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The Negro disorders so affected Agnew that eventually he seemed to be acting at complete odds with his earlier record. He implied that fleeing looters ought to be shot on sight by police. He claimed that the Kerner Commission Report on ghetto rioting might actually abet further disorder. When the Poor People's Campaign arrived in Washington, he condemned the Johnson Administration for allowing the marchers to camp on public land. Those gut reactions at once neutralized his liberal image and sent him toward a place on the G.O.P. national ticket.
"There can be a mystique about a man," Nixon said of Agnew after the convention. "You can look him in the eye and know he's got it. This guy has got it." What Agnew has got is a reflexive feel for how millions of fellow Americans view the world—many of them through suburban windows. It is another question whether he also has the qualities of leadership, intellect and judgment that are required, in an age of instant communications and thermonuclear weaponry, of a man who might some day be thrust into the presidency of the U.S. Agnew has certainly made some errors of judgment in the campaign so far, but the campaign is relatively young. As things stand now, the name Agnew could indeed become a household word in the U.S. His conduct in the next several weeks will determine just what sort of word it is.