Spiro Agnew on the Defensive

AFTER losing eleven statehouses to the Democrats in the mid-term elections, Republican Governors had some understandable reservations about their party's campaign strategy. Last week, at the semiannual G.O.P. Governors' Conference at Idaho's Sun Valley resort, they got a chance to question one of the campaign's prime architects and its loudest voice: Vice President Spiro Agnew. He journeyed to the meeting, Agnew said, "to consult with my brothers and if necessary, to debate them, and if convinced by logic, to make changes." His brothers, for the most part, found him a good deal more willing to debate than to change.

Speaking to the Governors on the night of his arrival, Agnew provided his most candid analysis to date of the Republicans' fortunes last November. He did not dwell on the victories. Instead, Agnew sought to dissociate himself from the losses. "The causes of victory or defeat in a political election are as opaque and indefinable after as before the vote," he said. As for charges that his steel-studded rhetoric during the campaign was a divisive weapon, Agnew declared, "Nothing is more unreasonable to me. What is an election if it is not an attempt to divide the voters of the country between two or three candidates seeking office?"

Reagan's Tactic. For those Governors who had hoped that Sun Valley's blanket of snow might cool off Agnew's language, that was too much. Fumed Oregon's Tom McCall, who had earlier urged President Nixon to consider candidates other than Agnew for the 1972 ticket: "There was the most unbelievable, incredible misunderstanding of the mood of America in that rotten, bigoted little speech." Other Governors labeled it simply "defensive." By the time that Agnew sat down to a closed-door breakfast with 21 of the Governors, as he later put it in an understatement, he and his audience were "sensitized to criticisms of each other."

The loudest complaint voiced against the Vice President was about his habit of attacking political enemies personally. The critics ranged from Iowa's moderate Robert Ray. who urged Agnew to adopt a positive tone, to California's conservative Ronald Reagan, who suggested that the Vice President dodge inflammatory statements about individuals. If necessary, said Reagan, the Vice President could always claim that he had not read a provocative speech or statement and therefore could not comment on it. Oklahoma's conservative Dewey Bartlett reminded the Vice President that he had been personally--and unsuccessfully--asked not to criticize former Democratic National Chairman Fred Harris while in Oklahoma.

Boob Tube. The Governors also complained about Agnew's campaign against the press, whose "columnists and commentators" he had labeled "ideological antagonists" the night before. Among those who pressed him on that point were Michigan's William Milliken, Delaware's Russell Peterson and New Jersey's William Cahill, who urged Agnew to abandon his "shotgun" attacks and adopt a more precisely targeted "rifleshot" approach.

Agnew replied that by his reckoning, 80% of the media "are after me and the Republican Party." He was prepared with a sheaf of press clippings illustrating what he clearly thought was unfair and vituperative comment about him by the press. Many articles contained partisan statements made by Democratic National Chairman Lawrence O'Brien and other top Democrats, which Agnew argued had been accepted as fact by the papers that printed them. He was especially incensed by a front-page story in the previous day's New York Times reporting that a majority of Governors at Sun Valley were "full of political complaints," and joked grimly that "the conference should have been held at Death Valley." Too many Republicans made provocative statements, he said, simply to get on the "boob tube."

Agnew read McCall's reaction to his speech of the previous night to the group. Reagan told McCall that he was guilty of violating the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not criticize another Republican. Later, one Governor recalled that Agnew learned that not only newsmen can interpret his remarks in various ways. "Those were Republicans in there, all of them loyal to the party, and we had seven or eight different interpretations of his banquet talk. Agnew was really shaken. For McCall, it was a session of acute personal embarrassment. But if the Vice President learns to deal with the issues in 1972 rather than to flay individuals, McCall will think it a fair trade." McCall's judgment was that Agnew "took it very well, with maturity and poise, the bitter and the sweet." However, Agnew gave no indication that he planned to change tactics.

On another matter, Agnew did promise relief. Faced with complaints that Republican Governors have trouble making their voices heard in the White House, the Vice President promised to spend more time serving as Nixon's intermediary in state-level politics. He was assigned that job by the President in February 1969, but has spent little time fulfilling its duties. Pledged Agnew: "We will strengthen our efforts at liaison."

Perhaps so, but Agnew is hardly taking himself off the banquet circuit. The very next day, in a speech in Akron to honor William H. Ayres, a Republican who was defeated in November after ten terms in Congress, Agnew opened Round No. 2 in the defense of his campaign role. He firmly disagreed with "the implication that the harsh thrust of partisan debate suddenly in 1970 no longer has a place in American politics," and declared that "division can be constructive."

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