Word: agnew
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...divide. It has been proved that only a consensus Republican candidate-an Eisenhower, a renovated Nixon-can appeal to enough groups to get elected. In a party that claims the allegiance of only 30% of the nation's voters, a divisive candidate inevitably goes down to defeat. Yet Agnew and the forces behind him are following the same well-trodden sectarian route that leads nowhere except to a certain ideological satisfaction. It would be an irony indeed if in the very year that Longtime Loser Richard Nixon finally joins the roster of the big winners, his party should start...
Spiked Mace. Even Spiro Agnew is to be reined in. For much of Nixon's first term, the Vice President's principal duty seemed to be to go after the Administration's enemies and critics with a spiked mace. In alliterative swings he denounced Democrats, liberals, radicals, protesters, the press, the Eastern Establishment, even dissident members of his own party, with an assiduousness and acidity that would hardly have been becoming of the President. There were liberal Republicans who thought it unbecoming even in a Vice President, and who saw in Agnew few qualities that would make...
During the campaign, Agnew will continue to address those $1,000-a-plate dinners where Republican fat cats come to devour the Veep's red meat. But Agnew has been instructed not to become any more of a campaign issue himself than he already is thanks to past rhetoric. "Give the Democrats hell," the President advised him, but judicious hell, and lay off everybody else, particularly the press. Agnew will not, of course, take the high road. That is still reserved for the President. Agnew will have to find something in between, perhaps what McGovern sarcastically calls "low-road...
There are signs, in fact, that Agnew is learning, though critics would say mainly from his own mistakes. "He didn't go to Harvard," says someone who knows him well. "Washington is full of educated people, and he has had to play catch-up ball." On his trips overseas, he may have stumbled less than the press has suggested; certainly they were publicity flops, in part because of his own hostility to the press, but they were not necessarily failures from the point of view of Nixon's foreign policy. A high ranking State Department official feels that...
...home, Agnew has been busy building up his own constituencies. Often feeling unwanted at the White House, not even let in on key projects like the President's journey to Peking, he has sought out groups where he would be more popular. As head of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, he has ingratiated himself with many Governors and mayors round the country, Democrats included, who credit him with fighting hard for revenue sharing. That does not mean they would like to see him become President, but at least they have learned that he does not bite -them, anyway. Higher...