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Speaking in New Orleans of the Oct. 15 Moratorium, Agnew delivered his most notable line of the season, one that instantly became part of American political history: "A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals." The line sounds like George Wallace armed with Roget's, but Agnew is no George Wallace, despite their common streak of anti-intellectualism. The Vice President is neither a racist nor a demagogue and, curiously enough, he seems little driven by political ambition. Says Carl Paolozzi, an aluminum-plant supervisor in Southern California, "Wallace is an extremist just like those guys on trial in Chicago. Wallace is against our system of government; Agnew is trying to preserve it."
In many ways, Agnew means simply to fight fire with fire, to counter the extreme "Up Against the Wall" rhetoric of the American left with his own equally tough vocabulary. M.I.T.'s Noam Chomsky, a prominent antiwar critic, has a habit of making slightly hysterical comparisons between the U.S. today and Hitler's Germany. For months, protesters have chanted: "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh/Viet Cong is gonna win!" Earlier, the chorus was "Hey, hey, L.B.J./ How many kids did you kill today?" In adopting equally simplistic phrases, Agnew contributes to a sort of verbal totalism. And, of course, there is the difference that the protesters are not highly placed officials who publicly represent the U.S. Government.
The Gut Chord
Agnew's canon is a pastiche of Ronald Reagan, Norman Vincent Peale and American home truths. "Parental discipline is the gateway to knowledge," he has said. "The family alone can provide the bedrock security of the soul." Stressing the need for civil order in another speech, he asked: "Do 'we the people' enjoy uproar? Obviously, the answer is no. Civil rights are balanced by civil responsibilities. People cannot live in a state of perpetual electric shock." One of the Vice President's favorite words is "Establishment." "It is time," he has urged, "for the Establishment of this country—governmental, educational, industrial, religious—to revitalize themselves, to be proud that they are integral and vital components of the greatest nation this world has ever produced. I am not ready to run up a white flag for the United States of America."
"Make no mistake about it," says California Pollster Mervin Field. "Agnew is strumming a real gut chord. The issue is much more than Viet Nam. When the President of the U.S. has to say in his speech, 'I know that it may not be fashionable to speak of patriotism these days,' you get an idea how wide the gap is." Another California pollster, Don Muchmore, agrees: "What Agnew is telling the public is precisely what the man in the middle has been saying to his neighbor for the last six months. What Agnew is saying isn't new; what's new is that the Vice President of the U.S. is saying it."