory democracy.” Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy expressed and appealed to that unrest. Now a startling number of Kennedy’s blue-collar supporters have drifted to George Wallace, who capitalizes on the theme that, “I’ll return some of this Government to people like you.”

Humphrey and Nixon pledge much the same, but sound less demagogic. Indirectly needling Lyndon Johnson for his obsessive secrecy, the Vice President envisions an “open Presidency,” and the establishment of town and county citizens’ councils, through which people could express their complaints and ideas to Washington. Nixon promises that his Government would be much less involved in almost everything, and believes that the return of more decision-making powers to authorities at the state and local levels would enhance national unity. But the candidates could say much more on these subjects. The sense of non-involvement must be replaced by a popular feeling of participation in a common cause, even a noble cause—and that takes presidential leadership.

A time of divisiveness calls for a leader with not only a program but a vision, a pragmatic yet philosophical politician who can articulate a challenge and inspire the trust that he will see it through. Pronouncements alone cannot heal, nor programs unify antagonistic groups. Above all, the next President must communicate a new challenge to Americans by making a persuasive appeal for reconciliation and renewed moral purpose.

For all their mixed apathy and anger, the people know what they want: a man who can lead them to a new era of American excellence. The glaring lack so far of any real discussion of how the candidates plan to achieve that excellence has at least one possible advantage for the 37th President. Precisely because he has not locked himself into specifics, the winning candidate may have more freedom of action than most previous Presidents. As of now, though, it appears that in picking the winner, voters will have to rely even more than usual on hope and hunch.