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In part that is because Nixon, aside from his generalized pledges to hold down spending and taxes, has refused to let himself be smoked out on many economic subjects. He has yet to enunciate a tax-reform program, or to say how long he might continue wage-price controls or to indicate what level of unemployment he believes might be consistent with reasonable price stability. This strategy of silence hardly contributes to public enlightenment, but it is effective politically. Voters think that they know where Nixon stands, even though the President who now decries fedral deficits will have run up by the end of this fiscal year a cumulative budget deficit of at least $74 billion since he took office.
McGovern, as the propounder of new ideas, has made himself the focus of discussion—disastrously for his presidential drive. For many voters the campaign as far as economics goes has resolved itself into a single issue: Can McGovern produce a sound and consistent policy for managing the intricate, delicate, complex U.S. economy? From high-salaried executives to modestly paid clerks, many believe that he cannot. They have concluded that McGovern is a fuzzy thinker who listens to bad advice from ultaliberal economists, changes his mind too often (Nixon's dramatic turnabouts on foreign policy and economic controls seem to be ignored), and makes promises that cannot be fulfilled.
By talking during the primary campaign of giving what his advisers called a $1,000 "demogrant" to everybody—even though the proposal was meant to replace some existing welfare programs— McGovern excited the social reformers, who are a minority in America, while deeply offending multitudes who thought it contradictory to the work ethic (see THE ESSAY, page 96). As economist Arthur Okun, a McGovern adviser , puts it. "The things that helped him win the division pennant have hurt him in in the World Series." When McGovern belatedly buried the demogrant idea in August, he alienated many more people, who decided that in the realm of economics he simply does not know what he is talking about.
What is surprising is that voters who are loudly and sometimes angrily dissatisfied with Nixon's economic management are at the same time often anti-McGovern. "The whole economic situation is bad. " says Wendell Rushton, a mechanic in Miami. Still, Rushton will vote for Nixon because "McGovern is wishy-washy, and his ideas are too far out." Stuart Silver, a construction superintendent in Chicago, frets that "there are too many people out of work." But Silver is hesitated to vote for McGovern because "his plans are just not realistic, and he keeps changing his position."