(7 of 9)
In sum, the Nixon Administration is rarely what it seems to be. It is never as conservative as it appears when Arthur Burns or Attorney General John Mitchell is acting as spokesman, nor as progressive as when Finch is talking. Despite Nixon's dearth of personal ideology, he manages to stick to certain basic principles, but with his own twist. He wants to reduce the Federal Government's participation in the people's business, but his welfare proposal seeks to establish for the first time a nationwide minimum payment decreed by Washington. He inveighs against neo-isolationists but wants to reduce foreign involvements. So it is on matters of style. Nixon and his men are supposed to be smooth, efficient operators, with keen political sense and a horror of small errors. Once during the campaign, an airport rally went badly. "No more airport receptions," Nixon told an aide. During a White House state dinner recently, Nixon spilled soup on his sleeve. "No more soup at these things," he decreed. Of course there were later airport rallies, and soup will doubtless reappear at banquets.
Nixon promised an "open Administration," and indeed, information has flowed more freely than during the Johnson years. But is it a two-way tide? Even some of the President's aides are troubled that he sees so few people in the course of his daily routine. Nixon, long noted for political acumen, may be getting out of touch; he seemed so, for example, when he failed to consult Congress about removing postal appointments from politics. TIME White House Correspondent Simmons Fentress observes: "Nixon likes to work alone in the little study next to the Oval Office. He likes to pack himself off to the privacy of the Executive Office Building hideaway. He sits alone at night in the Lincoln sitting room and goes over his papers while his stereo blares Kostelanetz or the score from Victory at Sea. He is much too cocooned. His contacts are too narrow."
While Lyndon Johnson was rarely alone, only the most senior Nixon aides have easy access. Most of the White House staff meets him rarely, if ever, and non-government visitors are few. Attorney General Mitchell and Defense Secretary Laird see him more frequently than other Cabinet members; Transportation Secretary John Volpe, reports have it, spent nearly ten weeks trying for an appointment with the President. Nixon's own choice for Republican National Chairman, Representative Rogers Morton, has yet to see him privately. The "palace guard" of aides carefully screens requests for audiences, and often grants them only on condition that certain matters not be discussed. White House staffers assemble a detailed "scenario" covering each appointment; from it, Nixon learns what his visitor will talk about, what the issues are, and what Administration policy has been on the matter in question.
All Presidents, of course, are more or less isolated; none has been free to mingle with the average citizen in a bull session at the corner tavern. As it happens, Nixon's growing insulation from ordinary political realities has embarrassed him so far only in relatively unimportant ways—chiefly in minor domestic matters, and not at all in foreign affairs.
World View