Liberal Republicans: A Shared Concern

Liberal Republicans are a restless lot under the Nixon Administration. To find out what they are thinking, TIME Correspondent Loye Miller last week interviewed two prominent G.O.P, liberals in states that are usually far apart in political philosophy, Iowa and Massachusetts. As might be expected, the Midwesterner--Tom J. Riley, 40, a successful Cedar Rapids lawyer, an eight-year (1961-1968) veteran of the Iowa legislature and an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 1968, was happier with Nixon and more willing to give him time to tackle the country's problems. John S. Saloma III, 34, an associate professor of political science at M.I.T. and a former president of the Ripon Society, the Republicans' liberal organization, was more apprehensive. But their concerns seemed remarkably similar.

Riley

I think the President has created the general impression of a well-qualified administrator putting in long hours and trying to do a first-rate job. He fits the image of a proper, upright, law-abiding citizen of humble background who has succeeded through perseverance. With a lovely wife and two very correct daughters, the whole family represents solid middle-class achievement. Beyond that, I think that in his views he represents the great consensus of the American people on the subjects of the day--law and order, campus disorders, civil rights.

I am concerned, however, over what appears to me to be an effort to placate the Southern elements in our party. I personally feel that the desegregation guidelines should not have been relaxed. It was unwise both in the country's interest and the party's interest. I think we've waited long enough for the Brown decision [the Supreme Court's 1954 edict outlawing school segregation] to be implemented. I was just coming out of the Air Force when that decision was handed down. Since then, my daughter, who was less than a year and a half, has practically finished high school. White children who weren't old enough for kindergarten then have now been graduated from high school, while so many Negro children have yet to benefit.

From a very significant law-and-order standpoint, the Administration's action was also unwise. It cuts the ground right out from under responsible Negro leaders, like Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young and others, who have argued for the due-process approach, as opposed to violence and extortion in achieving Negroes' aims.

Nixon appears to be trying for a consensus. I think you only obtain a consensus by accident; you can never create it. When it exists for you, you take great advantage of it, as Johnson did for a period of time. But when you're riding a number of horses, you only look good until they split up to go around a tree. L.B.J. came to his tree in Viet Nam.

Saloma

The honeymoon has been as much a reluctance of many people to become involved as it has been an affirmation or vote of support for Nixon. There was so much of a spirit of participation in the "new politics" of 1968, and so much of it was blunted, that it has caused a sort of pulling back in an important sector of American politics. But it's only a matter of time before these energies become mobilized again. I think there is a real danger that [the Nixon people] have misread this and got it all mixed up with their ideas of popular support and the Gallup figures.

You detect in this Administration a kind of nonreality in the way it reads the popular mood of the country. It very accurately reflects a part of America, but it moves further and further away from other parts of it. The longer-haired people and the blacks and the eggheads think differently from the Middle American, and under Nixon's strategy, they aren't brought to interact.

When it comes to college students and their causes, I think the Nixon bias is very much an over-30 bias. But he is speaking to a very legitimate concern in the country. What is bad about this is that you have these two moralities that are not speaking to each other. And when you have different moralities, the question is not which is more relevant, really. The key thing is leadership, and how it makes itself relevant to the problems the country faces. The men of this Administration are a decent group of Americans, but do they really understand or communicate with the major factions of the country?

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