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Resentment against McGovern's spending and welfare plans is also widespread, and it is by no means confined to people who are affluent or white or both. Christine Trice, a black who is a dressmaker in Los Angeles, asserts: "There is so much fraud in welfare and no incentive to get a job. Welfare needs cutting down, but McGovern seems to want to add to it. Paying for it will come out of the pockets of working people." In Miami, Leonard Lang, a student and part-time clerk says: "I'd very much like to know what happens to the one-third of my paycheck that's taken in taxes every week. Just for once, people want to feel that Uncle Sam is taking his hand out of their pockets."
Economically as well as socially, Nixon is effectively appealing to rising conservative feelings. Yet to the extent that there is a pro-Nixon vote on economic issues—as distinct from an anti-McGovern vote—it reflects not so much conservative ideology as an "I'm all right, Jack" attitude among the many voters whose tunes have improved during the exuberant upturn of the past year. "The farmer is going to vote Nixon." declares William L. Lanier, who raises soybeans and tobacco in Georgia. "For the first time in years, the farmer is making profit." Indeed, the Administration in the past year has lifted from subsidies by $1 billion, to $4 billion, helping increase fam income by 15%. Alex Harkness, a construction worker in Knoxville, Tenn., says complacently: "I have a new home, I have a new car. I'll stick with Nixon and hope the situation will just stay status quo for another four years."
The economy certainly has not shaken clear of all its problems. The Government reported last week that consumer prices in September rose one-half of 1%—more than double the August increase—and the growth of gross national product slowed, as expected, to an annual rate of 5.9% in the third quarter, from an unsustainable 9.4% the previous quarter. But the overall record is good. Prices this year have risen less than pay, so the real income of workers is increasing, and G.N.P. for all 1972 is still expected to show a record rise of $ 100 billion. Even his Democratic critics concede that Nixon has done a remarkable job of turning the economy around—and turning the economic issue to his favor—since he clamped on price and wage controls in August of 1971. "Nixon has learned a lot about managing the economy," says Economist Otto Eckstein. "Unemployment is high, but the inflation and jobless rates have gone down. People can see an improvement." Eckstein, a Harvard professor, reckons that his own grading of Nixon on economics has risen in the past 14 months from D to Aminus.
The most important Nixon-McGovern differences, though, are not about the economic record but about policy for the future. Their major points of dispute: