The Politics of a Nonpolitical Speech

SMILING at the assembled leaders of all branches of the Government, Richard Nixon made a lighthearted political sally early in his State of the Union speech. "There are more candidates for the presidency in this chamber today than there probably have been at any one time in the whole history of the Republic," he said, to laughter. Actually, not all the candidates from Congress were present, but the President could scarcely avoid the eyes of two of his likely challengers in November. There, seated side by side and within a few yards of him, were Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie--and the arrangement was not by accident. "C'mon Ed, let's sit down together, and let him look at us together," Humphrey had said to Muskie as the session began.

That scene symbolized the real significance of this year's State of the Union message. Needing help from a Democratic Congress in an election year, Nixon used his report, supplemented by a written message, to plead with his foes to put the public interest above their partisan concerns--and thus set them up for censure if they fail to respond to the lofty call to statesmanship. Confident, conciliatory and optimistic, Nixon was at his professional best in a speech honed, through eight drafts, to a taut 31 minutes. Heavy on generalities, soft on specifics, the address was far from inspirational, but it did reach a few moments of near eloquence.

No Surprises. The political nature of the reports was evident in Nixon's thumbs-up treatment of one of the biggest threats to his reelection: the state of the economy. He cited statistics to back his claim of leading the nation toward "a new prosperity without war." He termed the unbalanced budget (see THE ECONOMY) that he will present this week as "expansionary without being inflationary." Yet almost at the moment he was speaking, his financial experts revealed that the budget deficit that Nixon has run up in the current fiscal year will reach an astonishing $38.8 billion. That is the biggest deficit since World War II, and it came under the man who in 1968 complained that the smaller deficits of the Johnson Administration had "wracked and dislocated the economy" and produced "a profound crisis of credibility" in monetary affairs. Moreover, the balance of payments deficit for 1971 is now calculated to have been an equally unprecedented $31 billion--far larger than the imbalances for which Republicans have often at times past assailed Democratic Presidents.

While Nixon understandably glossed over such negative aspects of his economic performance, he was not above flirting with demagoguery in considering one of the nation's most controversial issues. In a speech that drew only a few enthusiastic responses, he elicited the greatest ovation when he promised that "local school boards must have control over local schools"--a clear reference to the politically sensitive issue of busing children to achieve a better racial balance in schools. If local school boards were to be actually in full control, unpressured by courts, the Constitution, and the Federal Government, there is little doubt that all the long painful years of progress toward integrated schools would be reversed in the South and never really get launched in the North.

In the rest of his message, Nixon offered no substantive surprises. As anticipated, he raised two issues that could become the basis of partisan controversy by election time. He announced that the Administration is considering ways to relieve local property taxes by having the Federal Government assume much of the burden of school financing. Since courts in three states already have declared that reliance on this tax violates the Constitution because of the vast range in school support between rich and poor districts, some such remedy seems necessary. Certainly any local tax break would be highly popular among hard-pressed homeowners.

Chip to Use. Arguing that "strong military defenses are the guardians of peace," Nixon was warmly applauded on the Republican side of the chamber as he announced that his new budget will call for an increase in defense spending. At a time when the costs of the Viet Nam War are receding, this is certain to be attacked by Democrats as a distortion of national priorities. Nixon plans to use much of the money to develop longer-range submarine-launched nuclear missiles, modernize land-based Minuteman missiles and further increase military pay to work toward the elusive goal of an all-volunteer army. He seemed to hint that the emphasis on nuclear arms may be a bargaining chip to use in the SALT talks with the Soviet Union. "Our ability to achieve an arms-control agreement depends on our ability to negotiate from a position of strength," he declared.

Nixon also proposed a vague program, to be spelled out in a later message, to turn much of the nation's underemployed technology into such peaceful pursuits as attacking the problems of pollution and making U.S. products more competitive in world markets. He went on to urge enactment of the "six great goals" that he had cited as a part of his "new American revolution" State of the Union speech last year. In various stages of progress or limbo in Democratic hands, they are: welfare reform, revenue sharing, executive reorganization, environmental protection, better health care and--the only one on which dramatic action has been taken--improving the economy.

Nixon did concede that he was not yet wholly satisfied that he had done everything possible to turn the economy around, pledging: "Our goal is full employment in peacetime. We intend to meet that goal." Yet Nixon aides tell reporters that full employment--generally placed at an almost irreducible minimum of 4% unemployed--is no longer practical now that so many women and teen-agers are seeking jobs.

In the oral message, Nixon pointedly avoided presenting a shopping list of election-year proposals. His written report does just that, however, touching on almost anything that any Democrat might challenge him on in the election, ranging from shifting the U.S. to the metric system to expanding equal rights for women. That challenge began almost immediately, as the Democrats got an hour of equal time on the networks to take issue with the President's message.

Hard Choices. Nixon has not yet shed his fondness of hyperbole. He contended that recent changes in world monetary and trade policies meant that "we stand today at a turning point in the history of our country--and the history of our planet." He still falls into clichee. "Surveying the certainty of rapid change," he declared, "we can be like a fallen rider caught in the stirrups--or we can sit high in the saddle, the masters of change, directing it in a course that we choose."

As a political document, designed to pass the election-year buck to the Democrats, Nixon's "nonpartisan" speech was a smooth and highly effective performance. He produced some graceful lines, including his defense of the nation's essential goodness. Said he: "Let us reject the narrow visions of those who tell us that we are evil because we are not yet perfect; that we are corrupt because we are not yet pure; that all the sweat and toil and sacrifice that have gone into the building of America were for naught because the building is not yet done."

But the President did not really face up to the hard choices of what to do about America's continuing racial problems, or how to take adequate action against environmental pollution while still stimulating economic growth, or finding ways to check the decline in the quality of life in the nation's largest cities. What he did, rather adroitly, was address the problem of how to re-elect a President when a majority of Congress is determined to defeat him.

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