Agnew A Buffoon
While I agree with Robert Rosen
that Spiro Agnew is a buffon, I
must take issue with Mr. Rosen's
light-hearted view of the
Republican Vice-Presidential
candidate. Agnew may be a clown,
but he is a very dangerous one.
Assuming a Republican victory in
November, what if, through some
disaster, Agnew should suddenly
become President. The man's only
qualification is that he is not
objectionable to Strom Thurmond
and the Yahoo wing of the party.
We would find ourselves with a
chief executive beside whom
Lyndon Johnson would appear a
champion of dissent, Dwight
Eisenhower a model of
articulateness, and Karl Mundt a
great intellectual. As the
Washington Post recently
commented, Nixon's selection of
Agnew may come to be regarded as
"the most eccentric
political appointment since the
Roman emperor Caligula named his
horse a consul."
One searches in vain for
glimmerings of intelligence and
compassion in Agnew's
pronouncements. Instead, there are
only ethnic slurs, witch-hunter cries
of "soft on Communism" and
"Reds on the campuses," appeals to
the white backlash rivalling those of
George Wallace, promises of
suppression of dissent and the one
vitual abolition of the Bill of
Rights, and the various grotesque
mistakes which Mr. Rosen pointed
out. Four years of Agnewism may
result in the politics of stupidy, the
politics of fear, or the politics of
oppression, but never the politics of
joy.
