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In its determined effort to discourage dissent, the Administration often ignored civil rights and tried dubious legal tactics. It arrested 12,000 demonstrators during the 1971 May Day protest in Washington, then released most of them without charges (only 79 were convicted). It staged several costly, time-consuming conspiracy trials. Most were ultimately thrown out of court.
Record at Home
The key to Nixon's domestic program was his remark, "Simply throwing money at problems does not solve anything." It could have been the start of a truly innovative and intelligent reform movement — and it may yet prove to be so. Nixon's own accomplishments were mixed.
To decentralize the functions that had begun flowing to Washington from the cities and states 40 years earlier, Nixon proposed the creation of a "New Federalism." He recommended that it be brought about by means of a six-point program which he overbilled as "the New American Revolution." The only part of the plan to be enacted in full, however, was a fiveyear, $30 billion revenue-sharing scheme to funnel federal tax money back to cities and states, thereby giving them greater discretion in spending on local needs.
Tinkering with Controls
Nixon's most promising domestic proposal was shaped by Daniel P. Moynihan — before he, like so many others in the Administration, drifted away (Moynihan went off to an ambassador ship in New Delhi after his pet programs were gutted; Housing Boss George Romney quit in discouragement; Interior Secretary Walter Hickel was sacked for, among other things, criticizing the U.S. invasion of Cambodia; and, of course, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus became victims of the "Saturday night massacre"). It would have replaced the present chaotic welfare system with a new family-assistance program. Many liberals criticized that scheme as providing insufficient money, but it was a major step in the right direction. Nixon unfortunately abandoned it, along with several other proposals, only partly be cause of a hostile Democratic Congress. Because he did not sufficiently back some of his own schemes, he became the leading counter-revolutionary of his own revolution. Only recently, however, he advanced a new Health Care Insurance scheme — short of what the Democrats proposed, but widely acclaimed as a breakthrough toward sensible national health care.
Nixon's greatest policy failure was the domestic economy—something nobody would have expected from a President with strong links to the business community. He dramatically abandoned his strongly proclaimed orthodox principles, went in for deficit financing, and in 1971 imposed wage and price controls. These did help restrain inflation for a while, but there followed a period of indecisive tinkering with controls, decontrols and semi-controls before returning to no controls and declarations of faith in the free market. The situation was aggravated by the pumping up of the money supply in the election year 1972, and then in 1973 by the energy crisis, for which the Administration had been