The Season's Other Political Wars

THE CAMPAIGN

THE battle for the summit of American political power this year has been a long and strange nonengagement. Yet on the democracy's lesser plateaus--in Senate and House races, in gubernatorial campaigns--the two parties have been engaged in furious and more traditional partisan warfare. At stake are 18 statehouses, all 435 House seats and 33 chairs in the Senate--the nation's balance of political power outside the Oval Office.

It is one of the anomalies of this campaign that Richard Nixon, with an almost Lyndonesque thirst for "consensus," seems to have slighted those other battles. According to every indicator, the President now stands on the threshold of a personal triumph. The "born loser" of the early 1960s seems within reach of an overwhelming political victory: even millions of Democrats to whom he was once a partisan pariah will be pulling Republican levers. But Nixon, the loyal party man who owed so much to Republican Party workers down the line, now seems unwilling to share that popularity with his colleagues. Largely as a result, his party may be about to fumble its best opportunity in 20 years to build strength in the House and Senate during a presidential election year. Nixon seems equally oblivious to the party's bid for statehouses.

Even with Nixon's help, gaining control of Congress would be extremely difficult. The Republicans need a net gain of 39 seats in the House and five in the Senate. Realistically, party spokesmen now believe they will pick up only ten to 20 in the House and two in the Senate. Whatever further hopes they have depend not on any calculated White House strategy but on whims of the American people. If the voters reject McGovern's candidacy to the point of giving Nixon a landslide on the scale of 1964, enough congressional hopefuls may be swept into office to tip the balance of power.

Such hopes, however, hang on the very tattered threads of the "coattail" theory. Revisionist political scientists, looking back over old elections with new eyes, now wonder if coattails ever were very important. They point out that in the past 24 years, three winning Presidents have actually run behind their party's candidates for the House. In Politics, Presidents and Coattails, Political Scientist Malcolm Moos concludes: "The coattail influence of the presidential candidate has been demonstrated to be of minor significance."

To be sure, in a growing age of independent voters there probably exists a cutoff point for ticket splitters. If Nixon can get past that point, then he might carry his entire party to victory. But Nixon has been doing almost no personal campaigning. Moreover, he and his staff have often denied party subalterns the money to work their own magic. While Nixon's Committee for the Re-Election of the President has to scratch its head to think of ways to spend its anticipated $45 million budget (bugging the Watergate was apparently one idea), the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee has only $3,800,000 to spread among 435 House candidates. Indeed, the C.R.P. has reached so deep into the pockets of big donors that Republican campaign managers across the country complain that there is little loose change left for them.

Some Republicans actually fear that Nixon has hurt more than helped. His wellpublicized, well-financed drive to enlist Democrats for Nixon, they believe, will bring out a lot of ticket splitters who might otherwise have stayed home. Renegade Democrats, they argue, are likely to feel guilty about voting Republican at the top of the ticket and will atone by casting penance votes for other Democrats.

Nixon has proved harmful to Republican office seekers in much more direct ways. In recent weeks, both Spiro Agnew and Richard Kleindienst visited Mississippi to sing the praises of Democratic Senator James Eastland, while never mentioning Gil Carmichael, the Republican who is running against him. Stunned by such a direct slap in the party's face, Connecticut Senator Lowell Weicker drafted a letter supporting Carmichael that was signed by 12 G.O.P. Senate colleagues, including Jacob Javits, Mark Hatfield and Charles Percy.

Democrats running for Congress wish McGovern were as contrary. The farther he stays away from their home turf, the happier most of them are. Indeed, Republicans see McGovern, not Nixon, as their greatest asset in congressional campaigns. Declares one Republican campaign manager: "McGovern is the best thing we've got going for us." Assuming he is elected, Nixon will likely face a strong opposition Congress in his second term, just as he did in his first.

In his first four years, Nixon concentrated largely on foreign policy, an area where he enjoys a hand relatively free from congressional control. Much of what he set out to accomplish in that area--with the notable exception of ending the war in Viet Nam--has been accomplished. Now he must turn to domestic priorities. It will be an uphill fight. Getting significant legislation through the two chambers of the Congress can be an arduous and often impossible task, even when the President's party controls both. That was a lesson John Kennedy learned. In the years to come, Nixon may well wish he had traded a few points of his victory margin for some friendly faces on the Hill.

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