Nixonland. Part 23

A s.n.a.t.c.h of dialogue was heard over the patrolling helicopters: "Just get a .22 rifle and do it."

"I'm not a violent man. I really don't believe in-you know."

"It's tempting, though."

"Well, it would take a .30-06 to do the job anyway."

A sign: THIS TIME GAS-GUNS. WHAT NEXT, BOMBS? THIS TIME GAS-GUNS. WHAT NEXT, BOMBS?

One hundred twenty-eight people were injured-"25 police among them," Rolling Stone Rolling Stone reported with pride. For the first time, a white American neighborhood was under military occupation. (The guardsmen worried about the oranges and cookies the hippie gamines gave them: were they dosed with acid?) A young colonel became so disgusted with the duty-like most guardsmen he had joined up to stay reported with pride. For the first time, a white American neighborhood was under military occupation. (The guardsmen worried about the oranges and cookies the hippie gamines gave them: were they dosed with acid?) A young colonel became so disgusted with the duty-like most guardsmen he had joined up to stay out out of combat-he threw down his rifle and helmet. of combat-he threw down his rifle and helmet. Rolling Stone Rolling Stone put him on the cover, a hero who had changed sides in a civil war. put him on the cover, a hero who had changed sides in a civil war.

The fifth day of the seventeen-day occupation, Reagan held a press conference. An angry, mustachioed reporter raised his voice: "Over one hundred people shot down! Over one hundred people, I'm sure the record will show. Gas, lethal gas-"

Reagan, as stern as a schoolmarm: "Once the dogs of war are unleashed, you must expect that things will happen, and people being human will make mistakes on both sides-"

The reporter: "We're here because people are being shot and killed today in Berkeley!"

Cross talk.

Reagan's voice rang out. "Negotiate? What is to negotiate?" What is to negotiate?"

A middle-aged reporter with a beard tried to explain: "Governor Reagan, the time has pa.s.sed when the university can just ride roughshod over the desires of the majority of the student body. The university is a public inst.i.tution-"

Reagan interrupted him, yelling, "All of it began the first time that some of you who know better, and are old enough to know better, are old enough to know better, let young people think that they have the let young people think that they have the right right to choose the laws that they can obey as long as they are doing it in the name of social protest!" to choose the laws that they can obey as long as they are doing it in the name of social protest!"

Reagan stood bolt upright, shoved photographers aside, and exited the room. That same day, May 21, Wednesday, Richard Nixon announced his choice for the Supreme Court: Warren Burger, an appeals court judge on the D.C. circuit. Nixon had read a speech of his reprinted in U.S. News & World Report: U.S. News & World Report: "Society's problem with those who will not obey the law has never loomed so large in our national life as it does today." European countries get more "swiftly, efficiently, and directly to the question of whether the accused is guilty." "Society's problem with those who will not obey the law has never loomed so large in our national life as it does today." European countries get more "swiftly, efficiently, and directly to the question of whether the accused is guilty."

Toward the end of that week the Berkeley student newspaper ran an editorial in defiance of their governor: "We will have that park. We will have it or lose the university."

There was a rearguard action in the Battle of People's Park. John Lennon and his new wife, Yoko Ono, exiled themselves to a bed at the Fairmont Hotel in Toronto and staged a publicity stunt for peace in Vietnam. Celebrities visited their hotel room to talk about the world situation as cameras clicked and boom microphones hovered. Timothy Leary poked his head out the window: "What a green trip." A gray-haired rabbi rehea.r.s.ed a new song with the Lennons, "Give Peace a Chance." "The love these two have for each other extends itself to all humanity," he said. And every day, John and Yoko would broadcast live to Berkeley, to try to calm the situation.

The Bed-In for Peace's mood shifted when Al Capp came calling. The sixty-year-old creator of Li'l Abner and the Shmoo, a former proud New Dealer, was now a barnstorming right-wing lecturer, dispensing such wisdom as "Students are tearing up campuses today for the same reason a few years ago they were wetting their bed"; "Never before has it been so profitable to kiss the a.s.s of kids"; and when asked what we should do in Vietnam answered-"Shoot back."

Capp bounded into the Lennons' hotel room with a smirk, introduced himself as the "dreadful Neanderthal fascist," and asked for something "hard" to sit on. He confronted the newlyweds: "What about during World War II? What if Hitler and Churchill had gone to bed?"

John answered, "A lot of people would be alive today," and asked the cartoonist what he was doing for peace in Berkeley.

"I'm cheering the police. That's precisely what I'm doing about it.... You people have a home in London. Do you permit people to smash the windows and defecate on the furniture, like they're doing in Berkeley?"

Capp started calling Yoko Ono names like "Dragon Lady." It seemed that he was trying to bait her husband into punching him. New Left radicals weren't the only people who understood the propaganda value of heightening the contradictions.

"I write my cartoons for money. Just as you sing your songs. And that's what this is for." write my cartoons for money. Just as you sing your songs. And that's what this is for."

Now the Beatle looked almost ready to punch him. He asked Capp to leave. Capp's parting words: "It's not for me to forgive you, it's for your psychiatrist."

It pointed up a dynamic of Nixonland: war and the efforts to end war looked alike on TV. They all just looked like more war.

On May 15, paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division stormed up an objective Americans called Hill 937 and Vietnamese called Ap Bia Mountain. The AP ran an evocative dispatch on May 19. "The paratroopers came down the mountain, their green shirts darkened with sweat, their weapons gone, their bandages stained brown and red-with mud and blood." It reported them cursing their commander, whose radio call was Blackjack: "That d.a.m.ned Blackjack won't stop until he kills every one of us."

It became known as Hamburger Hill. The soldiers won the objective, just as Americans often won their military objectives; 633 North Vietnamese main-force soldiers were killed, fewer than 100 Americans. Then the hill was abandoned, just as Americans often abandoned objectives in Vietnam. "We are not fighting for terrain as such. We are going after the enemy," Commander Creighton Abrams explained. "Don't mean nothin'," answered the troops-a refrain that echoed all the way back home.

The first politician to spoil the president's honeymoon on Vietnam had been George McGovern, back on March 17. "There is no more time for considering 'military options,' no more time for 'improving the bargaining position,'" he orated to a crowded Senate chamber. "In the name of decency and common sense, there must be no further continuation of the present war policy, however distinguished in rhetoric or more hollow predictions of victory yet to come.... I believe the only acceptable objective now is an immediate end to the killing." When a senator gives a major speech, he traditionally summons friendly colleagues to the floor to compliment him for the record. But Alan Cranston of California and Harold Hughes of Iowa had not expected anything like this. They said nothing. Ted Kennedy, for his part, told reporters that McGovern's words were "precipitate."

Now, two months later, Kennedy shifted toward McGovern. The Hamburger Hill a.s.sault, he said in a May 24 speech to the New Democratic Coalition, a party reform group formed after Chicago, was "cruelty and savagery." Five days later he called it "senseless and irresponsible," "madness"-"symptomatic of a mentality and a policy that requires immediate attention."

The president paid attention to Ted Kennedy. Nixon was obsessed with everything Kennedy-had been since 1946, when JFK stole the front page of the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times from him after his first election victory ("Son of Kennedy Congress Winner"). He had had to step over the bodies of two Kennedys to become president-then watched the torch pa.s.sed to this thirty-seven-year-old who had been kicked out of Harvard for cheating but had already been put on from him after his first election victory ("Son of Kennedy Congress Winner"). He had had to step over the bodies of two Kennedys to become president-then watched the torch pa.s.sed to this thirty-seven-year-old who had been kicked out of Harvard for cheating but had already been put on Time Time's first cover of the year as the favorite for the 1972 Democratic nomination.

Kennedy ghosts rattled around the White House; they were whom Nixon blamed for his acts that would otherwise look venal or petty. His fifth day in office, dictating a memo to Ehrlichman, he said, "The cabinet officers should fill at least ninety percent of all the available positions with new people regardless of the competence of the old people.... This is exactly what Kennedy did when he came in." On the president's first trip to Europe, he dashed as quickly as possible through Berlin: it was a "Kennedy city." He was averse to "Battle Hymn of the Republic": "That's a Kennedy song."

When Gallup did its monthly poll in May, it asked, "Which one of the men listed on this card would you like to see take over the direction of the plans and policies of the Democratic Party during the next four years?" Edward M. Kennedy won by more than Muskie and Humphrey combined. "Which of these men do you admire?" asked Fortune Fortune in its poll of college students: Kennedy, number one; the president of the United States, number three. John Ehrlichman suggested they put a surveillance tail on Kennedy. On March 26, Nixon approved the idea. And now Edward M. Kennedy was feasting vulturelike off the misfortune of Nixon's first setback in Vietnam. That figured. It was how those Kennedys worked. in its poll of college students: Kennedy, number one; the president of the United States, number three. John Ehrlichman suggested they put a surveillance tail on Kennedy. On March 26, Nixon approved the idea. And now Edward M. Kennedy was feasting vulturelike off the misfortune of Nixon's first setback in Vietnam. That figured. It was how those Kennedys worked.

Nixon didn't like senators or congressmen at any rate. He thought of them the way he thought of the press: they had the luxury of criticism without responsibility. His own party's congressional leadership got information on his legislative strategy on a strictly need-to-know basis (Congressman Jerry Ford thought Haldeman and Ehrlichman treated them like "the chairman of the board of a large corporation regards his regional sales managers"). A new president's first-year State of the Union address was where he traditionally unveiled his legislative program; Nixon didn't even give a State of the Union. He didn't know the name of some of his congressional liaisons. A Republican from Illinois moved to commemorate the names of the thirty-three thousand dead in Vietnam in the Congressional Record; Congressional Record; Nixon scrawled an order to an aide: "Harlow-Don't ask him to see me again." Nixon didn't invite a single congressman to his daughter Tricia's White House wedding in 1971. Legislators-petty, grandstanding, insolent. Nixon scrawled an order to an aide: "Harlow-Don't ask him to see me again." Nixon didn't invite a single congressman to his daughter Tricia's White House wedding in 1971. Legislators-petty, grandstanding, insolent.

The worst were the ones who read the Const.i.tution, especially Article I, Section 8, granting them powers "to declare War...to raise and support Armies...to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces." Interference with what Nixon saw as his sovereign foreign-policy-making prerogatives drove him nearly around the bend.

One day Nixon raged to his press aides to sever all ties with the Times Times and the and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Next he added the Next he added the Washington Post, Washington Post, after it jumped the gun in announcing his meeting with the president of South Vietnam on Midway Island June 8. (Nixon had decided he needed an excuse to be out of the country that day to get out of a scheduled address at Ohio State after the FBI told him it was one of the hottest antiwar campuses.) Three days later Hedrick Smith of the after it jumped the gun in announcing his meeting with the president of South Vietnam on Midway Island June 8. (Nixon had decided he needed an excuse to be out of the country that day to get out of a scheduled address at Ohio State after the FBI told him it was one of the hottest antiwar campuses.) Three days later Hedrick Smith of the Times Times reported talk in Washington that Hamburger Hill "would undermine public support for the war and thus shorten the administration's time for successful negotiations in Paris." The reporter with the best contacts in the West Wing, the reported talk in Washington that Hamburger Hill "would undermine public support for the war and thus shorten the administration's time for successful negotiations in Paris." The reporter with the best contacts in the West Wing, the New Republic New Republic's John Osborne, reported the president was enveloped in "a pa.s.sing phase of extreme frustration." Nixon spent hours each day alone, brooding, or b.i.t.c.hing to Haldeman about the staff's failure to get the press to write that he worked twenty-hour days. And that he cared nothing about public relations.

By the end of the school year, law enforcement officials counted eighty-four acts of arson and bombings or attempted bombings at colleges, twenty-seven at high schools. Almost one hundred anti-campus-violence bills pa.s.sed committees in the California State Senate. West Virginia pa.s.sed a law declaring anyone a "rioter" who failed to obey an order of any law enforcement officer. That included onlookers deputized deputized as law enforcement officers. It also declared law enforcement officers automatically guiltless in any rioter's death. as law enforcement officers. It also declared law enforcement officers automatically guiltless in any rioter's death.

The president embarked on a speaking tour before friendly audiences. If he couldn't speak at Ohio State, he found a campus where he could: tiny General Beadle State College. Ever alert for opportunities to take a hatchet to the weakest joints in the Democratic coalition, perhaps Nixon chose this particular inst.i.tution of higher learning because it was in George McGovern's home state, South Dakota. McGovern's profile had recently risen considerably. The Democrats had just named a commission to reform their nominating procedures to heal the divisions of 1968, with McGovern as chair. The senator from the modest, conservative Great Plains state was becoming a national figure-hobn.o.bbing with Franklins. Here was an opportunity to wound him.

"I feel at home here because I, too," the president began, "grew up in a small town. I attended a small college, about the size of this one; and when I was in law school, at a much larger university, one of the ways that I helped work my way through that law school was to work in the law library." He talked about a South Dakota mine claim his wife was left by her father: "No gold was ever discovered there." In the form of flattery toward his hosts, he stuck in a barb against his enemies: "Opportunity for all is represented here. This is a small college, not rich and famous like Yale and Harvard." It was at General Beadle State where "we still can sense the daring that converted a raw frontier into part of the vast heartland of America.

"We live in a deeply troubled and profoundly unsettled time. Drugs and crime, campus revolts, racial discord, draft resistance-on every hand we find old standards violated, old values discarded, old precepts ignored. A vocal minority of our young people are opting out of the process by which a civilization maintains its continuity: the pa.s.sing on of values from one generation to the next. Old and young across the nation shout across a chasm of misunderstanding, and the louder they shout, the broader the chasm becomes.

"As a result of this, our inst.i.tutions in America today are undergoing what may be the severest challenge of our history.... The nation has survived other attempts at insurrection. We can survive this one." If, he added, we had the will: "It has not been a lack of civil power, but the reluctance of a free people to employ it, that so often has stayed the hand of authorities faced with confrontation.... The student who invades an administration building, roughs up a dean, rifles the files, and issues 'nonnegotiable demands' may have some of his demands met by a permissive university administration. But the greater his 'victory,' the more he will have undermined the security of his own rights."

Nixon ended with a call to morality. "In pubic life, we have seen reputations destroyed by smears and gimmicks paraded as panaceas. We have heard shrill voices of hate shouting lies and sly voices of malice twisting facts." This he and his audience-we-would never do. "The values we cherish are sustained by a fabric of mutual self-restraint woven of ordinary civil decency, respect for the rights of others, respect for the laws of community, and respect for the democratic process of orderly change. The purpose of these restraints, I submit, is not to protect an 'Establishment,' but to establish the protection of liberty; not to prevent change, but to insure that change reflects the public will and respects the rights of all."

That same day the New York Times New York Times' Hedrick Smith broke the story of secret negotiations to return political control of Okinawa to j.a.pan and became the seventh American citizen to be unlawfully wiretapped by the administration.

The next morning Nixon's audience was a football stadium full of graduating Air Force Academy cadets. A favorite Nixon defense program, a promise to Strom Thurmond on the campaign trail, was under congressional threat: the antiballistic missile system, traditionally considered destabilizing in arms control circles. Full-page newspaper ads appeared savaging it: "From the people who brought you Vietnam-the antiballistic missile system." The ads appeared in the same editions where Pentagon cost overruns graced the front page. Here was Nixon's response: it was all the Franklins' fault.

"It is open season on the armed forces. Military programs are ridiculed as needless, if not deliberate waste. The military profession is derided in some of the so-called 'best circles' of America. Patriotism is considered by some to be a backward fetish of the uneducated and the unsophisticated."

We knew better. knew better. They They did not. They were ready, indeed, to disarm us. did not. They were ready, indeed, to disarm us.

"They believe that we can be conciliatory and accommodating only if we do not have the strength to be otherwise. They believe that America will be able to deal with the possibility of peace only when we are unable to cope with the threat of war."

Then, to the sea of crisp white caps, he delivered a good old-fashioned tribute to American power and destiny. "It would be easy, easy for a president of the United States to buy some popularity by going along with the new isolationists."

(He wasn't going to take the easy way out.) "If America was to become a dropout"-dropouts: hairy, smelly, insolent things-"the rest of the world would live in terror.... Our adversaries have not yet learned peaceful ways to resolve their conflicting national interests."

He even promised Orthogonians the moon-and insinuated that the "sick society" yammerers, Franklins all, were ready to s.n.a.t.c.h it away from them.

"My disagreement with the skeptics and the isolationists is fundamental. They have lost the vision indispensable to great leadership. They observe the problems that confront us, they measure our resources, and then they despair.

"When the first vessels set out from Europe for the New World, these men would have weighed the risks and they would have stayed behind. When the colonists"-or that's what his prepared text said; he made a Freudian slip and used the New Left's word "colonialists"-"on the Eastern seaboard started across the Appalachians to the unknown reaches of the Ohio Valley, these men would have counted the costs and they would have stayed behind. Our current exploration of s.p.a.ce makes the point vividly; here is testimony to man's vision and to man's courage.... When the first man stands on the moon next month, every American will stand taller because of what he has done, and we should be proud of this magnificent achievement.... Only when a nation means something to itself can it mean something to others."

The so-called best circles would have us stay right here on Earth and mean nothing to anyone.

The best circles responded obligingly: "It sounded like the old Nixon I used to know," said Senator Albert Gore, the liberal Vietnam War skeptic from Tennessee. "For my money, the president has been showing his worst side-the side that earned him the name Tricky d.i.c.ky." Time Time reported, "A few of his own staff admitted privately afterward that some of Nixon's language was unfortunate." When that quote showed up in his news summary, Nixon dashed off an action memo: "On an urgent basis I want the whole staff to be questioned on this." reported, "A few of his own staff admitted privately afterward that some of Nixon's language was unfortunate." When that quote showed up in his news summary, Nixon dashed off an action memo: "On an urgent basis I want the whole staff to be questioned on this."

The speeches ended the presidential funk. He jetted off to Midway Island and made President Thieu stand by his side as he humiliated him-announcing the withdrawal of twenty-five thousand American troops from South Vietnam. On June 9 the Senate voted to confirm Warren Burger as chief justice, 743 (Time put him on the cover: "The Supreme Court: Move Toward the Center"). At his next press conference the put him on the cover: "The Supreme Court: Move Toward the Center"). At his next press conference the New Republic New Republic's correspondent thought he heard a sneer in Nixon's voice when answering a question about Clark Clifford's suggestion in Foreign Affairs Foreign Affairs that the drawdown should be greater. During Clifford's year in the defense secretary's chair, Nixon responded, "our casualties were the highest of the whole five-year period, and as far as negotiations were concerned, all that had been accomplished, as I indicated earlier, that we had agreed on, was the shape of the table." A sneer was a sign Nixon was feeling himself again. Afterward he spent hours on the phone asking a.s.sociates how he had done-something he did only when he was confident he would hear praise. The president was in the arena, and all was well with the world. that the drawdown should be greater. During Clifford's year in the defense secretary's chair, Nixon responded, "our casualties were the highest of the whole five-year period, and as far as negotiations were concerned, all that had been accomplished, as I indicated earlier, that we had agreed on, was the shape of the table." A sneer was a sign Nixon was feeling himself again. Afterward he spent hours on the phone asking a.s.sociates how he had done-something he did only when he was confident he would hear praise. The president was in the arena, and all was well with the world.

For instance, two prominent Democrats from opposing wings of the party were at each other's throats: Senator McGovern, who brought his reform commission to Chicago for regional hearings in June, and Mayor Daley, who offered his own detailed proposal there for reorganizing the nomination process. McGovern responded by suggesting that hizzoner might better help heal the Democrats by recommending dismissal of the federal indictments of the eight alleged ringleaders of the 1968 convention riots: "A lot of raw wounds were opened in the convention," McGovern pointed out from the dais of the Sherman House Hotel, Daley Machine headquarters. "One thing keeping open those wounds is the city's determination to press the indictments. I earnestly hope, with your influence, you can alleviate the situation and put the events behind us, end the anguish, and heal the wounds."

The mayor reared back angrily at the insolent guest in his home.

"Senator, you must realize that the bitterness and the attacks within our party were present long before the convention and were built up by those within our party in their attacks on President Johnson. They They have a responsibility for what happened, not the people of Chicago. People came here to destroy President Johnson, and in doing it, they did not care if they destroyed the Democratic Party in the process." have a responsibility for what happened, not the people of Chicago. People came here to destroy President Johnson, and in doing it, they did not care if they destroyed the Democratic Party in the process."

It was one those political utterances in which a silk glove hid an iron fist. Senator McGovern had been one of "those people." Mayor Daley never did make much distinction between those politicians out to unseat President Johnson and the hippies fornicating in his streets.

"If a person violates the law," Daley barked, "he should suffer the consequences."

McGovern interrupted, "It is very important very important to try to heal all the divisions, and perhaps the mayor could exert his influence-" to try to heal all the divisions, and perhaps the mayor could exert his influence-"

Daley interrupted, "If you're asking for amnesty for anyone who violated this law, I'll have no part of it.... The people came here with the intentions of being disruptive.... It's all in the public record."

The hearing, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported, "weakened and embittered the party in the contest for its schizophrenic soul that is certain to intensify in the months ahead."

On domestic policy Richard Nixon's positions were not too different from those of all the best circles. Nixon didn't care care much about domestic policy-except for the kind of stuff he hired Harry Dent to worry about: blocking school integration. The running of a welfare state he dismissed as "building outhouses in Peoria." "I've always thought the country could run itself domestically without a president," Nixon once told Theodore White. "You need a president for foreign policy." Now that it was time at long last to turn to configuring a domestic agenda, Nixon was content to let the bureaucrats and policy intellectuals take care of it, following the conventional wisdom of their trade. much about domestic policy-except for the kind of stuff he hired Harry Dent to worry about: blocking school integration. The running of a welfare state he dismissed as "building outhouses in Peoria." "I've always thought the country could run itself domestically without a president," Nixon once told Theodore White. "You need a president for foreign policy." Now that it was time at long last to turn to configuring a domestic agenda, Nixon was content to let the bureaucrats and policy intellectuals take care of it, following the conventional wisdom of their trade.

That conventional wisdom, in 1969, was liberal. A growing state was seen as the natural companion to human progress-"the price of rapidly expanding national growth," President Eisenhower had said in 1958. The day before Nixon's Vietnam speech the Harvard economist and bestselling author John Kenneth Galbraith testified to a rapt joint congressional subcommittee in favor of nationalizing any company that did more than 75 percent of its business with the Pentagon.

That this mood was shifting on the ground-that the toryhood of change was outstripping the public's willingness to accept its nostrums-was something Nixon didn't pay much attention to, a lacuna in his obsession with the mood of the middle-cla.s.s ma.s.ses. Gallup, in its January polling, described a plan to provide every American family a guaranteed minimum income. "Would you favor or oppose such a plan?" Sixty-two percent said they would oppose it. Nixon ended up proposing something similar anyway. Such was the idea's momentum in the best circles.

The imminent end of material scarcity had been a hobbyhorse of American intellectuals since the fifties. Via "automation" and "cybernetics," the theory went, society would be able to meet its production needs with ever-diminishing human input. Social critics considered the boredom, anomie, and alienation that would follow in postscarcity's wake as the preeminent social problem of the age. It was put forward as the explanation for the generation gap, campus disorder, the new s.e.xual libertinism, the decline of religious piety, the rise of alternative spirituality, anything. An article in Time Time in February 1967 quoted the director of research at New York's Rockland State Hospital: "Those dated objectives of adequate food, housing, and racial equality are now within sight. The sense of great purpose and broad adventure which those goals engendered have vanished." Hence "curiosity and action are directed inward," so drugs that "sever the tenuous ties with the outside world are highly prized." Timothy Leary, at a famous 1967 "Houseboat Summit" with Alan Watts, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg, said the coming postscarcity portended the evolution of two separate species: the "anthill" people who still insisted on working, and "the tribal people, who don't have to worry about leisure because when you drop out then the real playwork begins." in February 1967 quoted the director of research at New York's Rockland State Hospital: "Those dated objectives of adequate food, housing, and racial equality are now within sight. The sense of great purpose and broad adventure which those goals engendered have vanished." Hence "curiosity and action are directed inward," so drugs that "sever the tenuous ties with the outside world are highly prized." Timothy Leary, at a famous 1967 "Houseboat Summit" with Alan Watts, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg, said the coming postscarcity portended the evolution of two separate species: the "anthill" people who still insisted on working, and "the tribal people, who don't have to worry about leisure because when you drop out then the real playwork begins."

In that context a modest guaranteed minimum income seemed a middle-of-the-road option.

Even conservatives agreed. Milton Friedman, in the 1962 book that brought him to Barry Goldwater's attention, proposed a "negative income tax": people declaring income on their returns below a certain minimum would receive a remittance from the government to bring them up to the minimum. Richard Nixon was fond of the idea because it would eliminate the welfare bureaucracy. He asked his new favorite White House staffer, an idiosyncratic forty-year-old former Kennedy and Johnson Labor Department official, about the negative-income-tax proposal he was working up: would it get rid of social workers?

"Wipe them out," said his smiling bow-tied aide, now in his boss's best graces.

This Orthogonian named Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a hard-charging and convivial Irish-Catholic striver out of New York whose alcoholic father had abandoned his family to relative deprivation when Daniel was ten. He graduated first in his high school cla.s.s, worked as a stevedore and attended City College and Tufts, and completed a Ph.D. thesis at the London School of Economics. Nixon recruited him by pleading that he was hardly the hardhearted conservative of legend, that he was a child of the Depression and knew poverty, too. Richard Nixon always exaggerated the degree of his youthful privation, simultaneously self-pitying and self-aggrandizing. But then, so did Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He'd hint he'd grown up in h.e.l.l's Kitchen. Actually, he learned the neighborhood when his mother bought a bar there when he was in college.

Moynihan had became nearly a household name in 1965 when Evans and Novak got ahold of a Labor Department study he'd written called "The Negro Family: A Call to Action." The "Moynihan Report," as it came to be known, argued that the path to the low-income blacks' full integration into American life was blocked by flaws in its matriarchal family structure. The message that culture, not economics, was the driving force in poverty delighted conservatives and made Moynihan public enemy number one among left-wing antipoverty activists. Nixon's people had kept their eye on Moynihan ever since 1966, when he wrote a jaundiced review of the War on Poverty in the policy magazine he coedited, the Public Interest, Public Interest, which included the line "The Republicans are ready to govern." Then in a head-turning 1967 speech to his fellow members of Americans for Democratic Action, he said America must "prepare for the onset of terrorism" from minority activists. How to fight it? Not the way LBJ said. "Liberals must divest themselves of the notion that the nation-and especially the cities of this nation-can be run from agencies in Washington." which included the line "The Republicans are ready to govern." Then in a head-turning 1967 speech to his fellow members of Americans for Democratic Action, he said America must "prepare for the onset of terrorism" from minority activists. How to fight it? Not the way LBJ said. "Liberals must divest themselves of the notion that the nation-and especially the cities of this nation-can be run from agencies in Washington."

Moynihan reserved special scorn in the speech for liberals' "curious condescension which takes the form of sticking up for and explaining away anything, however outrageous, which Negroes, individually or collectively, might do." Confronting them, he told the ADA liberals, "would not be pretty." But not confronting them would be worse. "Liberals [must] see more clearly that their interest is in the stability of the social order, and that given the threats to that stability, it is necessary to make much more effective alliances with political conservatives who share that concern, and who recognize that unyielding rigidity is just as much a threat to the continuity of things as is an anarchic desire for change."

Time magazine loved it. William F. Buckley adored it. A Black Power leader called it "a statement that the time had come when white liberals and white bigots had to get together." When the liberal biweekly the magazine loved it. William F. Buckley adored it. A Black Power leader called it "a statement that the time had come when white liberals and white bigots had to get together." When the liberal biweekly the New Leader New Leader published the speech under the t.i.tle "The Politics of Stability," Len Garment sent a reverential note to the author and rushed a copy to the boss (who must especially have adored Moynihan's take on Vietnam and urban riots as the "especial problem of American liberals because more than anyone else it is they who have been in office, in power at the time of, and in large measure presided over the onset of both"). In his employment interview Moynihan bonded with the president-elect over a shared hatred of "the professional welfarists." But Moynihan also came armed with a warning: that the urge to slip the yoke of the New Deal and the Great Society was not a conservative notion. It would be wildly disruptive: "The urban ghettos would go up in flames." published the speech under the t.i.tle "The Politics of Stability," Len Garment sent a reverential note to the author and rushed a copy to the boss (who must especially have adored Moynihan's take on Vietnam and urban riots as the "especial problem of American liberals because more than anyone else it is they who have been in office, in power at the time of, and in large measure presided over the onset of both"). In his employment interview Moynihan bonded with the president-elect over a shared hatred of "the professional welfarists." But Moynihan also came armed with a warning: that the urge to slip the yoke of the New Deal and the Great Society was not a conservative notion. It would be wildly disruptive: "The urban ghettos would go up in flames."

Moynihan had a better idea. Nixon could play a role vis-a-vis his forebear Lyndon Johnson the way Eisenhower had with Roosevelt and Truman: as a consolidator of their reforms-though Moynihan didn't put it quite that way. Moynihan was a master of rising in politicians' esteem by dressing up their existing inclinations in intellectual finery. Moynihan loaned Nixon a book: a biography of the great nineteenth-century Tory Benjamin Disraeli-consolidator and reorganizer of his liberal forebear William Gladstone. "Tory men and Whig measures are what changed the world," Moynihan explained. Nixon, an Anglophile to boot, was a sucker for the flattery.

In July, when Nixon reorganized the executive branch, he centralized domestic-policy decision-making in the White House to shut out the old bureaucracies just as he had for foreign policy. Moynihan became the Kissinger figure, entrusted to devise the legislative program, freeing Nixon to worry over the chessboard of geopolitics. "The boss is in love again," Bill Safire observed.

In "The Politics of Stability" Moynihan said the state was "good at collecting revenues and rather bad at distributing services." (Liberals should be "ashamed of ourselves" for not recognizing the fact, he added.) Thus, the domestic program Nixon would reveal in an early-August speech began with a diagnosis: "A third of a century of centralizing power and responsibility in Washington has produced a bureaucratic monstrosity, c.u.mbersome, unresponsive...a colossal failure."

Two fixes, he promised, would make the state work better. The first was sc.r.a.pping Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The Nixon-Moynihan "Family a.s.sistance Program" was cleverly devised to ameliorate its structural flaw: AFDC penalized work. Get a job, and you couldn't get welfare. Under Nixon's plan anyone earning $720 or less from outside sources would receive a federal benefit of $1,600. But the more money a family earned from work, the less the federal benefit-the benefit adjusted so that additional additional money from work would always earn a family a bigger total income. Earn $1,000 a year and the government would send you an extra $1,460, for a total family income of $2,460. Earn $2,000 and the government would send you $960, for a total income of $2,960. Any family earning less than $3,920 would get an annual government check. No American would be forced to live on under $1,600 a year, while under the current system a poor mother in Mississippi had to survive on $468. Labor Secretary George Shultz came up with a brilliant line to please the conservatives: "What the nation needs is not more welfare, but more 'workfare'" (though that was slightly artful, since a layabout who never worked a day in his life would apparently still be guaranteed an annual $1,600 from the government). For the liberals it increased federal welfare grants to the states and provided federal funding for 450,000 additional openings in new or expanded day-care centers. money from work would always earn a family a bigger total income. Earn $1,000 a year and the government would send you an extra $1,460, for a total family income of $2,460. Earn $2,000 and the government would send you $960, for a total income of $2,960. Any family earning less than $3,920 would get an annual government check. No American would be forced to live on under $1,600 a year, while under the current system a poor mother in Mississippi had to survive on $468. Labor Secretary George Shultz came up with a brilliant line to please the conservatives: "What the nation needs is not more welfare, but more 'workfare'" (though that was slightly artful, since a layabout who never worked a day in his life would apparently still be guaranteed an annual $1,600 from the government). For the liberals it increased federal welfare grants to the states and provided federal funding for 450,000 additional openings in new or expanded day-care centers.

The other part of the package was revenue-sharing, or what the president grandiosely announced as the "New Federalism"-a remittance of federal tax revenues, with few strings attached, to the states. Weakening Washington control was an idea beloved of conservatives. But such schemes were also a longtime favorite of liberal Republican good-government types. It all was a political masterstroke, a story to please elites of all stripes. The reviews were stellar. John Lindsay called the Family a.s.sistance Program welfare's "most important step forward in a generation." Time Time gave the president the cover, holding up a surfboard: "Nixon Rides the Waves." The magazine delighted at the spectacle of a chief executive who transcended ossified ideological divisions. gave the president the cover, holding up a surfboard: "Nixon Rides the Waves." The magazine delighted at the spectacle of a chief executive who transcended ossified ideological divisions.

The White House was pleasing the Franklins, and that seemed to relax the president. He even revised the chart for access to the Oval Office, from HEK-Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kissinger-to HEHK-Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Harlow, Kissinger, slipping in the name of congressional liaison Bryce Harlow. "RN is riding high," wrote the president in a memo to Haldeman and Ehrlichman. And if it wasn't enough that men were also about to fulfill JFK's dream of walking on the moon, and on Richard Nixon's watch, a certain Kennedy brother, surfing so gracefully heretofore, had just suffered a calamitous wipeout. He was returned to the cover of Time Time-wearing a neck brace and a pained, guilty expression.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

If Gold Rust AT 11:15 11:15 P.M. ON P.M. ON J JULY 18, 1969, 18, 1969, THE THE A APOLLO 11 ASTRONAUTS WERE CIRCLING the moon and in Martha's Vineyard a '67 Oldsmobile veered from a ten-foot-wide bridge near the road to the Chappaquidd.i.c.k ferry. It was found eight hours later by two boys looking for a fishing spot. Fire department scuba divers pried out a dead body inside. The police chief tracked the license number to the driver, who had escaped, then wandered to a nearby restaurant, asked friends to drive him to the inn where he was staying, then walked around "for a period of time," never mentioning he had been in an accident. He was the junior senator from Ma.s.sachusetts, in town for the yacht races. The dead pa.s.senger the moon and in Martha's Vineyard a '67 Oldsmobile veered from a ten-foot-wide bridge near the road to the Chappaquidd.i.c.k ferry. It was found eight hours later by two boys looking for a fishing spot. Fire department scuba divers pried out a dead body inside. The police chief tracked the license number to the driver, who had escaped, then wandered to a nearby restaurant, asked friends to drive him to the inn where he was staying, then walked around "for a period of time," never mentioning he had been in an accident. He was the junior senator from Ma.s.sachusetts, in town for the yacht races. The dead pa.s.senger Time Time described as "Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, a pretty, witty blonde who had worked as a secretary for Robert Kennedy." described as "Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, a pretty, witty blonde who had worked as a secretary for Robert Kennedy."

Everyone knew what "pretty, witty" secretaries were for; every other joke on Laugh-In Laugh-In was about how fun they were to poke, prod, and goose. There had long been rumors about JFK and RFK and Marilyn Monroe, about the two lithesome White House aides nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle, about the room at the Mayflower Hotel President Kennedy kept handy for trysts. Everyone also knew, in their own lives, privileged little rich boys for whom the rules never seemed to apply. Under Ma.s.sachusetts law, leaving the scene of a fatal accident where there had been "willful or wanton" conduct was manslaughter. And yet Senator Kennedy was not charged with manslaughter. He explained that he had been "exhausted and in a state of shock." The Kennedy family doctor reported he'd suffered a concussion. was about how fun they were to poke, prod, and goose. There had long been rumors about JFK and RFK and Marilyn Monroe, about the two lithesome White House aides nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle, about the room at the Mayflower Hotel President Kennedy kept handy for trysts. Everyone also knew, in their own lives, privileged little rich boys for whom the rules never seemed to apply. Under Ma.s.sachusetts law, leaving the scene of a fatal accident where there had been "willful or wanton" conduct was manslaughter. And yet Senator Kennedy was not charged with manslaughter. He explained that he had been "exhausted and in a state of shock." The Kennedy family doctor reported he'd suffered a concussion.

An aristocracy can convey grace and n.o.bility; it can convey dissolution and decadence. Overnight, the Kennedys learned for the first time what it was like when the former became the latter. Richard Nixon could not be more overjoyed.

Bill Safire warned him not to get too excited. By the time America learned the name Mary Jo Kopechne, astronauts would be walking on the moon, swallowing every other news story for days. The boss was more astute: "No. It'll be hard to hush this one up; too many reporters want to win a Pulitzer Prize."

Though just in case, they would send a "reporter" of their own.

The White House's on-staff private eye, Jack Caulfield, was dispatched to the Vineyard to join the ravening press throng through summer and fall to ask the most embarra.s.sing questions. He brought with him an a.s.sistant, another former NYC police detective who traveled with an American Express card stamped "Edward T. Stanley." His real name was Anthony Ulasewicz, and they paid him his salary off the books, from a secret fund of leftover campaign cash set up by the president's personal lawyer, Herb Kalmbach. Ulasewicz and Caulfield even talked about setting up an apartment on New York's East Side with a secret photography apparatus. Some lothario from the NYPD was going to try to entrap one of Mary Jo Kopechne's companions from the fatal evening into revealing what she knew about the cover-up. "We want to be sure Kennedy doesn't get away with this," Ehrlichman instructed.

No one would ever really find what "this" was. The doubt would hang ambiguously in the air forever, shadowing the entirety of Edward M. Kennedy's career. On July 20, at 4:17 eastern standard time, Neil Armstrong landed the lunar module Eagle Eagle on the surface of the moon: "One small step for [a] man-one giant leap for mankind." Here was a brief, shimmering moment of patriotic transcendence, a respite from the sordid doings on Earth. But the doings on Earth were on the surface of the moon: "One small step for [a] man-one giant leap for mankind." Here was a brief, shimmering moment of patriotic transcendence, a respite from the sordid doings on Earth. But the doings on Earth were so so sordid, the conquest of s.p.a.ce didn't distract too many for too long. In the annals of tabloid s.e.x scandals, after all, this one sordid, the conquest of s.p.a.ce didn't distract too many for too long. In the annals of tabloid s.e.x scandals, after all, this one was was the moon shot. the moon shot.

Time's August 1 cover story: "After the first brief inadequate statement at the station house...his silence allowed time for both honest questions and scurrilous gossip to swirl around his reputation and his future." Time Time was not above repeating the scurrilous gossip. ("In another version now in the gossip stage, a federal agent secretly a.s.signed to guard Kennedy saw Mary Jo wearily leave the cottage party about 11 p.m. and curl up to sleep in the back seat. Some time later, according to this theory, Kennedy and another girl at the party, Rosemary Keough, got into the car without noticing Mary Jo asleep in back.") was not above repeating the scurrilous gossip. ("In another version now in the gossip stage, a federal agent secretly a.s.signed to guard Kennedy saw Mary Jo wearily leave the cottage party about 11 p.m. and curl up to sleep in the back seat. Some time later, according to this theory, Kennedy and another girl at the party, Rosemary Keough, got into the car without noticing Mary Jo asleep in back.") Time Time featured Chappaquidd.i.c.k speculation in seven issues in a row. Why had the senator and the secretary left the shindig early? What was a senator doing at a party with six middle-aged men and six young women not their wives? "No one was drinking heavily," said one of the ladies present. Just how much drinking was that? Why had Ted Kennedy missed the bright reflecting arrow pointing the way to the Chappaquidd.i.c.k ferry, on a road he would frequently have driven? Why didn't the two friends he met up with afterward, both lawyers, call the police? Why wasn't an autopsy performed? Why was the inquest scheduled for September 3 delayed by order of a justice of the Ma.s.sachusetts Supreme Court? "Why"-this from the featured Chappaquidd.i.c.k speculation in seven issues in a row. Why had the senator and the secretary left the shindig early? What was a senator doing at a party with six middle-aged men and six young women not their wives? "No one was drinking heavily," said one of the ladies present. Just how much drinking was that? Why had Ted Kennedy missed the bright reflecting arrow pointing the way to the Chappaquidd.i.c.k ferry, on a road he would frequently have driven? Why didn't the two friends he met up with afterward, both lawyers, call the police? Why wasn't an autopsy performed? Why was the inquest scheduled for September 3 delayed by order of a justice of the Ma.s.sachusetts Supreme Court? "Why"-this from the Richmond News Leader, Richmond News Leader, the conservative movement's flagship daily-"do the tire tracks leading into the pond reportedly show no signs that the Senator put on the brakes?" the conservative movement's flagship daily-"do the tire tracks leading into the pond reportedly show no signs that the Senator put on the brakes?"

And so Ted Kennedy broadcast a speech on all three networks in a bid to save his political life: a Kennedy performing a Checkers Speech. It was all there: the homey set (his father's Hyannis Port living room in front of a shelf of books the stroke-ridden Joe Kennedy could not read); the simultaneous acceptance of, and self-pitying distancing from, responsibility ("I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately"; "My doctors informed me that I suffered a cerebral concussion and shock"). The artfully sentimentalizing, self-exculpatory language ("I was on Martha's Vineyard island partic.i.p.ating with my nephew, Joe Kennedy, as for thirty years my family has partic.i.p.ated in the annual Edgartown sailing regatta"-reciting that name, name, Joe Kennedy, shared by the crippled father and the heroic brother martyred in World War II; "sailing," not "yachting," a Kennedy version of the respectable Republican cloth coat). Joe Kennedy, shared by the crippled father and the heroic brother martyred in World War II; "sailing," not "yachting," a Kennedy version of the respectable Republican cloth coat).

"I made immediate and repeated efforts to save Mary Jo by diving into the strong and murky current, but succeeded only in increasing my state of utter exhaustion and alarm," he claimed; Nixon-like, one was supposed to construe the suspect as victim. Mary Jo Kopechne was cast in the part of the c.o.c.ker spaniel; Kennedy said he was going to keep defending her honor, regardless of what they said. "Mary Jo was one of the most devoted members of the staff of Robert Kennedy.... She worked for him for four years, was broken up over his death. For this reason, and because she was such a gentle, kind, and idealistic person, all of us tried to help her feel that she still had a home with the Kennedy family.... I know of nothing in Mary Jo's conduct on that or any other occasion, and the same is true of the other girls at that party, that would lend any substance to such ugly speculation about their character."

And how dare you even think think such a thing. such a thing.

Kennedy concluded, Checkers-like, by throwing the question to the voters of Ma.s.sachusetts, who were "ent.i.tled to representation...by men who inspire their utmost confidence. For this reason I would understand full well why some might think it right for me to resign. For me this would be a difficult decision to make. I seek your advice and opinion in making it."

The public was rather forgiving-58 percent said, "He has suffered and been punished and should be given the benefit of the doubt"-even though by 44 to 36 percent they thought he had failed to "tell the real truth" and a majority thought "there still has been no adequate explanation of what he was doing at the party or with the girl who was killed," and 77 percent said he was wrong not to report the accident immediately. Only 16 percent disapproved of his Senate performance. But that was not the question at hand. Ted Kennedy was a presidential prospect. The question was, even giving him the most gracious benefit of the doubt, whether a man who under some combination of impairment and pressure wasn't able to act decisively was the kind of man you wanted to have his finger on the nuclear b.u.t.ton.

The worst-case scenario was that he had had acted decisively. The conservative acted decisively. The conservative Manchester Union Leader Manchester Union Leader reported that Kennedy had charged five long-distance phone calls in the forty-five minutes after the accident to family retainers such as Theodore Sorenson and Burke Marshall. "The phone calls, if indeed made, would be damaging evidence, that far from being a dazed accident victim, Kennedy was a lucid politician trying to avoid a scandal," reported that Kennedy had charged five long-distance phone calls in the forty-five minutes after the accident to family retainers such as Theodore Sorenson and Burke Marshall. "The phone calls, if indeed made, would be damaging evidence, that far from being a dazed accident victim, Kennedy was a lucid politician trying to avoid a scandal," Time Time helpfully explained. And the Establishment, having coronated a 1972 presidential nominee, showed buyers' remorse. The helpfully explained. And the Establishment, having coronated a 1972 presidential nominee, showed buyers' remorse. The Times Times's Scotty Reston said the real question "is not whether the voters of Ma.s.sachusetts can live with the Senator's account of the tragedy, but whether he can." Time Time suddenly realized it had never much trusted him anyway: "The youngest, handsomest, and most spoiled of the Kennedy brothers had often seemed shallow and irresponsible." Two liberals, Tom Braden and Frank Mankiewicz, in their new syndicated column, called Chappaquidd.i.c.k "the end of the Kennedy era." Mankiewicz had been Bobby Kennedy's press secretary. suddenly realized it had never much trusted him anyway: "The youngest, handsomest, and most spoiled of the Kennedy brothers had often seemed shallow and irresponsible." Two liberals, Tom Braden and Frank Mankiewicz, in their new syndicated column, called Chappaquidd.i.c.k "the end of the Kennedy era." Mankiewicz had been Bobby Kennedy's press secretary.

After Kennedy announced that, yes, he would be running for reelection in 1970, Al Capp, at the bidding of the White House, switched his registration to run against him. Middle America-or at least a Mrs. Keith H. Johnson and an Eleanor M. Wilson-spoke in letters to the Chicago Tribune: Chicago Tribune: "Edward Kennedy may be the chosen son of Ma.s.sachusetts, but we in the Midwest cannot accept that 'outing' as normal family procedure"; "We read daily of men who perform magnificently under the utmost stress in Vietnam. There are others whom stress does not seem to affect in the same way." "Edward Kennedy may be the chosen son of Ma.s.sachusetts, but we in the Midwest cannot accept that 'outing' as normal family procedure"; "We read daily of men who perform magnificently under the utmost stress in Vietnam. There are others whom stress does not seem to affect in the same way."

The liberal inhabitants of the best circles: they weren't like you and me.

On August 8, in the middle of the darkest Chappaquidd.i.c.k speculations, four more mysterious deaths captured headlines: a stunning actress, eight months pregnant, Sharon Tate; a male hairstylist to the Hollywood stars; a coffee heiress; her rich young Polish emigre boyfriend-all brutally murdered in a beautiful house high in the Hollywood hills.

A young New York Times New York Times reporter, Steven V. Roberts, filed dispatches from California, not on the investigation, which was going nowhere, but on what he termed the murder victims' "life-styles." Tate and her husband, the filmmaker Roman Polanski, "had been near the center of a loose group of filmmakers who were described with all the current cliches: mod, hip, swinging, trendy." Polanski had just directed a very hip film, reporter, Steven V. Roberts, filed dispatches from California, not on the investigation, which was going nowhere, but on what he termed the murder victims' "life-styles." Tate and her husband, the filmmaker Roman Polanski, "had been near the center of a loose group of filmmakers who were described with all the current cliches: mod, hip, swinging, trendy." Polanski had just directed a very hip film, Rosemary's Baby, Rosemary's Baby, starring the hippie gamine Mia Farrow who had just left her square, old husband, Frank Sinatra. "Most of their friends lived in apartments and hotels, restaurants and shooting locations, airplanes and steamships.... They talked about three-star restaurants in Paris and discotheques in New York with equal facility"-people such as Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. They were "young, handsome, and free." They were, also, liberal: when Gibby Folger wasn't off jet-setting, she campaigned for Robert Kennedy and cared for children in Watts. "She realized she didn't have to conform to that Protestant ethic," a friend recalled. "I remember once asking her how she was and she laughed, 'Well, I'm not my old constipated self anymore.'" starring the hippie gamine Mia Farrow who had just left her square, old husband, Frank Sinatra. "Most of their friends lived in apartments and hotels, restaurants and shooting locations, airplanes and steamships.... They talked about three-star restaurants in Paris and discotheques in New York with equal facility"-people such as Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. They were "young, handsome, and free." They were, also, liberal: when Gibby Folger wasn't off jet-setting, she campaigned for Robert Kennedy and cared for children in Watts. "She realized she didn't have to conform to that Protestant ethic," a friend recalled. "I remember once asking her how she was and she laughed, 'Well, I'm not my old constipated self anymore.'"