McGovern Moves Front, Maybe Center

LAS VEGAS Oddsmaker Jimmy the Greek last January figured him a 50-to-1 shot to be nominated President. Only three months ago, national polls rated him 5% in any Democratic field. In the corridors of the Senate Office Building last winter, like the Ancient Mariner he would stop reporters and ask plaintively: "Why aren't you covering me? I'm a serious candidate!"

Last week it became precisely clear how serious South Dakota's George McGovern is. With a certain cool relentlessness, he swept another four primaries--New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota and, most crucially, the winner-take-all contest in California, with its 271 delegates. Anticipating at least another 200 delegates in next week's New York primary, along with 150 delegates from remaining state conventions and some converts among the uncommitted, McGovern seemed likely to go to Miami Beach on July 10 armed with more than 1,300 votes, apparently within easy striking distance of the 1,509 necessary for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Thus, as it caromed out of the long and expensive primary spring, the slightly dazed Democratic Party found itself confronting something close to a fait accompli. Hubert Humphrey, far behind with 324 1/2 delegates, vowed to fight on, in fading hopes that the convention arithmetic might still be changed. Maine's Edmund Muskie, an inactive candidate, late last week declined to take himself out of the race and free his 172 delegates.

The hopes of both Humphrey and Muskie may have been tinged with a lingering disbelief. Here was plain, slow-spoken George McGovern, minister's son, prairie populist, leading the armies of commitment and ideological chic. However ruggedly colorless the driver, his bandwagon rolled flamboyantly on, bright with the fresh-faced young and the movie stars and intellectuals who had found their new political vehicle. Behind a superbly organized and financed army of volunteers, McGovern had all but won the delegate battle through the primaries and state conventions. It was a neat touch that he was playing by the party reform rules that he had helped formulate. To followers with memories of 1968, McGovern's impending nomination seemed nearly too good to be true.

Stunned. To more conservative Democrats, including Southerners, many labor leaders and party professionals stunned by the force of the new politics, McGovern still seemed a gamble too dangerous to risk. In his pledges to cut defense spending by $32 billion, redistribute the nation's wealth and reform its tax structures--the "radical" aura surrounding him--they saw forebodings, of an electoral disaster.

At bottom, the McGovern question turned on two radically different perceptions of the nation's mood. Perception One: The U.S., while desiring some change--tax relief, an end to the war --remains too determinedly centrist to elect a candidate who talks of tampering fundamentally with the nation's economic structure and defense policies. The center, Political Analysts Richard Scammon and Ben J. Wallenberg wrote in 1970, is "where viclory lies. The greal majority of the voters of America are unyoung, unpoor and unblack. They are middleaged, middle-class and middle-minded." This is the America that former Nixon Campaign Worker Kevin Phillips adumbrated in his thesis about "The Emerging Republican Majority," and it is the America Richard Nixon plays to.

Perception Two: Scammon-Wattenberg has become somewhat beside the point; as the outpouring of voles for George Wallace and McGovern proved through the spring, Americans are in a mood of restless malaise, fed up with the war, with "big government" and "big business," with institutions that do not seem to work. Such a foul public temper is dangerous for any incumbent. In this climate, the reasoning goes, McGovern is eminently electable; Ihe conventional political wisdom does nol hold any longer.

Desptle his high delegate count, McGovern's performance to date is not entirely persuasive proof that his is the future's voice. Hubert Humphrey still leads McGovern in total popular votes cast during Ihe primaries--4,051,340 to 3,950,394. McGovern lost in New Hampshire, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland and Michigan. Until last week, he had won preference ballots in Nebraska, Massachusetls, Wisconsin, Oregon and Rhode Island. The most important of these states, Wisconsin, gave McGovern only 29.5%, while Wallace gol 22% and Humphrey 20.7%. McGovern simply seemed a startling viclor because he had started so far back in Ihe pack.

Nor were the results in California quite as spectacular as the winner-take-all provision made them seem. A week before the primary, Mervin Field's California poll showed McGovern ahead by an astonishing 20%. The poll itself became an issue in the race, perhaps breeding overconfidence in the McGovern ranks, perhaps discouraging Humphrey workers. As it turned out, McGovern won by only 5%--44% to Humphrey's 39%. While the vote reflected a broadening McGovern constituency (see box), he had outspent Humphrey by $2 million to $500,000. Humphrey's advance work was atrocious and his press relations opaque.

The White House quickly greeted the prospect of a McGovern nomination with impolite relish. John Mitchell, who resigned as Attorney General to manage the President's campaign, remarked wryly: "Contrary to some published reports, the Committee for the Re-Election of the President is not engaged in selecting the Democratic candidate." McGovern is most vulnerable, the White House men believe, on his proposal to cut annual defense spending by $32 billion, on his income-redistribution plan and his sometime endorsement of the $6,500 income guarantee for a family of four, as proposed by the National Welfare Rights Organization and other groups.

The Republicans will focus on persuading such traditional Democrats as Catholic "ethnics" that McGovern represents radicalism and permissiveness. "He bought the whole package of the President's commission on population growth, including contraceptives for teen-agers," says a White House aide. "That'll go over great in the Catholic community." Already the Republican rhetoric on McGovern is being honed to a nasty edge. Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott was moved to call McGovern the "triple-A candidate--acid, amnesty and abortion." While Nixon would campaign as a working President, he would have scores of "surrogate candidates" ready to go forth with grittier political messages. One of them might be Spiro Agnew or, if Agnew is dropped from the Republican ticket, former Treasury Secretary John Connally. Last week, perhaps in preparation for a vice-presidential role, Connally was dispatched by the President on a 17-nation world tour in Nixon's behalf.

Wan. Was there any way that McGovern might be stopped short of a first-ballot nomination? Both Muskie and Humphrey seem to hold on to some wan hope. Muskie, after a night of soul-searching and consultation with his advisers, decided against throwing his strength to McGovern and guaranteeing his first-ballot nomination. Said Muskie: "If reform of the Democratic Party means anything, it means that the nominee of the party must be selected in an open convention."

Humphrey made gingerly motions to the right last week. Contrary to an earlier statement, he said that he might be willing to accept George Wallace as a vice-presidential running mate. Such a combination would be highly improbable--whether for ideological reasons or because Wallace might simply be too debilitated by his gunshot wounds to campaign. But Humphrey clearly hoped to gain Wallace's 328 delegates in exchange for allowing the Alabamian some added influence at the convention.

But the only way McGovern might now be denied the nomination, many Democrats felt, was for him to adopt such intransigent positions before the credentials and platform committees that his momentum would abruptly halt, and the uncommitted delegates would harden against him. According to this scenario, he would so antagonize party regulars that his delegates would freeze at 1,300, denying him a first-ballot victory. Then a hemorrhage might begin, with his delegates leaking away to Muskie or Humphrey or a dark horse. But to deny the nomination to a man who had accumulated 1,300 or more delegates through the primaries would likely provoke a disastrous party schism.

Already McGovern seems moving toward the center, fuzzing if not softening his positions. On the eve of the California primary, McGovern went to the Democratic Governors conference in Houston, where he found the initial mood chilly and depressed. When 30 Governors at that meeting were asked whether McGovern could carry their states, only three raised their hands --Wisconsin's Pat Lucey, South Dakota's Richard Kneip and Minnesota's Wendell Anderson. McGovern listened to a barrage of complaints about the cascading number of delegate challenges being made by his supporters. "My God," said Nebraska's Jim Exon, "I endorsed you, and the McGovern people are trying to keep me off the delegation!"

McGovern soothed them, promising to appoint a staff member to study all the challenges and eliminate the "frivolous" ones. Then for two hours, as the Governors sipped drinks, McGovern went over his positions: He opposed legalizing marijuana; he would leave abortion for the states to decide.

On amnesty: "I'm not as liberal as Calvin Coolidge, who provided amnesty for World War I deserters. I'm opposed to amnesty for deserters." Pressed by Nevada's Mike O'Callaghan on what he would do if the North Vietnamese refused to release American prisoners even after U.S. withdrawal, McGovern said, "Under such circumstances, we'd have to take action," although he did not say what action.

Wild-Eyed. McGovern said that he was fully prepared to compromise on his domestic programs. For example, he said, he was now convinced that Wilbur Mills' tax reform proposal--canceling most major tax loopholes and then reintroducing each one for separate congressional consideration--was superior to his own. After six Governors shot questions on his welfare program, McGovern raised his hands and said: "Look, Congress will always provide the balance against any programs that I recommend." One Governor later remarked: "He seemed to be saying, 'Don't worry. If you think I'm a wild-eyed nut, Congress will keep me in line.'"

As the meeting broke up at 1 a.m., some participants who had come in with "Hello, Senator" left with "Goodbye, George." Communication had been started, but as one liberal Governor observed: "The big question is whether the Senator can really moderate his positions to the point where he can challenge Nixon for the center. He must do this to win, but I suspect he may be trapped by the fanaticism of his youthful supporters."

Later in the week, McGovern blurred his welfare proposals to the point that they were almost indistinguishable from the President's. "We start from the same assumption," McGovern said, "the need to develop some kind of program to provide income supplements for working people." Campaigning in New York, he told reporters that his figure of a $1,000 income supplement for all Americans was not a hard-and-fast proposal but only "one possibility." He continued to believe that his alternative defense budget would stand up, "give or take a little " but he only planned to ask the convention to accept the idea of reducing arms expenditures in order to increase domestic investment.

In another conciliatory expedition, McGovern plans a tour through the South, even though the region would probably be near-solid Nixon territory. His own followers sometimes forget that McGovern, a Democrat from a conservative, Republican stronghold, long since learned to survive by the politician's arts. It is such political instincts that are now easing him back toward the party's middle--a delicate maneuver in which McGovern is playing for the highest prize at the risk of his credibility and the constituency that has brought the prize so close.

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