'We Are Going to Make America Better"

LIKE many Presidents, Richard Nixon always seems a bit happier, a bit more relaxed, when he gets away from Washington. For him it is not the exuberant, back-to-the-soil renewal that Lyndon Johnson experienced returning to the Pedernales. In Nixon's case it is the easier routine, the escape from the alien East, the chance to be among the people, away from a balky bureaucracy and a fractious Congress.

In the heartland last week en route to San Clemente, the President took the occasion in St. Louis to make a refreshing call to a national reconciliation --and found himself refreshed in turn by a jubilant reception that acted as a visible tonic. Once home in California, he reflected: "In Washington, we tend to live in a very isolated world. There is a sort of intellectual incest which really reduces the level of the dialogue. You have to go to the country now and then to get a real feeling of what people are thinking."

Before he left the capital, however, Nixon had to pluck a couple of unavoidable legislative nettles. One of them was more than garden variety: renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which came to his desk for signature with a provision for votes for 18-year-olds firmly attached. Despite reservations, Nixon put his name to the measure largely to avoid offending blacks, who consider the voting-rights extension vital. "We never had the blacks with us," an aide explained, "but the President is trying now to get across the idea that he is not their enemy."

Override. Nixon's doubts were not about the provisions for black voting rights. What worried him was the legality of Congress' giving 18-year-olds the vote, a goal that he strongly favors. "I believe," he said, "along with most of the nation's leading constitutional scholars, that it requires a constitutional amendment." A veto would have alienated another largely anti-Nixon group, the young, so Nixon asked Congress to press on with a constitutional amendment already pending--and directed Attorney General John Mitchell to start a court test of the section of the new law that deals with 18-year-olds' voting.

Nixon did choose to veto the extension of the Hill-Burton Act, which would have authorized $1.3 billion in federal grants, plus another $1.5 billion in guaranteed loans, for hospital construction over the next three fiscal years. As with his veto of a $19.7 billion education aid bill earlier this year, one reason was lack of federal funds. What Nixon wanted, but did not get from Congress, was a cutback to only $50 million in direct spending for hospital construction; he did not object to the loan provisions. The House quickly overrode Nixon's veto 279 to 98; the Senate may follow suit this week. It was the first time in ten years that either house of Congress has voted to override a presidential veto. In 1960, both houses passed a $750 million-a-year federal pay bill over the veto of President Eisenhower.

When Nixon left Washington, the tangles vanished. A 32-piece Air Force band, flown out especially from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and flown back as soon as it had done its duty, serenaded him on arrival at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, near St. Louis. He set his tone at once: "There are things wrong with this country, but the great thing about America is that we have the capacity to make those things right." When Nixon got to Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis, the cares of Washington were washed away in the most tumultuous reception that he has been given since he won the 1968 nomination in Miami. He was among his own people, 14,000 Jaycees and wives--the Kansans in white cowboy hats, the Indianians in referees' jackets with little whistles around their necks, the Iowans in yellow Tyrolean hats. After Hail to the Chief, Nixon waved his arms through a roaring seven-minute ovation.

Counterpoint. "It is time to stand up and speak about what is right with America," Nixon said--and he returned to his much-quoted election-night theme: "Rather than have America torn apart, let's bring Americans together." He was no Pollyanna on race: "We have come a long way, but we have a long way to go." He had no blind law-and-order message: "If we ask people to respect the laws," both the laws and those who enforce them must deserve respect. Most of all, he spoke to the young. "Let us tell young Americans, all Americans, that we should love America. But let us love her not because she is rich and not because she is strong, but because America is a good country and we are going to make her better."

It was no rhetorical masterpiece, but it sounded a counterpoint to Nixon's injudicious remark about youthful "bums" and Vice President Agnew's continual assaults on dissenters. The response sent Nixon off to California warmed to the core. If he is lucky, some of the good feeling may last even after he returns to Washington early next week. In the meantime, there is somber business to attend to--even in the California sunshine. This week the President will deliver a written report on Cambodia timed to coincide with his June 30 deadline for the removal of U.S. troops, and he will take a new step in presidential communications. For an hour he will be interviewed on foreign affairs by three commentators of the television networks. That format was essayed by John F. Kennedy (once) and Lyndon Johnson (twice), but in each case the show was taped and edited in advance. It is a measure of Nixon's current confidence that he has chosen to meet his interlocutors before the live, unforgiving camera eye.

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