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One of Nixon's own final televised campaign speeches, billed as a "Look to the Future," did not provide sure clues either. Much of it was devoted to clarifying his view of the touchy final negotiations for ending the Viet Nam War and his renewed pledge that "our children can be the first generation in this century to escape the scourge of war." His remarks on the domestic future were couched in vague terms about the need for Americans to achieve "more kindness in our relations with each other" and "to find a new zest in the pursuit of excellence." But then Nixon all along had deliberately failed to outline programs and obviously was not going to take the chance of getting specific in the final phases of a winning campaign. In his speech, his only domestic promise was "I will do all in my power to avoid the need for new taxes," and he ruled out any new program "that would violate that pledge." He said that he intended "to shift more responsibility and power back to the states and localities, and most important, to the people."
Relying on civic-minded citizens to resolve social problems through the lowest levels of government is, of course, sweet-sounding democratic theory. Indeed, one innovation in Nixon's New American Revolution was this goal of localizing some responsibilities. Nixon's only enacted measure to promote that shift has been general revenue sharing, under which some $5.3 billion of federal tax money is being reverted to states and cities this year for them to spend as they see fit. Spread thinly everywhere, including suburbia (where it will often be used to reduce local taxes), this will not provide the resources for any sizable community to meet such needs as better mass transportation, improved housing, nonpolluting waste disposal, and better schools. Nixon is expected to press for congressional approval of "special" revenue sharing, targeted at easing specific problems, but apparently this would supplant the larger federal grants already serving similar purposes.
Yet when Nixon predicted in his speech that his localized approach would be attacked as "a retreat from federal responsibilities," he was right ,because to a large extent, it is. Washington stepped into many of the social programs it has launched precisely because states and cities had been unwilling or unable to handle them. Many of the lingering Great Society programs have indeed proved to be ineffective or wasteful and need to be weeded out; most of the ills they were meant to remedy have grown worse.
But the nation's states and cities, many of them impoverished, are even less equipped to deal with them now. It is naive to expect that without outside pressure a city dependent upon a mining industry will, for example, check pollution, or a racially divided community will integrate its schools. The lowest common denominator is often local prejudice. Even many liberals, on the other hand, have been shaken in their traditional faith in federal intervention as an effective agent in dealing with a range of social problems, and Nixon's approach evidently is in tune with the majority's present temper.