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He will not be a legislative President but an executive President, exploring those areas where he is sovereign and has to contend least with a Congress controlled by Democrats. A long time ago, he sat in his Wall Street lawyer's office, cramped and yearning, and he said a President should worry first about war and peace. He has not changed, despite the necessities of domestic political dialogue.
Nixon has not said so, but it is plain that he does not believe in the Viet Nam war and that he wants to get out just as quickly as possible. His reaction to the Communists' spring offensive was to wait it out calmly. Washington meanwhile has succeeded in maneuvering the Saigon government into a more tractable position vis a vis the National Liberation Front—a necessary shift if negotiations in Paris are ever to succeed. Despite Nixon's denial last week of firm plans to reduce the U.S. troop level in Viet Nam, no one would be surprised if the Administration takes that option in the near future.
Nor is his dedication to Safeguard, the anti-ballistic missile system, altogether certain. The Administration has given itself plenty of time and maneuver room on this project. From down deep come the hints that if the Russians will sit and trade a little in arms-limitation talks, Nixon might just scrap the whole thing.
He is a man who reflects the nation that made him—mobile geographically and intellectually, sensitive to the prevailing momentum. To some he is still a man in search of an idea. To others he represents an open-mindedness not hobbled by the intellectual arrogance of those in the previous Administrations who led the U.S. into the Viet Nam war, but is instead flexible enough to seek out the right course and attempt to follow it. The doubt, of course, is whether he can perceive the right. He said last fall he would be a fresh wind in Washington, and he has not been quite that. He said he would drop the surtax. He has not been able to. He promised peace, and the war goes on.
In his second priority, the battle of inflation, he has acted with the surety of the company attorney. The budget will be cut. He has learned not to talk about the hardships of his early life publicly now, but in private he occasionally is carried back to those days when the Yorba Linda Nixons did not have money for a balanced diet, and he is then in a very real way attuned to the spiraling food prices in modest America.
Maybe there isn't much on paper besides ideas, but in ideas, ultimately, lies the power of any presidency. And therein is the promise. He wants to try to manage the changes in this country, rather than react to them, and so he would like to spend more time and money on those underprivileged children in their first five years, to funnel some of the federal tax funds back to the statehouses and the city halls. Yet large questions remain. Can Nixon move vigorously from the planning and organization phase to action? Has he been too slow in addressing social needs? Will his credit in the country run out before accomplishments come in? The answers he provides in the coming months are his next big test.