AMERICAN NOTES: Loosened Loyalties

For Richard Nixon, it was not a particularly comforting week. Two powerful groups long on generally friendly terms with him turned on his policies—in one case with deliberate rudeness, in the other with homiletic eloquence. Organized labor has been as cordial to Nixon as to any Republican President in memory, backing him particularly on the war and on law-and-order. But Nixon took the calculated risk of appearing before the biennial convention of the AFL-CIO in Bal Harbour, Fla., a day after it had instructed the labor members of the Pay Board not to cooperate in forming Phase II wage...