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The Nixon nation is a varied and obviously populous place. The issues of the campaign, strangely enough, strike little fire—the talk is apt to be more of principles. Where Nixon supporters do discuss issues, their opinions tend toward the predictable: "peace with honor" in a war that the President inherited and is only trying to end—just don't turn it over to the Communists overnight. (It is interesting that the word Commie has all but disappeared from the political lexicon.) No amnesty for draft resisters. Busing is bad, or else does not matter much any more.
Nixonians generally are against wage and price controls in principle. But in practice they are not so sure. Mc-Govern's economics, they agree, would be disastrous, especially the Senator's proposals to tax capital gains as regular income. Welfare arouses even more emotion—against it. A retired Floridian summed up the Nixonian attitude: "Give 'em a shovel."
>Ewell Pope is a 44-year-old self-made Atlanta millionaire who came back from Korea with a Silver Star, a
Purple Heart and a lucidly aggressive desire to "aspire and achieve in the system." Today he is a partner in Crow, Pope & Land Enterprises, one of Atlanta's largest real estate developers. Having grown up on a tiny Georgia farm, he feels entitled to declare: "This country has always been a place where anyone who was willing to work at it could rise up to some degree." He is antiracist: "If someone asked my wife to sit in the back of the bus, I'd be the meanest man alive." He explains part of the reason he is voting for Nixon: "The political values of this country are mainly middleclass. Because this group believes in human rights, people have sometimes been too anxious to right any human wrong that occurs, and they have given the Federal Government powers to go in and right what seems wrong at the time. But you are never going to get those powers back from the Federal Government. I have been in almost every country in the world by now. Every time I get a little bit upset with our system, I can still come back and marvel at how great it is."
>Paul Berg, 19, of Seattle, Wash., was one of the Young Voters for the President who cheered from the galleries in Miami Beach last month. A student at Shoreline Community College, he works part-time tending pumps at a local gas station. Berg is one of the thousands of young voters with whom the Republicans mean to disabuse the McGovernites about their hold on the young. "I never went in for protests or demonstrations," Berg says, "but some of my friends did. The country has broken out of its low point. In 1968-70, everybody seemed down on the United States. But now I think the country is getting back on its feet. We've got a good system, you know. I do wish we had a little more patriotism. I don't mean 'America—love it or leave it,' or anything like that. But just a little more pride in our country."
>G.S. Donnell, 62, sold out his North Carolina oil-truck fleet two years ago and retired to Fort Lauderdale, where he lives with his wife in a stylish condominium apartment. "After I retired," he says, "we traveled all over the United States in a station wagon, sleeping on the ground in sleeping bags. I know