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Whiggery has its virtues. Passage of the tax bill is a good indication that a hyperactive President is not always necessary to useful legislative progress. Ultimately, the question is whether a Whig's approach can deal with the great internal problems of the U.S. today. Federal authority expanded from the New Deal onward largely because a vacuum existed at lower levels of government and in the private sector. Crises existed that only Washington seemed willing to attack. Today the problems may be different, but they are no less urgent. One test of Nixon's philosophy will come when state and city governments show whether they can get by with more money but less control and expert guidance from Washington.
The Ripon Society, a group of articulate, liberal Republicans, praised Nixon's welfare plan but warned last week that if the G.O.P. turns aside from the problems of the day, the party will disappear just as the Whigs did. "Men of good will may disagree about the means to solve the urban and black crises," said the Society. "They do not ignore them. The party that does not deal with these problems has no future, whatever the ethnic background of its constituents, and it will go the way of the Whigs, who floundered on the great issue of their era"—slavery, which led to the Civil War. Richard Nixon has been faithful to his theory of the presidency, but it remains to be seen whether that theory is sufficient to the day.