Word: humphreyism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...that the candidates have dodged the issues. George Wallace has artfully exploited white fears of black progress; in that unsavory sense, he has indeed confronted the nation's No. 1 agony-race relations. Richard Nixon rightly boasts that he has spoken on 167 issues, and Hubert Humphrey laughingly admits that he is criticized for having more solutions than there are problems. But quantity is no true gauge. The candidates have not yet spoken explicitly and specifically about scores of basic issues that go to the heart of America's future. They have not revealed a definitive...
This year's campaign, like many before it, has become a clash over personalities-and that is all to the good, as far as it goes. To vote wisely for a presidential candidate is basically to judge his strength of character. Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey have at least conveyed a clear choice between quite different styles and attitudes. All the same, both potential Presidents have been disturbingly imprecise even about the major issues of war and race, to say nothing of lesser problems. As a result, their true policies often seem equally vague to many voters. Not that...
Nixon and Humphrey have both assigned volunteer experts to the thankless task of turning out thoughtful if largely unread position papers on all sorts of topics: black capitalism, the problems of aging, rural redevelopment. But most are aimed at small special-interest groups, and if the press reports them, such pronouncements usually wind up in puny paragraphs between the obituaries and the recipes. Above all, candidates give short shrift to many issues because the people themselves are uninterested. Talk about the gold outflow or trade protectionism makes audiences nod and yawn. It is a political axiom, and one of democracy...
Looking beyond Viet Nam and the "honorable settlement" that both Nixon and Humphrey have called for, what of the future? Nixon does not disagree with Humphrey's argument that the U.S. "cannot play the role of global gendarme." But neither man clearly explains just how the U.S. should defend its foreign allies and interests. To draw a specific perimeter of defense would obviously encourage aggressors to grab anything on the other side of the line. Still, the candidates could at least specify which areas they regard as vital to American security, while just as clearly reserving a right...
Happily, both men emphasize that primary responsibility for protecting foreign countries should be shifted to regional groupings of the countries themselves-a subject crucial to U.S. policy in Southeast Asia after the Viet Nam war ceases. Humphrey says, for example, that Asia's regional defense should be led by Japan and India. But many exposed allies will be unable to protect themselves until they achieve political and economic stability-and that will require foreign aid. The Vice President advocates more U.S. economic aid, while Nixon hopes to hold it down by giving aid to fewer countries and inducing affluent...