Word: planking
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...President's recent frenetic rushing to and from the Governor's Manhattan apartment and the White House, was probably not spun out of a few creative minds on the eve of its approval by the convention. It is unlikely, for instance, that Nixon asked for a stronger civil rights plank simply because Senator Kennedy selected Senator Johnson as his running mate. Shrewd as Kennedy's choice seems to be, it is hardly enough to panic Nixon so much that he will lose all hope of winning a single Southern state in November. Nixon may have been at a loss...
...easy time of it with his fiscal policy plank. As Chairman of the President's Committee on Price Stability and Economic Growth he achieved an endearing marriage of progressivism and conservatism with the words: "We [must] continue to pursue the general policies of the last few years but improve the effectiveness with which we administer these policies." He discovered that formula months ago, but it has taken him several more to adjust his entire platform to the curious slogan, "positive, progressive conservatism." With as little mention of how local committees are to provide the initiative for financing slum clearance...
Nixon's foreign policy plank is even more passive. What the Vice-President wishes to do--although it is somewhat uncertain what he means by the phrase--is to stand firm, and in doing so to liberate Eastern Europe and Communist South-east Asia. How he plans to do this--by being rude to the Russians, by being nice to them, or simply by aiming rockets at them whenever they behave badly--he gives no indication. The entire plank, in fact, when it is not hoping for a glorious future and deploring the recognition of Red China, is celebrating...
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this plank is what it has left out. It has virtually ignored all of Governor Rockefeller's relevant "points," including his remarkable proposal that the U.S. support the "confederation" of nations into solid political chunks. Both Nixon and Charles H. Percy's committee chose to exclude this intriguing scheme from their platform, probably because it seemed a little oddball--perhaps radical--in contrast to the vapidity of the rest of the plank...
...Vice-President's search for a platform has ended--but because it had to--and his troubles are by no means over yet. Every plank is a vacuous patching together of the divergent shreds within the Republican Party, and Nixon has not chosen to reinforce it with something like Al Smith's famous "wet telegram...