1971: United States

Politics

Politically, the most obvious thing about 1971 was that it preceded 1972, a presidential election year. Electioneering was already in full swing, and not in recent history had so many candidates or would-be candidates jostled each other so early and so uninhibitedly. If, as many have predicted, four parties are rolling in 1972—the Republicans and Democrats, a splinter group for George Wallace, and another splinter for left-wing Democratic dissidents—there will be plenty of candidates to go around.

With everything keyed to 1972, the normal suspicion and mudslinging that flow between a president of one party and a Congress of another party were multiplied. It was further compounded by the fact that Congress contained so many members (at least five in the Senate and two in the House of Representatives) who wanted President Nixon's job. When Congress refused to do anything early in the year with the president's welfare reform and revenue-sharing legislation-legislation to which the president had attached the highest priority in his State of the Union message—the Congress was accused of trying to make a Republican chief executive look bad. And when Nixon, in the name of fighting inflation, impounded funds voted by Congress for certain programs, or when he took foreign policy action without consulting the proper congressional committee, he was accused of unconstitutional usurpation of power.

Something for everyone.

Although anything done by a president who wishes to be reelected can loosely be considered political, some of Nixon's actions seemed especially susceptible to that label. The president appeared to have something for everyone. For the right wing, he increased the powers of the Subversive Activities Control Board, got tough with the 'eastern establishment press,' and increased wiretapping and other surveillance of 'domestic subversives.' For the left wing, he promised visits to the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China and modification of the traditional U.S. opposition to a United Nations seat for Peking. For the Catholics, he promised (unsupported by any visible legislation) more money for parochial schools. For the hard-pressed aerospace industry on the west coast, he pushed through Congress a $250 million loan guarantee for the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and promised more funds (to begin flowing in June 1972, just soon enough to be felt at election time).

A host of new game plans.

Nixon was also proving himself an adroit politician by keeping his antagonists off balance; whenever they thought he had been locked into a position that would be great to build a campaign attack against, he shifted. There was, for instance, his change of position on 'make-work.' In vetoing the Employment and Manpower Act of 1970, the president had scorned 'WPA-type jobs,' a reference to the public works projects under the New Deal. However, eight months later Nixon was signing the Emergency Employment Act of 1971, which provided $1 billion to create the first significant number of federally financed public service jobs since the Works Projects Administration stopped functioning at the end of the depression. There was not much difference between the act Nixon vetoed in 1970 and the act he signed in 1971, but the presidential race was nearly a year closer.

More dramatic reversals followed. President Nixon had opened the year calling for a 'new American revolution,' to which he intended to contribute by establishing a new revenue-sharing plan for the cities and a new welfare program for the poor. Yet by August he was saying that his new economic policy required putting a moratorium on these or any other portions of the 'new American revolution' that meant high government spending.

The dizzying suddenness with which the president reversed his entire economic 'game plan' was the most dramatic move of all. The pressures for this change were evident. In early August a private Republican poll showed that two-thirds of the American people felt the Democrats were more capable than the Republicans of bringing and sustaining prosperity. So Nixon swiftly adopted a course he had once vowed he would never follow. On August 15, only seven weeks after Treasury Secretary John B. Connally had announced that there would be no wage-price freeze, no tax incentives, and no restraints on foreign imports, the president went on national television to declare that all three measures were now in effect. For more than a year many Democrats had been urging the president to impose a wage-price freeze; by doing so, he deprived them of one of their most potent political complaints (although most Democratic leaders were quick to adjust their stance, so that instead of upbraiding Nixon for a do-nothing economic policy, they upbraided him for constructing a policy that benefited the wealthy businessman at the expense of the middle-income and low-income taxpayer).

Adroit as the president's maneuvers were, their long-term appeal to the voters would of course depend on the success or failure of the programs themselves. But for a while, at least, the very fact that the president showed himself flexible and willing to gamble stirred a favorable response in some unexpected quarters.

After a brief period of tolerance and amiability, a period in which AFL-CIO president George Meany played golf with Nixon at Burning Tree Country Club and toasted him at Labor Day banquets, the hierarchy of big labor became predictably disenchanted with the president over the wage freeze. But labor's rank and file was another thing. Despite unemployment that in some localities exceeded 10 percent, the white wage earner showed unusual sympathy for the president's efforts to stabilize the economy. In early opinion polls, for example, the rank and file voiced overwhelming support for the wage-price freeze.

School busing.

The 'politics only' label was also put on the president's handling of the school busing problem, a problem that was complicated and confused at best after the Supreme Court ruled in April that busing was permissible but not mandatory to end school segregation. On August 3, Nixon condemned the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare's desegregation plan for Austin, Texas, saying that it went too far in calling for extensive cross-town busing. The president ordered HEW to do no more than the bare minimum the Supreme Court required. The criticism prompted strong rumors that HEW secretary Elliot L. Richardson would resign because he felt that his integrity had been sacrificed to the president's need for southern support; however, that blew over.

On other occasions Nixon made every effort to make the South feel that he sympathized with its problems. Meeting in Birmingham, Ala., with editors and publishers from a dozen southern states, he said, 'I have nothing but utter contempt for the double, hypocritical standard of northerners who look at the South and point the finger and say, 'Why don't those southerners do something about their race problem?''

Power politics.

The faster Nixon tried to pull his forces together for the big push in 1972, the faster they seemed to fall apart. This illusion, however, was the result not of serious disaffection but of the natural use of power levers — and the year before the election is the time when the real leverage is applied. Invariably, as election time approaches, all factions try to steer the president in their direction by hinting that should he resist their requests, they just might take their votes elsewhere.

Nixon was taking more threats from the right wing of his party than from the liberals. The rightists' anguish became tumultuous after Nixon announced he would go to Peking; the more extreme elements in the Republican Party immediately washed their hands of him. Among the hand-washers was Representative John G. Schmitz of Orange County, Calif., whose district includes Nixon's home. Schmitz announced that he would have nothing more to do with the purveyors of this 'suicidal policy of surrendering to international communism.' Young Americans for Freedom, the right-wing youth movement, formally denounced Nixon at their national convention. After meeting with William F. Buckley, Jr., editor of National Review, a dozen prominent conservative writers and editors announced that they were 'suspending' their support for Nixon.

But the far right was unable to offer a united front. It got no sympathy, openly at least, from some of its stalwarts, such as Governor Ronald Reagan of California and Senator John Tower of Texas, both of whom endorsed the president's China trip. Even Mr. Conservative himself, Senator Barry Goldwater (R, Ariz.), said that if Nixon could reform the Communists by taking 'the word' to them, 'then more power to him.'

Ever since Eugene McCarthy agreed to be the candidate for the dramatic 'dump Johnson' movement in 1968, the dumping of somebody has become a standard political act. By early 1971 a 'dump Nixon' movement was under way, with Representative Paul McCloskey of California serving as the Republican Party's peace candidate. Although McCloskey's entry was enjoyed by Democrats who desired to see the president embarrassed in any possible way, his candidacy was putting a couple of the Democratic hopefuls at a disadvantage. Some of the antiwar money that would otherwise have gone to, say, Senator George McGovern (D, S.D.) was going into McCloskey's war chest instead.

Dump Agnew?

If rumors could kill a career, Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew was certainly imperiled. The year was filled with scuttlebutt that he was falling out of favor. Agnew was out of the country on a round-the-world trip at the time presidential foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger slipped into China to set up Nixon's visit. Rumors, circulated in some of the best Washington circles, had it that Nixon, remembering Agnew's disapproval even of the visit of U.S. Ping-Pong players to China, had told him nothing of Kissinger's plans and had gotten rid of him during the sensitive negotiating period so that he would not try to interfere.

Those favoring the end-of-Agnew rumor also saw proof of their theory in the rise of John B. Connally, a Democrat, a former governor of Texas, and a political protégé of Lyndon B. Johnson. Connally became secretary of the treasury early in 1971 and promptly became Nixon's spokesman in financial affairs. Connally sold the president's important economic packages—the freeze and the postfreeze 'phase 2'—to the press and the public with an outgoing wit that was uncommon in the introverted Nixon administration. So well did Connally perform that many were giving odds he would replace Agnew on the ticket in 1972.

Crowded Democratic field.

The presidential steeplechase attracted a multitude of Democratic hopefuls (and doubtfuls) from the U.S. Senate—Edmund Muskie (Me.), Hubert H. Humphrey (Minn.), George McGovern, Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), Henry Jackson (Wash.), and for a while Fred Harris (Okla.), Harold Hughes (Iowa), and Birch Bayh (Ind.). There were so many would-be candidates traveling around that at times the Senate suffered from lack of leadership; key votes sometimes found four or five senators away campaigning.

On August 11, New York City's mayor, John V. Lindsay, appeared to join the pack of presidential hopefuls by formally quitting the Republican Party, becoming a Democrat, and announcing his intention to 'take an active part in 1972.' He did not say at the time that he was a candidate, but most people thought he was. Lindsay's change of parties may have been a blow to the pride of the GOP's liberal wing, but it was also a blow to several liberal Democratic contenders, who already were in a crowded field and did not need further competition.

Cynics found their own reasons for the crowded race. Lindsay, they said, had changed parties and was hinting at the White House because he had no hope or desire of being reelected mayor, having suffered strikes from transit workers, schoolteachers, garbage collectors, cabdrivers, drawbridge operators, and even policemen during his regime, not to mention such other headaches as a crushing (and still increasing) welfare burden. Senator Harris, they said, shifted his sights to the presidency because polls showed he could not be reelected to the Senate from Oklahoma in 1972. Congressman Wilbur D. Mills (Ark.), powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who was also taking part in the 1971 I-may-be-a-candidate game, was said to be motivated by a desire to use the exposure to help him in a future attempt to become speaker of the House.

Muskie was managing to stay ahead of his active Democratic rivals (Kennedy was not an active candidate) in the public opinion polls, but he was thought to be lagging behind in terms of grass-roots organization. In an attempt to eliminate that weakness, he ended the year with a four-month, 32-state organizing tour. Money was also becoming a problem for Muskie; by early fall he was believed to already be in debt for a quarter of a million dollars.

The high cost of campaigning was becoming a dread burden for all the candidates. To obtain their nominations in 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon spent a combined total of about $1 million. In contrast, Muskie alone was expected to spend that much before 1971 was over, and the bill for his preconvention effort in 1972 was expected to run as high as $10 million. Expenses of such magnitude were forcing some candidates into ironic positions. For example, the campaign of Senator Harris, who was offering himself as the superpopulist of the Democratic Party, was being aided by New York bankers. In any case, he picked the wrong bankers and went broke. Distaste for personal fund-raising was said to be one of the key reasons Senator Hughes decided not to run.

Only Senator Kennedy enjoyed the luxury of having high ratings in public opinion polls without seeking them. Although he claimed he was not a contender for the nomination, the public refused to accept that as the final word. When his car ran off the bridge at Chappaquiddick, Mass., two years ago, the fall into the shallow waters of the bay killed Mary Jo Kopechne, a passenger in the car. The incident was thought to have also killed Kennedy's chances to ever occupy the White House. With the general public, forgetfulness seemed to have taken over by 1971, but not so with the party pros, who apparently still considered any politician with a scandal like that in his past to be a bad risk and who were favoring him only as a poor third behind Muskie and Humphrey. For his part, Kennedy insisted that his demurrers as a candidate were sincere because 'I feel it in my gut that it's the wrong time, that it's too early.' As a second reason, Kennedy said that he did not want to subject his family to worry about the possibility of his being assassinated. This was the first time since the murder of his brother Robert in 1968 that he had spoken publicly of his own sense of peril.

Wallace's candidacy.

Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama was in the presidential race again. Privately he acknowledged that, once again, he envisioned himself not as a winner or a loser but as a conditioner of the other candidates. His objective was to force both parties to become more conservative on integration in order to win southern votes and the votes of ethnic enclaves in the factory communities of the North. Wallace's ballyhoo techniques were not new, but they were as newsworthy as ever. For example, he ordered several Alabama school districts to ignore federal court orders to integrate via busing. That left him in an enviable position: if the Justice Department shoved him, he could offer himself as a martyr to state's rights; if the department gave in, he could quite rightly claim victory over the federal leviathan. But this strategy failed when the school districts themselves ignored his orders.

Even with Wallace's impressive presence, much of the South appeared to be up for grabs. No longer were Democrats writing it off, as they had done for the most part in the 1968 presidential race. Southern Democratic leaders such as Georgia governor Jimmy Carter and South Carolina senator Ernest Hollings insisted that if the Democrats avoided a candidate known primarily for his antiwar stand, they could win a majority of the southern states as they had traditionally done prior to the civil rights schism within the party. Some of the southern renaissance of the Democratic Party was coming from a decrease in white wrath, and some was coming from an increase in black political power. The U.S. Bureau of the Census released figures this year showing that in 11 southern states, from Louisiana to Virginia, the populations of 102 counties were at least 50 percent black. And the voting rights legislation of the 1960's was helping to make this potential power felt at the polls.

New interest groups.

New political forces were crystallizing in 1971. One was the women's liberation movement, which was present and accounted for but which did not yet seem to be cohesive enough to have a strong impact at the national level.

The Congressional Black Caucus within the U.S. House of Representatives got an increasing number of headlines but achieved few results. After a year-long effort (which included a boycott of the State of the Union message), the caucus members succeeded in getting a meeting with the president in March, but he subsequently rejected virtually all of the more than 60 recommendations they made at that meeting. The caucus consisted of 12 voting congressmen and one nonvoting delegate from the District of Columbia, the 13 people ranging from relatively militant young politicians, such as William L. Clay (D, Mo.) and Ron Dellums (D, Calif.), to more easygoing congressional veterans, such as Gus Hawkins (D, Calif.). But even if the group had been unified by more than color, which it was not, the influence of its dozen votes—most of them from members with little seniority—was proving to be no more measurable than that of any other 12 votes. The caucus served mainly as a symbol of whatever potential lies ahead for blacks, who now hold only 1,860 of the 522,000 elective jobs in the United States (a small number, but still 22 percent higher than in 1970). The caucus members and Senator Edward Brooke (R, Mass.) were the most obvious rallying points for those blacks who felt, with Congressman Clay, that 'in this country, if you have no political power, you have nothing.' Perhaps to dramatize that point, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (D, N.Y.), the most combative black member of the House, announced that she would enter several presidential primaries.

To most national politicians, much more interesting than liberation-minded women or increasingly militant blacks were the newly enfranchised young people. The new era opened at 8:05 P.M. on June 30, when the Ohio House of Representatives voted 81-9 in favor of the Twenty-sixth Amendment, which lowered the minimum voting age from 21 to 18 for all elections in the United States. Never before had 38 state legislatures shown such ratification speed; it took only three months and seven days for the amendment to win the approval of the required three-fourths of the states. There are about 11 million potential voters in the newly enfranchised age group—quite enough to swing a national election. So out went the pollsters and out went the newspaper and magazine reporters to see if they could detect an ideological trend. First reports were that the young voters would be as diversified as their elders had always been, but as registration stepped up, it looked like bad news for the Republicans. Even in such normally conservative strongholds as Orange County, Calif., recognized by some as the John Birch capital of the west coast, registration among the young was running two-to-one Democratic.

In his State of the Union message opening the political year, President Nixon had said, 'Most Americans are simply fed up with government at all levels.' As the year closed, there were some signs that these disgruntled Americans might be ready to express themselves at the polls.

Congress

The 92nd Congress convened at a pivotal point in legislative history. The House Democrats, still strongly in the majority, had the relatively rare opportunity to choose a new speaker and, with that choice, a chance to change Congress' much-criticized system of managing its affairs and charting legislation. With the retirement of long-time speaker John W. McCormack (D, Mass.) at the end of the 91st Congress, the way was left open to name a younger leader and to end the traditional method of naming to committee chairmanships only those members who had managed to live longest and to continually win reelection to safe seats.

There was little question as to who the next speaker would be. Carl Albert (D, Okla.), who had served as majority leader under McCormack, was chosen routinely, with only token opposition from a young black congressman, John Conyers, Jr. (D, Mich.). The vote was 220-20. But attention focused on who would succeed Albert as majority leader. Here there was a spirited contest.

Hale Boggs (D, La.) was the front-runner, having served as majority whip, or number three man in the House Democratic leadership, in the last Congress. But Morris K. Udall (D, Ariz.) mounted a strong challenge as the favorite of the liberals. There were two other candidates, James G. O'Hara (D, Mich.) and Wayne L. Hayes (D, Ohio), until the end of the first ballot, in which Boggs led.

By the second ballot, however, Hayes and O'Hara had dropped out and Boggs won handily, 150-88, an outcome that left the liberals with little hope of changing the old order in Congress. Udall had campaigned on a platform of reform. Boggs had made no such promises; although he had a record of liberal votes on many issues, Boggs was regarded as the candidate of the traditionalists.

Nevertheless, when the House Democratic caucus met on the next day, January 20, its members adopted some moderate changes in the old system: seniority would no longer be the only standard for choosing committee leaders, and the caucus would be given the opportunity of voting, under some circumstances, on the candidates. Under the new system the Committee on Committees, composed of the Democratic members of the Ways and Means Committee, would nominate chairmen and members of the various committees. If there should be a challenge to a nomination from ten or more members of the caucus, the issue could be debated and voted on.

In practice, the new system had little effect on the organization of the House. In the end, seniority continued to reign, but its strong hold on the body had been weakened. One other change had a more substantial effect. The caucus decided that no member could hold the chairmanship of more than one important subcommittee, a move that opened paths to leadership for more congressmen.

Meanwhile, in the Senate a challenge was developing to the reelection of Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D, Mass.) as the majority whip. The outcome, it became clear later, hung on the fate of Senator Richard B. Russell (D, Ga.), who lay near death in Walter Reed Army Hospital.

The challenge came from Robert C. Byrd (D, W.Va.), who had been conducting a quiet campaign to unseat Kennedy from his Senate post. Kennedy appeared relaxed and nonchalant. As election time approached, Byrd had 28 commitments from fellow Democratic senators to support him in the caucus, just enough to win, but one of those commitments was a proxy from Russell. When the time came to vote, a Byrd ally telephoned Walter Reed Hospital and learned that Russell was still alive. He relayed the word to Byrd, and Byrd signaled his fellow West Virginian, Jennings Randolph (D), to put his name in nomination. The result was a surprisingly large upset, with Byrd winning, 31-24. Russell died less than five hours later.

The effect of the outcome was to place in line of succession behind Mike Mansfield (D, Mont.) the majority leader, a man whose strongest asset appeared to be a capacity for attention to details of Senate legislative operations — and to favors for his fellow senators.

Only two days after the House Democrats voted their moderate reforms in congressional machinery, both houses of Congress assembled to hear the president's State of the Union address and to be called on to enact one of the most ambitious programs ever to be presented to Congress by a president.

President Richard M. Nixon named five legislative goals. He called for an overhaul of the welfare system, a new plan to share federal revenues with the financially distressed states and cities, national health insurance, measures to protect the environment, and a reorganization of government that, if enacted, would mean the reorganization of Congress itself.

But, ironically, a measure that the president had not requested and did not want—extension of his authority to impose wage-and-price controls—was one that he seized on later in August while virtually scrapping major parts of his own economic 'game plan.' It was clear, as the president called for postponement of effective dates for revenue sharing and welfare reform, that he had sounded the death knell for both plans so far as the first session of the 92nd Congress was concerned, even though by the time he had acted the House had already passed welfare reform in a package that was acceptable to the White House. Senate opponents, however, needed no further excuse for delay.

18-year-old vote.

Noncontroversial, however, was the most historic act of this session of the 92nd Congress: the resolution calling for an amendment to the Constitution to give the vote to 18-year-olds in all state and federal elections.

The measure was needed to clear up confusion left over from the 1970 extension of the Voting Rights Act, which, it had seemed, extended the vote generally to 18-year-olds. But a U.S. Supreme Court decision had held that the act was effective for federal elections only, and not valid for selection of state or local officials. The result could have been chaos at the polls when the next election came around. Finally, on March 23, the House cleared the resolution for the president's signature. It became the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution on June 30, when Ohio became the 38th state to ratify it.

SST funding defeated.

One of the measures that the president most wanted but was not destined to get was funding for development of a supersonic transport (SST). This, like the constitutional amendment, was business left over from previous sessions, where early stages of SST development had been approved by comfortable margins.

On the side of construction of the SST were aligned the power of the White House, organized labor, and congressmen from the many states where development of the plane would affect business and employment.

On the other side were arrayed a growing number of congressmen who feared that future waves of supersonic transports flying through the upper atmosphere would seriously damage the environment. Despite their efforts, the aid bill passed the House and went to the Senate.

Senator William Proxmire (D, Wis.) led the opposition to the SST. Senator Warren G. Magnuson (D) and Senator Henry M. Jackson (D), both from Washington, the home of Boeing, the main SST contractor, were the primary stalwarts in the plane's support. Finally, on a roll-call vote, the issue was decided and the opponents of the plane won by the surprising margin of 54-46. In the end, the key to the outcome lay not with new senators, as had been expected, but with five former supporters who switched. They included the chairman of the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee, Clinton P. Anderson (D, N.M.), who had voted for the SST in December 1970 but had changed his vote in the March 24 roll-call.

In late July Congress agreed to appropriate $58.5 million to reimburse airlines for their contribution to the SST.

Public-service jobs.

Shortly after rejecting the SST funding, for which the president had fought so hard, the Senate acted again, this time to give him a measure that he was resisting. As the word was being passed that President Nixon was likely to veto it, the Senate approved by a 62-10 roll-call vote a bill authorizing up to $1.75 billion to provide public-service jobs for the unemployed.

With unemployment a persistent problem in the United States and the president plagued both by this problem and by fears of continued inflation (which he said the emergency unemployment measure would fuel), the issue of public-service jobs appeared to raise the prospect of a critical confrontation between the president and Congress. Finally, the House added more than $2 billion to the Senate measure, but a compromise sent the president a bill providing for $2.25 billion to create public-service jobs.

By the time the bill reached the president's desk he had already vetoed a $5.6 billion measure to provide jobs in public works, and last December he had vetoed a bill similar to the measure providing for public-service jobs. But by July 12 the president had grown at least as concerned about unemployment as he was about inflation, and on that day, in his western White House at San Clemente, Calif., he signed the first general public-employment legislation since the 1930's.

The bill provided money for states and localities to put people to work in such fields as the environment, health care, education, public safety, transportation, recreation, and housing. The main part of the bill authorized $750 million for fiscal 1972 and $1 billion the next fiscal year so long as the unemployment rate remained above 4.5 percent. It authorized $250 million more each year for areas with unemployment running above 6 percent of the labor force in three consecutive months.

Antiwar battle renewed.

In the Senate, as in previous years, much of the action of the first session of the 92nd Congress seemed to be merely marking time while antiwar senators prepared to come to grips with the president over continuation of the Vietnam war. Attention focused on the Hatfield-McGovern amendment to a bill extending the military draft for two more years.

Senator George S. McGovern (D, S.D.) and Senator Mark O. Hatfield (R, Ore.) proposed as an amendment to the draft bill that 'no funds authorized or appropriated under this or any other law may be expended after December 31, 1971, to support the deployment of United States Armed Forces in or the conduct of United States military operations in or over Indochina.'

The crucial day was June 16. The Senate first took up and quickly disposed of a substitute amendment, a compromise, offered by freshman senator Lawton Chiles (D, Fla.). The Chiles proposal would have moved the cutoff date for continued funding of the Vietnam war back to June 1, 1972, provided that all American prisoners of war had been released by April 1, 1972.

Although both McGovern and Hatfield supported the measure offered as a substitute for their own, it was easily defeated and the stage was set for the critical vote. By a 42-55 roll-call vote, the Senate supported the position of the president.

The issue, however, was not yet settled. Waiting in the wings with still another antiwar proposal was Senator Mansfield. The Mansfield plan, also an amendment to the draft bill, would declare it to be U.S. policy to withdraw troops from Indochina within nine months. The new strength of the antiwar forces in the Senate was revealed as this amendment was passed and was made part of the draft bill, which the Senate approved June 24 by 72-16.

Its passage, however, created a deadlock with the House, which refused to accept the Mansfield amendment and passed instead its own version of a draft extension. Creating an awkward situation for the president as commander-in-chief, the deadlock persisted until long after authority for inducting draftees into the armed forces had expired.

For the first time in decades the nation was without the draft. However, after being stalled in conference for some time, the Mansfield amendment was diluted and the draft bill was finally passed. In acting on the measure, the Senate had the unusual experience of seeing southern senators voting for cloture to shut off debate and force a vote.

On November 17, President Nixon signed a $21.4 billion military procurement bill which contained an amendment declaring it to be 'the policy of the United States' to cease all military operations in Indochina as soon as practicable and to withdraw all forces by a set date, 'subject to the release of all American prisoners of war.' The president announced that he intended to ignore the amendment, sponsored originally by Senator Mansfield and modified by a Senate-House conference committee. Congressional doves expressed shock that the president would ignore a part of the law, and it was expected that antiwar senators would try to amend the defense appropriations bill to allow funds to be used in Vietnam only for the withdrawal of American forces.

Lockheed guarantee.

Nixon administration plans continued throughout the year to face cliff-hanging decisions in Congress. Just before its August recess, Congress took up a measure that harked back to the SST debate. This was a measure to guarantee private lending to help Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, a major defense contractor.

The problems of Lockheed stemmed originally from a contract to build a giant transport, known as the C-5A, for the Defense Department. As development went on, it became clear that cost overruns would put the cost of the big C-5A far above its original price. (The original ceiling price for 115 C-5A's was $2.3 billion; by the beginning of this year the estimated cost had soared to $3.7 billion for only 81 planes.) When Lockheed had to absorb a $427 million cost overrun, the company was left with a tremendous deficit, and the giant aircraft corporation faced the threat of bankruptcy. To weather its crisis, it needed $250 million in financing, but its bank creditors refused to advance additional funds unless the government guaranteed the loans.

Proxmire and many of the same contingent who had fought the SST girded for battle. But what appeared at first to be a disaster finally proved the stroke of fate that saved Lockheed. In Great Britain, Rolls Royce, Ltd., went into bankruptcy. Rolls Royce had been building the engines for a new plane, the L-1011 TriStar airbus, on which Lockheed was pinning its hopes for survival.

The British government said it would give Rolls Royce enough support to build the engines, but only if the U.S. government would guarantee the financing that Lockheed needed to go ahead with its projects. This was the ammunition that Lockheed's supporters needed in Congress. Without this aid, they were able to argue, a major defense contractor, with vital defense projects, would go down the drain. Even so, after squeaking by the House, the rescue measure for Lockheed cleared the Senate by only one vote.

Foreign aid battle.

A major confrontation between the administration and the Senate developed when a $3.5 billion foreign aid authorization bill was voted down, 41-27, on October 29. Senators voted against the measure for many reasons. Some were opposed to all foreign aid; others simply wanted the program overhauled. The Nixon administration continued to work for passage of the original bill, but the Senate Foreign Relations committee soon approved two separate bills (economic and military aid) totaling $2.6 billion and intended to carry foreign aid only to the end of the current fiscal year. The House then revived the $3.4 billion measure it had passed in August and sent it to a conference committee to be reconciled with the Senate bill. Congress agreed to continue spending authority to December 8, while a new bill was being worked out.

Tax relief and campaign spending.

The House passed a bill to reduce taxes, especially for low-income families. The Senate took up the bill after the House, and by November 21 had still not completed action. Various amendments to reduce taxes were added, including one to speed up an increase in the low-income allowance and one to increase the amount of child-care expenses deductible as a business expense. The most controversial action in the Senate concerned a Democratic effort to finance national political campaigns by allowing each taxpayer to designate one dollar of his taxes for this purpose. On November 19 an administration spokesman let it be known that the president might veto the tax bill if it contained the campaign spending provision.

Foreign Relations

More than in previous years, United States foreign relations in 1971 witnessed the erosion of assumptions and goals which had guided the nation's cold war policies since mid-century. The four-power agreement on Berlin, signed in September; the movement toward U.S. recognition of the People's Republic of China; the burgeoning disagreements over monetary and trade policy among the Western allies; and the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Japanese rivalries in the Far East were all part of a breakup of cold war alignments in Europe and Asia which presaged a free-swinging diplomacy of shifting alliances and impromptu coalitions during the 1970's.

Europe.

U.S.-Soviet relations.

Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, as reflected largely in the continuing strategic arms limitation talks (SALT), were scarcely promising as the new year opened. The conversations at Helsinki during November and December 1970 had gone badly. The Soviets repeatedly offered proposals which had no chance of acceptance. Neither power intended to weaken its security by curtailing its nuclear defenses.

The fourth round of talks opened in Vienna during March in an atmosphere of gloom, with each delegation merely reiterating its established positions. Washington officials argued against any agreement that would cripple the Safeguard ABM program. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird pointed to the momentum in Soviet missile development. Senator Henry M. Jackson (D, Wash.) warned in April that the strategic balance was 'tilting in favor of Moscow.' Ignoring such preachments, President Richard M. Nixon informed the nation on May 20 that the United States and the Soviet Union had agreed to concentrate in 1971 on curbing antiballistic missiles and on 'certain measures with respect to the limitations of offensive strategic weapons [as] a major step in breaking the stalemate on nuclear arms talks.' The president admitted that intensive negotiations would be required to translate the joint statement into concrete agreement.

On October 12 the president announced that he would visit Moscow in May 1972 to discuss 'all major issues,' principally arms control, the Middle East, and East-West relations. The Moscow trip was to be 'independent' of the trip to Peking, which would take place before it.

Changing Europe.

Perhaps more fundamental than East-West relations was the changing American relationship with Western Europe itself. Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, which inaugurated the most far-reaching East-West dialogue since the beginning of the cold war, continued this year to challenge all established cold war relationships across the face of Europe.

Behind Brandt's policy lay his desire to increase West Germany's trade with the Soviet bloc. In large measure the Western fear of a powerful West Germany loosening its economic ties with the West explained the French reversal of Charles de Gaulle's opposition to British entry into the European Economic Community. Indeed, on June 23 the EEC reached an agreement that paved the way for entry of Britain, Denmark, Norway, and Ireland. British prime minister Edward Heath gave himself until October to prepare Parliament for the vote that committed Great Britain to entry. British entry would reinforce an old American desire that Western Europe unite politically, but the creation of a ten-member EEC presaged further trouble for the American balance of payments.

Berlin.

After a year and a half of negotiations, a final Berlin agreement was signed on September 3. In general the agreement favored the West. The Soviets accepted responsibility for maintaining Western access into West Berlin. They agreed also to the West German governmental presence in Berlin, including some 23,000 civil servants. West German governmental groups and political parties would be permitted to meet in Berlin. West Berliners would now travel with West German passports rather than Berlin identity cards. Finally, the agreement would permit the people of West Berlin to increase their contacts with East Berliners. For these concessions the West extended Moscow the right to establish a consulate in West Berlin, limited to a staff of 20 and accredited to the other Western powers rather than to the Bonn government. The Berlin agreement assigned to East and West German authorities the responsibility to formulate detailed arrangements on matters of access to Berlin and passage through the Berlin wall. By traditional Western standards the formula was scarcely ideal, for it confirmed the Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe and granted a clear legitimacy to the East German regime. And the Western presence in Berlin was still dependent on the goodwill of Soviet and East German officials.

Force levels in Europe.

Brandt had no intention of weakening the Western alliance as the price of détente. Bonn no less than Western Europe generally opposed any abrupt reduction of American troop levels in Europe.

Moscow met the issue squarely in May by calling for negotiations on mutual and balanced force reduction (MBFR) in Central Europe. The Soviet proposal became the dominant issue before the spring meeting of the NATO foreign ministers at Lisbon in June. The allies accepted the Soviet proposal in principle but could not agree on matters of procedure. To Western and Soviet critics alike the pace toward troop reductions seemed too leisurely. But Britain and France shared West Germany's distress at the prospect of U.S. troop withdrawals from the continent.

If MBFR gained limited support in Lisbon, it managed to destroy Senator Mike Mansfield's (D, Mont.) revived effort of May to amend the military draft bill to reduce American forces in Europe from more than 300,000 to half of that by the end of the year. Supporters of the measure argued that U.S. troops in Europe mattered less than the nation's commitment to Europe's defense. President Nixon met the challenge head on, saying that it would be 'an error of historic dimensions' for any NATO power to reduce forces unilaterally. The president produced a bipartisan list of 24 former top officials, including former president Lyndon B. Johnson and former secretary of state Dean Acheson, who supported his stand. But what undermined Mansfield's position completely was the Soviet MBFR proposal. To withdraw unilaterally, said Secretary of State William P. Rogers, would terminate any possibility of discussions. The close vote on the Mansfield measure served as a warning that the opposition to maintenance of current U.S. troop levels in Europe was substantial. The NATO ministers at Lisbon preferred to ignore the warning.

The Far East.

The Nixon plan.

Another year of disenchantment with the United States involvement in Vietnam in no way altered the president's program. He still hoped to reduce United States forces to the level which he believed acceptable to the American people while strengthening the South Vietnamese army to the point where, supported by United States air power, it could control the political future of Saigon. If successful, such a program would compel Hanoi to negotiate a settlement or prolong a useless war. If the president feared the consequences of a Communist gain, he also understood the domestic political necessity for the war's termination.

For the Nixon administration the exit from Vietnam was through air power. Bombing alone could bridge the gap between the president's determination to withdraw American troops, a policy spurred by declining troop morale, and his determination to keep intact the non-Communist governments of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The president warned Hanoi in December 1970 that any destruction of United States reconnaissance planes over North Vietnam would bring retaliation against missile sites and the military complexes around them. Any decision of Hanoi to increase the level of fighting in the South would bring a similar response. Said the president in February, 'I am not going to place any limitation upon the use of air power ....' In effect Washington warned Hanoi that any movement of North Vietnamese forces into South Vietnam would bring a full-scale American bombing of North Vietnamese targets. However, it was not clear that the threat of devastation from the air would encourage Hanoi to make peace on Saigon's terms. Bombing could destroy farms and homes; it could create refugees by the thousands; but it could not bring peace to Vietnam. The war would be won on the ground or not at all.

The invasion of Laos.

One possible course of action available to South Vietnam was a ground thrust into Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. By early February newsmen reported a heavy buildup of South Vietnamese forces along the Laotian border. As South Vietnamese forces prepared for a massive invasion, Saigon imposed a total blackout of news on the operation. Secretary Rogers admitted before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Saigon government might attempt to take all North Vietnamese sanctuaries, which would include those in Laos, and that such further efforts would have the full support of U.S. air power. Early in February, South Vietnamese forces quietly pushed into Laos, facing little opposition. For Washington it seemed essential that North Vietnam receive a crushing blow before a full American withdrawal. Quite predictably, President Nixon lauded the invasion as a brilliant strategic move—the unwinnable war would now be won after all. Indeed, the president declared his willingness to have the success of Vietnamization measured by the Laotian operation. By mid-February, South Vietnamese forces were destroying North Vietnamese supplies along segments of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Backed by massive U.S. air strikes, South Vietnamese forces entered Tchepone, an important objective, on March 6. The occupation of this bombed-out town was the greatest and the last of the South Vietnamese triumphs. Thereafter, in some of the heaviest fighting of the war, the South Vietnamese began to retreat, giving up one base after another. After mid-March the United States attempted to cover the South Vietnamese retreat from Laos by launching heavy air raids over North Vietnam. When the 45-day campaign ended in late March, the South Vietnamese had suffered heavy casualties.

Even as the South Vietnamese forces withdrew from Laos in the face of fierce Communist counterattack and heavy casualties, Pentagon officials portrayed the operation as a major success. The invasion, by American estimates, had reduced the movement of North Vietnamese supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to some 20 percent of the total for the previous dry season. Saigon insisted that the South Vietnamese forces had withdrawn according to schedule, and President Nguyen Van Thieu said that the effort was 'the biggest victory ever' for South Vietnam. No less than in the Cambodian invasion of 1970, the Laotian venture, by official estimate, gained valuable time for successful Vietnamization and thereby ensured the continued withdrawal of American forces. Still, the rapid reestablishment of Communist control of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, added to the South Vietnamese disasters in Laos, cast further doubts on the triumphs of Vietnamization.

Continued Vietnamization.

Capitalizing on the alleged South Vietnamese success in Laos, President Nixon informed the nation on April 7 that he would withdraw another 100,000 men from Vietnam, bringing the total remaining to 184,000 by December 1. But he refused to announce a date for the final withdrawal of American forces. The goal in Vietnam was still a victory that would give the South Vietnamese 'a reasonable chance to survive as a free people.' It was still a choice, said the president, between world responsibility and abdication; between defeat, despair, and recrimination and pride, confidence, and character. To challenge the notion that the United States remained the 'greatest single hope of peace' would plunge the American people 'from the anguish of war into a nightmare of recrimination.' By such arguments the president hoped to hang on until the Saigon regime could defend itself.

The South Vietnamese election.

Why the long-heralded presidential election in South Vietnam, scheduled for October 3, presented a critical test of U.S. efforts in Vietnam was clear even before the year began. For what mattered as much as military success was the political and economic fabric of South Vietnam. Disaster on either front could undermine the entire American attempt to leave behind a stable, democratic country. Republican critics reminded Nixon that the forthcoming election, if won by a neutralist, could pave the way for a quick and graceful American withdrawal. Still, official Washington, determined to avoid a political compromise, made clear its preference for President Nguyen Van Thieu's reelection. Thieu, hoping to win in 1971 with a clear national mandate, faced his most formidable opposition in General Duong Van Minh. Vice-President Nguyen Cao Ky, not considered capable of challenging Thieu's control of the central political organization, loomed as a spoiler who could throw a three-man race to Minh.

During June, Thieu rammed a measure through the South Vietnamese National Assembly which required candidates to gain the endorsements of at least 40 members of the National Assembly or 100 members of the country's municipal or provincial councils. Minh concentrated on the legislature and picked up his 40 required endorsements there, but he condemned the election law as unconstitutional and threatened to withdraw. Ky gathered 102 signatures, but inasmuch as 40 of these appeared on Thieu's petitions, the Thieu-backed Supreme Court declared Ky ineligible.

On August 20, Minh withdrew his candidacy and shortly thereafter produced evidence that Thieu had already planned to rig the election. The Supreme Court now reversed itself in an effort to keep Ky in the race, but the vice-president withdrew with charges that the election would be totally dishonest. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker called on Ky and Minh, asking them to reconsider and thus give the election some guise of legitimacy, but his efforts came too late.

On September 11, Thieu lamented over national television that he faced no competition in the presidential race, but he absolved himself of all responsibility for the withdrawal of the other candidates. Thieu promised, however, that he would regard the October 3 election as a referendum and leave office if he received less than 50 percent of the vote. Antigovernment rioting in Saigon mounted throughout September. Thieu ordered the police to 'shoot to kill' in the interest of maintaining order. Election day was quiet enough. Amid charges of fraud, Thieu claimed 91.5 percent of the votes cast, a figure he later raised to 94 percent. Thieu had monopolized Vietnamese politics, but his future appeared less than bright. Critics declared that U.S. support had carried him through the election; whether that support could keep him in power was less clear.

China.