THE country seemed in an odd, suspended mood. The great quadrennial division of the national house to elect or re-elect the President did not yet seem to have seriously begun—or else had already taken place so early and quietly that in effect there would be no real contest. Certainly the campaign has thus far failed to catch the national imagination, a fact that has something to do with the candidates who are running. There was little buoyancy and no euphoria in the American mood, but some of the stronger political poisons seemed to have been drained. The war, taxes, inflation, unemployment, the environment—no one could claim that these issues had disappeared, but they were festering less now. Some curious instauration of the '50s seemed to be at work in the psychology of 1972, almost a conscious revolt against the extravagant, Halloween '60s.
One saw it, for example, on the nation's campuses as the first fragrances of autumn suffused the air and the football season started. If the hair was often as long as before, there was also a deja vu of cardigans, Bass Weejuns and button-down collars. Fraternities were pursuing pledges as if Pat Boone and Johnny Mathis had never gone away. One recent night at George Washington University in Washington, the student rathskeller and the bowling alleys were jammed. Berkeley, cradle of the free speech movement, reverberated to the thock of tennis balls.
In large and small ways, the Republican political effort reflected and enhanced this mood. By campaigning little, Nixon suggests, as he means to, an air of ordered normalcy, of the business of the country going along as usual. When he does swing out on a rare foray, as he did last week to Texas, there are overtones of other days. His major remarks there were an old-fashioned scolding of "permissive" judges whose leniency from the bench in dealing with hard-drug traffickers is a "weak link" in the attack on the heroin problem. At one point during the trip, visiting a high school in Rio Grande City, he sat down at a piano like Harry Truman and banged out Happy Birthday on the old 88 for a Democratic host Congressman while the students chorused the words. In fact, of course, Nixon has moved way beyond the '50s politically and philosophically, as is shown by his major diplomatic moves of conciliation toward the Communist powers and a number of his domestic proposals. But in his manner and calculated appeal, he invites the electorate to come home to an earlier, no longer quite real America.
In contrast, the McGovern campaign marches to the rhythms of the long, Wagnerian '60s: the blacks' upheaval, the war and the defense machine, a generation's uprising (or dropping out), the industrial-ecological dilemma, the battle for privacy, the feminist movement, the sexual revolution. It was in this context that McGovern's candidacy was shaped and his nomination became possible. For McGovern and his people it is not possible after such events to envision the nation relapsing quietly into some smooth semblance of the middle Eisenhower years. Too much has changed. Another awareness, another America was born in those years of the last decade.
Rot. Hurting in morale and above all for money because of his bad showing in the polls, McGovern lashed out: "I think the polls are a lot of rot. I