University of Virginia Library

Muskie's Best Dividends In Nixon 'Deficit'

He is unequivocally against
aid to an undemocratic Greece,
against colonies (especially
American semi-colonies like
Viet Nam and Korea), or
government spying on its own
citizens.

And while Kennedy and
Humphrey can claim to agree
with some of these positions
one has to be careful in
deciding how much political
expediency goes into their
thinking-for one thing,
remember how long it took for
"Hu-bird" to break with LBJ
to any great degree, and for
another, reflect on the words
of a writer for the London
Times:
Kennedy isn't recently
supporting the Catholic side in
the Irish Civil War for small
peanuts, he knows how the
Americans love the underdog.

In comparing Muskie to
Nixon we run up against the
two main issues that the public
is interested in-the war and
the economy. While Nixon
inherited a declining role for
Americans in Vietnam, he has
not chosen to convert this into
anything worthwhile; instead
he lays the blame to the North
Vietnamese and goes blithely
ahead with some
predetermined plan of his.

If the Vietnamese can't
stand on their own after seven
years of overt U.S. presence
and four more years of covert
U.S. presence, and seven more
years again of U.S. presence
through the French (Nixon's
patron, Eisenhower, even
offered the French atomic
weapons to save Dien Bien
Phu), then let us finally face
reality!

The economy, though,
offers us a much better
opportunity to pinpoint
Nixon's failings. When he is
finally out of office and
writing his memoirs it still
won't be the last time we will
hear how labor, or Congress, or
somebody was the real cause
for the failures of Phases Two
through Six, or however many
we'll have. It would be too
much trouble to detail the
present administration's
failings, so let's concentrate on
Muskie's approach.

There will be no Southern
Strategy; it won't be needed.
The extra emphasis on the
economy that any Democratic
administration seems to have
will help insure that minorities
will not be drowned when the
business cycle dips.

By forcing the white South
to go elsewhere than the
President-and his powerful
ability to control the direction
of the administration-the
delaying of inevitable
integration will give way to a
more diverse economy, thus
helping an area traditionally
high in unemployment and low
in wages.

The farm states will have
their subsidies taken away and
will be forced to do what the
poor people do-grow crops or
go into another line. This is
directly counter to the stands
of Humphrey and McGovern
who have helped introduce a
bill to increase government
spending by$2 billion to raise
wheat and feed grain support
prices by 25 per cent.

More attention to the
effective enforcement of the
labor laws in the West and
Southwest will also give the
Mexican-Americans a better
share of America's wealth.

Additionally, Muskie will
have the people with him when
he takes specifics to Congress,
since the Democrats are
traditionally considered best at
handling economic problems.
Congress will be with him too,
since in all likelihood it will be
Democratic also.

Muskie would better take
advantage of the issue of the
economy than either Kennedy
or Humphrey since they are
both associated popularly with
the war issue in one way or
another, and less so with other
issues.

Muskie also intends to avoid
Nixon's big pitfall, which
amounted to a full retreat from
his own previous thoughts on
the subject. While deficit
spending has become a part of
post-World War II life, never
before had the Keynesian
philosophy of borrowing from
the future ($38 billion worth)
been received with more open
arms. This country cannot have
a Nixon-type leader much
longer and remain in good
shape.

So we can see that Edmund
Muskie's strongest competition
for the Democratic nomination
will be Kennedy and
Humphrey, and that Muskie's
positions and the confidence of
the electorate will put him out
in front. At the convention
itself this second fact will
clinch the nomination. In the
match-up with Nixon, the
latter's handling of the
economy would be the main
reason for the Muskie win.