THE FEAR CAMPAIGN

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confusion. Nixon reiterates that there can be no order without justice, that progress and peace go hand in hand. He goes on from there to attack the Democratic Administration for "grossly exaggerating" the relationship between poverty and crime. Nixon insists that doubling the conviction rate would accomplish more than quadrupling the antipoverty effort. Despite pressure from Republican liberals like Senator Edward Brooke, he is far less specific about social justice than he is about law and order.

Essentially, Nixon is trying to steer between the crass appeals to animosity of Wallace and the orthodox liberal approach of Humphrey. Eschewing concrete proposals, Wallace aims at his listeners' gut feeling that crime must be quashed by any means available. Nixon attempts to sound both alarmed and controlled at the same time, but the element of alarm seems to be winning out. He cites the FBI figures without qualification: "If the present rate of new crime continues, the number of rapes and robberies and assaults and thefts in the U.S. today will double by the end of 1972." He talks of the U.S. as the country with the "strongest tradition of law and order, now racked by uprecedented lawlessness."

Nixon belabors the Supreme Court for "hamstringing the peace forces in our society and strengthening the criminal forces." The court has borne the imprint of a Republican Chief Justice appointed by Dwight Eisenhower. Nixon has nonetheless succeeded in putting Humphrey on the defensive. Humphrey supports the Supreme Court. He lauds the Kerner commission report, which Nixon accuses of blaming everyone except the rioters and which Wallace terms "asinine and ludicrous." To underscore the truism that neither party has a monopoly on crime, Humphrey points out that Wallace's Alabama leads the nation in the number of murders, and that states with Republican Governors also have high crime rates ("if that means anything"). Humphrey likes to point out that he is running for President, not sheriff.

In the position papers issued so far, both Humphrey and Nixon propose large-scale federal assistance to local law-enforcement, judicial and correction agencies. Both emphasize the need for a major attack on organized crime and an enlarged role for the Justice Department. However, Humphrey's proposals are considerably more detailed. He recommends, for instance, the establishment of "regional crime institutes" to do research and provide training and technical services for local law-enforcement agencies. And it is Humphrey who envisions the more prominent role for the Federal Government. To this, the Vice President adds strong and constant stress on the need for a wholehearted attack on the social and economic problems that he insists are at the root of lawlessness.

Humphrey is in trouble on the issue partly because his stand is not responsive to many whites' fears of the Negro; but more importantly because even well-meaning whites have become deeply skeptical about the liberal proposition that social and economic improvements necessarily diminish crime.

What to Do

When Wallace says that force is the only way to ensure law and order he is far from alone. Last week the Dem ocratic National Committee received results of four regional polls on the issue, each asking whether