The Nation: Shooting at the Bluebirds of Happiness

THE President might go to Peking, but more pressing matters of the pocketbook clamored for his—and the nation's—attention last week. Rumors persisted that Nixon might fly to the Orient at almost any moment; that would rivet national and world attention back to the new East-West dialogue. Meanwhile, a rash of strikes and increasing anxieties about the Administration's economic policies dominated the U.S. mood at midsummer.

To be sure, the men whom A.F.L.-C.l.O. President George Meany sarcastically terms the Administration's "bluebirds of happiness" continued to chirp cheerily about a long-term economic resurgence. But...