LIKE an old coach delivering his half-time pep talk, President Richard Nixon gathered his team round the table in the Cabinet Room last week to reassure them that the 1970 election was no worse than a tieĀand that what counts is what happens two years hence, in 1972. The Nixon players came in two platoons: first the Cabinet members and then some 30 top-echelon White House aides. With Daughter Tricia seated beside him, Nixon spent nearly an hour laying down his analysis of the returns. His conclusion: "The election, ideologically, was enormously successful."
In the last two weeks of September, "the social...