Nation: THE MOON AND MIDDLE AMERICA

ERIC HOFFER, that relentlessly middlebrow longshoreman turned philosopher, applauds the Apollo program as “a triumph of the squares.” The historic journey to the moon is infinitely more than that, of course, and Hoffer’s phrase is mildly offensive. But he does have a point. The laconic Apollo 11 astronauts who returned to earth last week, and many of the people in science and industry who made the trip possible, epitomize the solid, perhaps old-fashioned American virtues. So do the thousands who came to see them off at the Cape and those who celebrated their return with flags and patriotic bumper stickers —few love beads among them, fewer bell-bottom trousers and no disparaging words about the nation. The moon landing was a mind-stretching leap into the future and an accomplishment shared by all America and indeed by the world. But it was especially an accomplishment of “middle America.”

It was also a vindication of some traditional strengths and precepts in the American character and experience: perseverance, organizational skill, the willingness to respond to competition—even the belief that the U.S. enjoys a special destiny in the world. Like the World War II Manhattan Project that created the Abomb, the space program exemplifies a particularly American genius.

That gift is the ability to muster massive resources of men, materials and expertise to convert abstract scientific theory into awesome, tangible technological achievement.

Greatest Since Creation. It is only an accident of history that Richard Nixon occupied the White House when the U.S. first landed men on the moon, but the coincidence seems apt. No less than Neil Armstrong, he is the smalltown boy who rose to fame, the upright citizen, the doer somehow left a bit unsophisticated despite his success and prominence. Nixon could scarcely contain his exuberance as he waited on the flag bridge of the carrier Hornet for the Pacific splashdown. Waving his arms, he exclaimed: “Oh, boy! Oh, boy!” As the Apollo command module bobbed in the sea, Nixon shouted down to the flight deck to ask the Navy band to play Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.

The President was the soul of middle America when he greeted the astronauts. Peering through the glass window of the quarantine van, he cried: “Gee, you look great!” He inquired whether they knew the results of the All-Star game. He chatted on and on, with somewhat feeble witticisms about asking the astronauts’ wives for a date (coyly revealing that he really meant a state dinner). While there was a certain unpretentious charm to it all, it was also an awkward performance, and its triviality was strongly at odds with the solemnity of what had been accomplished. To describe the feat, Nixon reached for a superlative and found a big one. “This,” he announced, “is the greatest week in the history of the world since the creation.” That seemed somewhat sweeping for a President who has instituted weekly religious services at the White House: in the Christian view, the birth of Christ surely must rank as a greater event in the world’s chronology since Genesis.

In an odd way, the moon is rapidly becoming a mark of where one stands on political and social issues. If Apollo was a victory for U.S. engineering genius, it could not disguise American failures at home. That fact has already become a thundering cliche, and one that promises to be heard for a long time. If we can put men on the moon, why can’t we build adequate housing? Or feed all citizens adequately? Or end social and economic injustices? (Or even make the airlines run on time?) One answer, at least, is obvious: unlike the moon landing, these earthbound problems involve complex human instincts and frailties, torturous legacies and anomalies of history.

It is the liberals (along with radicals, many blacks, many of the young) who ask these nagging questions, with particular insistence pressing home the contrast between the accomplishments in space and failures on earth. In this decade the liberals made an issue of these national inadequacies and attempted solutions. Promises made stirred hopes and then frustrations. Other factors, most importantly the war, have set loose political and social demons that neither liberals nor conservatives can yet capture or placate. The events of last week underscored the irony of the liberals’ present eclipse. In 1961 John Kennedy set for the U.S. the goal of landing men on the moon by 1970; Richard Nixon, the man Kennedy defeated, presided over the attainment of that goal in 1969. By mischance, Senator Edward Kennedy, the heir to an important part of U.S. liberal leadership, found his political future seriously in doubt.

Competitive Prod. Ted Kennedy himself has argued for a shift of national priorities away from space and Viet Nam to pressing domestic needs. Given the temper of Congress and the Nixon Administration, and the continuing costs of war, that shift is not likely to happen soon. The very success of Apollo 11 is an augury that the level of space spending may not be cut. The liberals seem out of tune with the majority of middle Americans—at least for now. Middle America does not seem discontented with the present ordering of national values. It elected Richard Nixon and strongly backs the U.S. space program.

There is a special affinity between Richard Nixon and the people of middle America. TIME’S Washington bureau chief, Iowa-born Hugh Sidey, flew with Nixon across the Pacific last week and reflected:

“The President is obviously the embodiment and leader of these people who have paid their taxes, kept the wheels of the country turning, absorbed ridicule from their children and from college professors without saying much. Nixon has given a voice to the majority that did not know it was a majority. Suddenly a few things seem to be going right. This is encouragement to Nixon; this is what his kind of people can do. There is something to be said for it. There is some praise due all those middle-stratum Americans who do the best they know how, trying to do what is honorable—or at least what they think is honorable.

“Riots, crime and permissiveness are all linked in their minds, in a sense, with the old, New Deal-style leadership. Those Americans who have struggled to get just a bit of the good life are turning away to seek a calmer mooring. Right now they have fastened upon Richard Nixon, who goes to ball games, supports the lean hot dog and follows space flights with the enthusiasm of a small boy. He is the president of the Jaycees, the Kiwanis booster, the cheerleader flying around the world glorying in what middle America has wrought. The Apollo success makes it a good day for people who have taken a lot of scorn for a long time.”

In spite of presidential euphoria and middle-American fatigue with the nation’s problems, the question remains: Can the U.S. apply its demonstrated technological virtuosity to help master its vexing difficulties at home? Emmanuel Mesthene, director of a Harvard research program on technology and society, believes that an important preface to that goal is already under way. “Our society,” he argues, “is coming to a deliberate decision to understand and control technology to good social purpose.” Perhaps, but major obstacles clearly remain. Going to the moon is easier—and far less costly—than rebuilding American cities and uplifting the disinherited. There is no obvious prod of international competition, no single challenge perceived and response desired by a cohesive majority.

Two Forces. Nonetheless, the U.S. has opened another frontier in space, and there is no material reason why it cannot do so on earth if only it has the will. In 1893, Historian Frederick Jackson Turner described the American qualities born of frontier life: “That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom.” All this could be applied to causes even more arduous—and at least as worthy—as reaching the moon. But it can happen only with the help of two forces that are extremely hard to bring into play, and there is no evidence as yet that they are being marshaled. They are national leadership and national will.