European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 24, 1969, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Friday january 24, 1969 the stars and stripes William f. Buckley Page 9 the first impression was not All important. It was Good with out being very Good. What was missing during the Campaign and before it still missing the sense of Dominion. The appalling example of it it or. Nixon s incredible persistence in talking to the press wherever arid whenever he is ambushed by it no matter what he is engaged in doing. Thus after the end of his greatly effective acceptance speech in Miami. And again arriving in a Lincoln Continental no less than 21 feet Long that in itself one would think would cause one to decline to chit Chat with report ers. But it happened also that he was on his Way to becoming the president of the United states ust a minute or two later and there As he and the outgoing president disembarked were the omnipresent reporters with their a sense of tumescent microphones what did they talk about in the car in Stead of smiling and proceeding of his Way Nixon stopped to gabble of he said chantily our dogs and other  i have always wondered at the temerity of the american press. I was afraid to View the interment of president Kennedy on television for fear that Abc would poke a microphone into Jackie s fac and ask her what did she think of the Eulogy but that will change. The of fice almost always invests its majesty in the incumbent. If it could happen to Andrew Jackson and Chester Arthur and Harry Truman certainly it will happen to Rich Ard Nixon who on top of his other attributes is a More Dili gent student of All matters and therefore will become a competent student of the presidency and the presence which is indispensable to the office. Thus the striking passages of his address had to do with the human spirit. These passages he could speak feelingly because he is the primary american exemplar of the Triumph of the human spirit Over adversity. The Astro nauts never had such dark and lonely moments As Nixon had and out of that experience he fashioned a philosophy which is essentially hopeful. There were of course the traditional disappointments whih one finds in almost every inaugural address ritual obeisances this time for instance to youth and always of course to the american people who Are never called the  there were the vexing Pas sages which Are either without meaning or Are banal beyond the Point that makes them Bear repeating in no routine situations. We Are going to turn our swords into Plo shares yes yes yes we shall plan now for the Day when our wealth can be transferred from the destruction of War abroad to the urgent needs of our people at  in the first place that in t a plan it s a Hope in the second place a few paragraphs further Down or. Nixon tells us thai what we need at Home in t any longer really material it is things of the spirit. Well we can get those can we not without re allocations in the defense budget and elsewhere the rhetorical blight of Sorensen those false antitheses which Are substitutes for analytical invigoration we cannot expect to make everyone our Friend but we can try to the years brought a new discipline make no one our enemy to hum. But then he struck out and his words and thoughts were re sounding. Only the spirit will cure the evils of the spirit the deaths of the spirit he said Fin Gering that great National Anomie which is the plague of our time. Don t look to the government to bail you out be cause our greatest need now is to reach beyond  we shall Promise said or. Nixon cautiously Only what we know we can  and finally we have endured a Long night of the american spirit. But As our eyes catch the dim Ness of i he first rays of Dawn let us not curse the remaining dark. Let us gather the  already the new president had slipped into the Royal  c Wathington Star Syndicate 5�veried by a Broad National need and interest Saint Francis Huckel Max Lerner How can any Man attaining the coveted seat of Power in Washington fail to feel that it is a Day of Triumph but in Richard Nixon s Case there must be an added measure of sweetness that the prize brings because he has been so Long in seeking it and it has been so close to his grasp and yet so Slippery in eluding it. When Lincoln was asked by a Friend How he Felt about the move to get him the nomination for the presidency he answered candidly the taste is in my  the taste has been in Richard Nixon s Mouth Ever since his role in the Hiss Case got him the vice presidential nomination in 1952. Someone noted the other Day that Congress might have waited four years before doubling or. Nixon s Hilary and have made him work for it. The reply was that very decidedly he has worked hard and Long waited endlessly. The waiting could t have been easy Richard Nixon had to watch for eight Long years As vice president while decisions were made that May have seemed to him not so much wrong As inept and fumbling and say nothing. He had to fight off the efforts to replace him for a Sec Ond term. Then came the heartbreaking defeat at the hands of a dashing Young irishman blessed with every gift of the gods youth and Money and brains Grace and looks a natural aristos in John Adams classic sense As compared with a Small town Middle class upward Mobile who had been compelled to fight for everything he get and flaw his Way up the rope to Power. Then there came More wafting and Heartbreak the of a in California in 1962, the bypassing at Tai Goldwater convention of 1964. But in time there came also a new self discipline a withdrawal from the headlines and from the earlier image of sweaty struggle a new coolness and sense of distance. There was still the waiting and the inextinguishable hunger for the Summit prize. But they belonged to a Man who had come to know himself and who put into use in running his Campaign All he had Learned in his four years of waiting. In the end it worked. Nixon had earned the right in his comeback to throw the words of All the doubters and detractors Back into their Teeth but he did t. As he had come to Mas Ter his self discipline it had now mastered him and there was no crack in the tempered surface except perhaps to his close friends at key Biscayne to show the exultation beneath. C 1969, u Angeles time Fly to Antipoverty plan Worth doing badly i pick c is Antn film to taint turn am.  i t i. F there is nothing that turns on Middle class fury like the discovery of graft and corruption among the lower economic groupings. A Stalwart Bourgeois who can look calmly on Price fixing among electric goods m a n u f a c tuners and even cheer if a lumber John p. Roche company sneaks off with a National Park works himself into a paroxysm of rage when he learns there Are bookmakers operating in the slums. One of the great lines of All time was delivered by a negro numbers runner As he was taken off to the bucket Man he said to the waiting press we just run the poor Man s Stock  recently and predictably it will continue for some time in the future the headlines have emphasis of corruption in various parts of the poverty program. The new York times apparently having deserted social revolution at the order of the Day has mail peace with the elec the opinions expired in the column and cartoon on thai Page r0raat Tho a of the author and Are in no Way to pc cont dared Ai rear Imontine to View of the Star and strip let of or Otth United state government Tion returns and now features millions in City poverty funds lost by fraud and  if we can believe the investigators perhaps 10 per cent of the 122 million in new York s Antipoverty program have in one ingenious fashion or another been stolen. Pat Moynihan pres ident Nixon s authority on Urban affairs has contributed to the general Brouhaha with a volume denouncing the administrative Structure of the office of eco nomic Opportunity Leo. He suggests in essence that ideological enthusiasm was substituted for hard headed administrative Wisdom and that the result was a shambles. If there Are three aspects of this situation which seem to Merit analysis and discussion first the fact that ther is corruption in the operation of the poverty pro Gram hardly comes As a Shock to me or to most of those involved in its establishment. This 1$ in no Way to be construed As a justification of larceny it it merely to suggest that Lyndon Johnson Willard Wirtz Sarge Shriver and other key sponsors Art not Vil Lage idiots. When a government attempts to create a at pro Gram it invariably has to move into an uncharted wilderness. When As in the Case of poverty this program involves passing out a lot of Money a knowledgeable policy maker knows that some of it is going to wander off. Thus a decision has to be made at the very outset that the probable advantages of a new policy Are so significant and compelling that the risk of corruption is Worth taking. The key decision makers in the Johnson administration had what David Riesman has called the nerve of failure they were prepared to innovate and face the consequences. Pat Moynihan is a very intelligent Man but i have never met anybody in politics with president Johnson s somber Talent for seeing around Comers. Second if Johnson had played the War against poverty by the traditional bureaucratic rules my guess is that the Leo would have had All the vitality of a dead Mackerel. A there would have been no larceny but neither would there have been a program. Johnson put his Money on innovation and was prepared to let the chips fall. What really separates intelligent liberals from intelligent conservatives is a fundamental differ Nee in temperament. The conservative wants guarantees from the future the Liberal often with considerable doubts is willing to try something new. As the British writer g. K. Chesterton once commented if a thing is Worth do ing it is Worth doing  like Moynihan i thought the Community participation provi Sions of the poverty statute were Wacky but Given the Overall thrust of the measure and my commitment to its goals i was prepared to live with some non sense. Third when we look at the poverty program in Broad perspective we must define it As a weapons system for dealing with one of our major social problems. It therefore seems fair to approach h and evaluate it As we would other sorts of weapon s by Stoms notably those employed in attaining National Security. Take for example our experiments with air to surface missiles sky Bolt which led to the cancellation of programs into which we had sunk perhaps $200 Mil lion. Or look at the tfx now the fill in the first week of operations we lost about $25 million Worth of planes. The re action was not to scrap the plane but to go Back to the drawing Board and eliminate the defects. C w9, King feature Syndicate