University of Virginia Library

Robert Gillmore

Spiro Agnew :
Nixon's Nixon

The writer, a government graduate
student, was graduated in
1968 from Williams, cum laude,
with honors in political science. At
Williams, he edited the Record, the
student newspaper and chaired the
Republican Club and an undergraduate
Ripon society. He was an
Army journalist in Vietnam, has
studied at the London School of
Economics and was recently on the
Washington Post editorial staff.

When Sen. Eugene McCarthy
quipped a few weeks ago
that Vice President Agnew was
"Nixon's Nixon" he probably
said much more than he realized.

What the tart-tongued senator
realized is by now as
obvious as Agnew's presence:
that as Richard Nixon's vice
president he is performing the
same hatchet-work Richard did
as Dwight Eisenhower's vice
president.

Double Theme

As the astute Minnesota senator
is almost certainly aware, Republican
strategy since the New Deal
has played on a double theme-what
may be called a high road and a
low. The later has been the special
province of Vice Presidents Nixon
and Agnew.

Long before-before Scammon
and Wattenberg discovered the
"social issue" Republicans were
playing the politics of the low
road-playing upon the irrational
and emotional fears of the American
electorate, thus distracting
them from more pressing (mainly
economic) grievances.

In the 50s, the Republican low
road was "corruption" in Washington
and communism" - also in
Washington, and in every other
country not formally entwined in
Western alliances.

Thus, while Richard Nixon
dueled with demons, needed reforms-among
them federal medical
care and aid to education-died with
the non-leadership of the Grand
Old Mouse.

Today, the issues are more tangible:
"radical-liberals," crime
(especially "in the streets") and
student and other "unrest. While
these issues are real, they are still of
the low road. For Vice President
Agnew and others, they are only
theoretical bridgework for the politics
of fear, and they remain diversionary
tactics to make the Dayton
housewife forget, among other
things, that Republicans are dawdling
over the issues that cost money
but can make her life more unpleasant
than "radiclibs."

National Fears

The spectre of Agnew however,
does not lie merely in his rhetorical.

For what Sen. McCarthy may
not have realized is that Mr. Agnew
is "Nixon's Nixon" in a much more
significant way.

President Eisenhower added Senator.
Nixon to the Republican
ticket because Senator Nixon
would travel the Republican low
road: He would speak to national
fears of "communism" and corruption."

President Nixon added Governor
Agnew to his ticket because Mr.
Agnew would travel another low
road: he would speak to other
(largely Southern) fears:

President Nixon fulfilled his role
well. By travelling the low road
often enough he gained a wide
party following. Republican liberals
thought that Vice President Nixon
did nothing for the party's "better
nature," in Lincoln's words, and
should not, at any rate be made Mr.
Eisenhower's Herblock "heir
apparent." They therefore wanted to
dump the man whom Herblock
drew as travelling in sewers. The
party's influential conservatives-Mr.
Nixon's former Senate
colleagues William Knowland and
Styles Bridges among them -
blocked the move. President Eisenhower,
as usual, acquiesced.

Find Candidate

Within the next two years, Republican
liberals, deeply pained by
the Vice President, and not wanting
to make him Mr. Nixon's successor,
will very likely try to find another
candidate. And even more likely,
the party rank and file will effectively
block a move to remove a
man who is at least as popular
within the GOP as Mr. Nixon was.

As President Eisenhower's second
term drew to a close party
liberals, in the person of Governor
Nelson Rockefeller, tried vainly to
stop what many thought was inevitable.
-Richard Nixon's Presidential
nomination.

But instead, President Kennedy
defeated the "heir apparent" and
later confessed. "Nelson would
have creamed me."

As President Nixon's second
term ends, party liberals will probably
engage in an even more futile
exercise. Perhaps in the person of
Senator Charles Percy they will try
in vain to persuade their party that
Mr. Agnew cannot win and murmur
to themselves that he should not).

But instead, President elect Edward
Kennedy may admit: "Chuck
would have beat me."