From the deck of the little 350-ton Arbella plowing westward through the angry Atlantic to the Massachusetts coast in 1630, John Winthrop preached a sermon that struck the theme of what America in all its future years would seek to be. “Wee shall be,” Winthrop prophesied, “as a Citty upon a Hill, the Eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world.”
Almost three and a half centuries later, many Americans view the U.S. as something far less than a shining “Citty upon a Hill.” To baffled foreign eyes, the nation that once roused hopes around the world now appears inexplicably torn by tension and dissension, its vast treasure squandered with a profligate’s hand, its fabulous beauty pockmarked by hideous urban scars. Has the American Dream become the American damnation, a formula for selfishness rather than equality and excellence? British Historian Sir Denis Brogan flatly states: “This is not going to be the American century. Very few people are enamored of the American way of life.” Arthur Krock expresses a visceral fear that “the tenure of the United States as the first power in the world may be one of the briefest in history.”
Crisis of pluralism
This week, as he swears the awesome inaugural oath, Richard Nixon becomes the 37th President of a people still bewildered by a year of crises hauntingly reminiscent of those that preceded the Civil War and the Depression. As if verging on a national nervous breakdown, the U.S. in 1968 erupted in ghastly events: assassinations, black riots, student protests, rising crime. America faced a crisis of pluralism: warring groups and individuals refused to pay the price, whether in money or changed attitudes, that might broaden social justice. A decade that began with a quest for moral grandeur seemed to be ending on the defensive, mired in the sheer effort to keep society from exploding.
The incredible year ended, to be sure, with a growing view that the worst is over, the raw angers of race and generations spent and replaced by a national readiness to begin anew. As if symbolizing its potential for great cooperative projects, the U.S. sent three articulate and sensitive men on a faultless trip around the moon. Yet Richard Nixon, unfortunately, cannot rely on what may be only a passing moment of domestic peace and pride. Dark forces endure in U.S. life; stubborn problems remain to be resolved. Clearly, the daunting task of the American President in 1969 is nothing less than to heal a nation. What can he possibly do?
Every new President basks in a rebirth of American hope, a resurgent faith that new men, with new perceptions, can summon the nation to greatness. In one sense, that hope is well justified in the case of Richard Nixon: he comes to power when the war in Viet Nam may finally be ending; today, Americans are generally agreed that the nation’s resources must, as far as possible, be reallocated toward resolving its domestic ills.
Where—and how?
In this special Inauguration report, TIME thus focuses primarily on those ills: race, poverty, decaying cities, crime and all the other current burdens on the U.S. mind and spirit. Above all, it seeks to penetrate the biggest mystery in U.S. life today: why has the can-do country become a country that can’t? Why can’t a nation that commands one-third of the world’s wealth wipe out its social problems overnight? Are Americans so angry that they simply fail to see and seize the remarkable opportunities before them?
The answers are by no means apparent. The President cannot solve the problems alone; Americans themselves must decide where they want the nation to go—and how. It is a troubling fact that few Americans can view their land today without wondering whether it is not somehow going to hell and heaven at the same time. The world’s richest, strongest nation has never deserved its superlatives more. Yet rarely has it felt so wracked and confused, so unable to yoke its power to its problems. For the President who may well preside over America on its 200th birthday in 1976, the challenge is to revive its morale and purpose.
Even if Nixon merely diagnoses what ails America, he will have gone a long way, for what the nation needs above all is a fundamental reassessment of its peril as well as its progress. Are the disruptions in U.S. life signs of decay, or are they constructively forcing Americans to do out of necessity what they have refused to do by choice? Can the U.S. go on risking the backlash effects of helping some needy people at the expense of others who refuse to share their gains—or does it sorely need a unifying national challenge, a moral equivalent of Pearl Harbor? To lead and heal the nation, Richard Nixon will have to marshal immense compassion and intellect. The presidential imperative to comprehend the real forces of the age—and link them constructively to the unique character of the “Citty upon a Hill”—may never have been so difficult.
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