Nixonland. Part 37

On February 17, after a departure ceremony that earned him a standing ovation from even confirmed political enemies, Marine One ferried the president to Andrews Air Force Base, where he boarded the presidential 727, renamed for the occasion with a subtle reelection message: Spirit of '76. Spirit of '76. He took three days in Guam to acclimate himself to Peking time, then landed in China at 11:30 a.m. local time-9:30 p.m. eastern standard time, his favorite hour for televised speeches. On the flight to Peking, he called in Haldeman to go over the ch.o.r.eography for his egress from the plane one last time-"the key picture of the whole trip." A general's sensitivity to commanding time and s.p.a.ce, a theater director's obsession with the pageantry: he wouldn't allow anything but perfection for the most important entrance in his life. Another detail of timing: he chose February 17 to drop the largest one-day tonnage on South Vietnam since June of 1968, to send a message that whatever his gestures toward peace, he was still a man to be feared. He took three days in Guam to acclimate himself to Peking time, then landed in China at 11:30 a.m. local time-9:30 p.m. eastern standard time, his favorite hour for televised speeches. On the flight to Peking, he called in Haldeman to go over the ch.o.r.eography for his egress from the plane one last time-"the key picture of the whole trip." A general's sensitivity to commanding time and s.p.a.ce, a theater director's obsession with the pageantry: he wouldn't allow anything but perfection for the most important entrance in his life. Another detail of timing: he chose February 17 to drop the largest one-day tonnage on South Vietnam since June of 1968, to send a message that whatever his gestures toward peace, he was still a man to be feared.

The first day, February 21: so different from six short years ago, when his overseas retinue was one retainer carrying his suitcase. The press plane landed first-eighty-seven reporters. That was so they could be in place to capture the scene: the five-hundred-soldier honor guard, in blue and olive green marching into position, and stretching from one end of the horizon to the other (singing the same ballad that inspirited the Red Army during the yearlong 4,960-mile "Long March" of 1934 by which Mao's forces survived to recoup and humiliate America by defeating Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces); the vivid splashes of red from the gigantic propaganda banners (LONG LIVE THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY; LONG LIVE THE GREAT SOCIETY OF ALL THE WORLD'S PEOPLE LONG LIVE THE GREAT SOCIETY OF ALL THE WORLD'S PEOPLE)-pictures to rival a Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic, or a moon shot. Pat's coat was bright red, too. The whole world saw it live in color. It was the coming-of-age for a ten-year-old invention, the Telstar satellite, which let these historic images be broadcast around the globe.

Yesterday's imperialist running dog strode regally down the red-carpeted stairs where Chou En-lai, the Chinese premier, stood waiting in his long blue coat. Nixon boldly thrust his hand forward first-reversing the seventeen-year-old insult when John Foster Dulles had turned his back on Chou in Geneva. Everyone was smiling broadly.

The president didn't even know then whether he'd get to meet the ailing chairman. After lunch, he was informed of the good news: Mao would receive him in his private study. Chinese cameras provided the photography: Chou, the female interpreter Tang Wensheng, Mao, Nixon, Kissinger, relaxing in a semicircle of easy chairs, the chairman's stacks and stacks of books forming the background of the shot, like the living room of some affable old college don (and, cropped out of the picture at Nixon and Kissinger's request, State Department ally Winston Lord).

The pictures evidenced a truth-and not just that State was being cut out of the negotiations for the trip's final joint communique. Chairman Mao, whom Nixon flattered as an intellectual and not a butcher, whose "writings moved a nation and have changed the world," and President Nixon, whom Mao shrewdly gave credit for also having written a "good book," had a nifty rapport. The chairman joshed about "secret agent" Henry Kissinger's reputation with the ladies, discoursed about his preference for dealing with right-wingers; Nixon chimed in his theory about how it took a right-winger to make the kind of peace moves that left-wingers-easier for political opponents to tar as treasonous-could only talk about. Chou graciously cleared up an international mystery: the whereabouts of unreliable left-wingers within their own regime, led by Lin Biao, who had opposed Nixon's visit, and whom the world had not seen or heard from in months. The Chinese leaders clearly now believed themselves among friends. Mao explained that they had died in a plane crash. Chou hinted that it had not been an accident. Nixon winked his solidarity. "The chairman can be sure," he said, "that whatever we discuss, nothing goes beyond this room."

The potentates disappeared into their plenary sessions in the Great Hall of the People; barred entrance, the reporters followed Pat as she bore witness via Telstar to the China where everyone smiled: while slopping the pigs at Evergreen People's Commune, at the 727-acre Summer Palace of the great Chinese emperors, at Peking Children's Hospital, where the patients cheered Pat in her white lab coat, in the kitchen of the Peking Hotel, where one of the 150 chefs transformed a turnip into a chrysanthemum and a green pepper into a praying mantis for her delight. At the Peking Zoo she admired the pandas. At one of the sumptuous banquets she reached for a cylindrical container of cigarettes, admiring the two cuddly bears on the label. "Aren't they cute? I love them," she burbled.

"I'll give you some," Chou En-lai replied.

"Cigarettes?"

"No. Pandas."

And just like that, the National Zoo ended up with two precious and extraordinarily rare Chinese pandas.

The gift foregrounded one of the ways that what could have been a horror to the Silent Majority-appeasing the enemy-was domesticated into its opposite. Pat Nixon was not incidental to the project. The ERA was on the verge of pa.s.sage. Republican politicians who had once lined up to support it without a thought ("Let there be freedom of choice!" Richard Nixon had responded to Dan Rather on January 2 when asked what he thought of the new coinage Ms. Ms.) were now learning that the notion of this simple little const.i.tutional amendment, just twenty-four words-"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of s.e.x"-was not going down smoothly in Middle America. The New York Times New York Times reported from Hope, Indiana: "last summer, a woman described as a 'radical school teacher'...came to speak about women's liberation to members of the all-male Lions club.... 'She told them that people shouldn't be judged by what's between their legs, and ever since, people around here just haven't been too serious about women's lib,'" one self-described "wife, mother, and homemaker, in that order," explained. One firebrand anticommunist organizer since the 1950s had turned her reported from Hope, Indiana: "last summer, a woman described as a 'radical school teacher'...came to speak about women's liberation to members of the all-male Lions club.... 'She told them that people shouldn't be judged by what's between their legs, and ever since, people around here just haven't been too serious about women's lib,'" one self-described "wife, mother, and homemaker, in that order," explained. One firebrand anticommunist organizer since the 1950s had turned her Phyllis Schlafly Report Phyllis Schlafly Report over to fulminating that what the ERA would bring America was more horrifying even than anything the Chinese could have in store for us: "This Amendment will absolutely and positively make women subject to the draft," her subscribers learned. It would license a man to "demand that his wife go to work to help pay for family expenses.... The women's libbers are radicals who are waging a total a.s.sault on the family, on marriage, and on children." Then she described the inaugural issue of Gloria Steinem's new magazine-"The princ.i.p.al purpose of over to fulminating that what the ERA would bring America was more horrifying even than anything the Chinese could have in store for us: "This Amendment will absolutely and positively make women subject to the draft," her subscribers learned. It would license a man to "demand that his wife go to work to help pay for family expenses.... The women's libbers are radicals who are waging a total a.s.sault on the family, on marriage, and on children." Then she described the inaugural issue of Gloria Steinem's new magazine-"The princ.i.p.al purpose of Ms. Ms.'s shrill tirade is to sow seeds of discontent among happy, married women so that all all women can be unhappy in some new sisterhood of frustrated togetherness"-and another new publication called women can be unhappy in some new sisterhood of frustrated togetherness"-and another new publication called Women: Women: "68 pages of such proposals as 'The b.i.t.c.h Manifesto,' which promotes the line that 'b.i.t.c.h is Beautiful.'...Another article promotes an organization called W.I.T.C.H. (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from h.e.l.l), 'an action arm of Women's Liberation.'...Tell your Senators NOW that you want them to vote NO on the Equal Rights Amendment. Tell your television and radio stations that you want equal time to present the case FOR marriage and motherhood." "68 pages of such proposals as 'The b.i.t.c.h Manifesto,' which promotes the line that 'b.i.t.c.h is Beautiful.'...Another article promotes an organization called W.I.T.C.H. (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from h.e.l.l), 'an action arm of Women's Liberation.'...Tell your Senators NOW that you want them to vote NO on the Equal Rights Amendment. Tell your television and radio stations that you want equal time to present the case FOR marriage and motherhood."

Thus the context within which the newspaper Chicago Today Chicago Today editorialized that Pat Nixon's pageant of dutiful wifeliness expressed the true meaning of the historic trip: "Mrs. Nixon's presence in Peking and her unfailingly warm, gracious conduct are accomplis.h.i.+ng something that official discussions, important as they are, cannot do. She is establis.h.i.+ng direct and friendly contact with the Chinese people on a normal human level; the level where children and families and food and service and health are the most important things. As, indeed, they are." editorialized that Pat Nixon's pageant of dutiful wifeliness expressed the true meaning of the historic trip: "Mrs. Nixon's presence in Peking and her unfailingly warm, gracious conduct are accomplis.h.i.+ng something that official discussions, important as they are, cannot do. She is establis.h.i.+ng direct and friendly contact with the Chinese people on a normal human level; the level where children and families and food and service and health are the most important things. As, indeed, they are."

Meanwhile the men did their work. Richard Nixon had prepared for the trip by reading the Anti-Memoirs Anti-Memoirs of the French intellectual and statesman Andre Malraux, who had met with Chou and Mao during the period of the Long March (the message of Malraux's book was one America had studiously ignored: that China was fundamentally isolationist and had no particular inclination to either spur or dissuade Hanoi from war). The Chinese had prepared by watching of the French intellectual and statesman Andre Malraux, who had met with Chou and Mao during the period of the Long March (the message of Malraux's book was one America had studiously ignored: that China was fundamentally isolationist and had no particular inclination to either spur or dissuade Hanoi from war). The Chinese had prepared by watching Patton. Patton. During the opening banquet, which all three networks covered live for four hours, the Red Army band played "America the Beautiful," and the During the opening banquet, which all three networks covered live for four hours, the Red Army band played "America the Beautiful," and the Times Times reviewed the occasion as "a reunion of old friends rather than the first social meeting of the leaders of two nations that have been bitterly hostile for more than two decades." reviewed the occasion as "a reunion of old friends rather than the first social meeting of the leaders of two nations that have been bitterly hostile for more than two decades."

Then came the famous trip to the Great Wall. ("As we look at this wall, what is most important is that we have an open world.") Next, the unveiling of the "Shanghai Communique," which included a joint Sino-American card played as a warning to the Soviet Union ("Neither of the two countries should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony"); and a brilliantly delicate fudging of the Taiwan issue ("The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China").

The public was polled: 84 percent approved. William F. Buckley, invited along to placate conservatives, thought the whole thing felt like the Nuremberg prosecutors embracing the n.a.z.is. But other conservatives figured out ways to absolve the president of anti-anticommunist heresies. Ronald Reagan explained to a Philadelphia housewife with whom he'd been a pen pal since the 1940s, "I think the Red Chinese are a bunch of murdering b.u.ms, but in the big chess game going on, where Russia is still head man on the other side, we need a little elbow room." The next Gallup poll affirmed 83 percent of Republicans still favored Nixon's renomination-far, far better than LBJ was doing in February of 1968. Richard Nixon was euphoric. "This was the week that changed the world," he boomed in his toast on the final day, at the Shanghai Exhibition Hall.

The political situation back home was never far from Nixon's thoughts. The third evening, as he sat in the stands at a sports exhibition, while Bob Haldeman was admiring the advance work-one section for soldiers in green uniforms, another for soldiers in blue uniforms, one for athletes in red sweat suits, another for athletes in blue sweats, all cheering on cue for the television cameras-Chou En-lai was quietly presented a folderful of papers. He leafed through them, looked up, nodded. Henry Kissinger asked an interpreter what had just transpired. Kissinger was told that Chou had just approved the layout of the next day's People's Daily. People's Daily. Nixon replied, "I'd like to rearrange a front page now and then." And at breakfast the day before his return, Haldeman briefed Nixon on a bit of news from back home that gave him yet more reason for joy. Nixon replied, "I'd like to rearrange a front page now and then." And at breakfast the day before his return, Haldeman briefed Nixon on a bit of news from back home that gave him yet more reason for joy.

Reporters had begun circling Muskie like buzzards, just as they had Romney in 1967: everyone wanted to be the first guy to claim the scalp of a front-runner. Agnew, not unconvincingly, called him "Malleable Ed": he had been "a princ.i.p.al defender of the Johnson administration war policies" and now was "an exponent of the 'out now at any cost' position." And on Muskie's stature-building trip to the Middle East, Russia, and Europe, the press discovered a Romney-like weakness: he responded irritably when pressed for details on his Vietnam s.h.i.+fts. "His caution and prudence control a very quick temper," Jules Witcover wrote his editors back home. "I think we'll see more and more of the man's caution together with increasing pressure from the press for more directness on issues and positions. If it reaches the point where it triggers his short fuse, it could be his Achilles heel." R. W. Apple of the New York Times New York Times. .h.i.t on another weakness in a piece headlined "Muskie Campaign Still Lacks Spark": "In the long-run, many politicians across the country believe that because of the lack of deep-rooted enthusiasm for Muskie's candidacy...if he starts slipping, he will slip rapidly." hit on another weakness in a piece headlined "Muskie Campaign Still Lacks Spark": "In the long-run, many politicians across the country believe that because of the lack of deep-rooted enthusiasm for Muskie's candidacy...if he starts slipping, he will slip rapidly."

The polling in New Hamps.h.i.+re was projecting two-thirds of the vote for Muskie. But cracks in his composure started showing in the face of questions like "Senator, if you get only sixty percent of the vote in New Hamps.h.i.+re, will you consider that a defeat?" He lost more composure in the face of sabotage: false scheduling information kept getting out to the public. Then William Loeb of the Manchester Union Leader, Manchester Union Leader, always eager to destroy a liberal, reproduced on his February 24 front page a handwritten, semiliterate letter from someone named Paul Morrison, who said he had met Muskie in Florida and asked how he could understand the problems of black people given the few minorities in Maine. A Muskie aide, the letter related, responded that they always eager to destroy a liberal, reproduced on his February 24 front page a handwritten, semiliterate letter from someone named Paul Morrison, who said he had met Muskie in Florida and asked how he could understand the problems of black people given the few minorities in Maine. A Muskie aide, the letter related, responded that they did did have minorities in Maine: "Not blacks, but we have Canucks"-at which Muskie was reported to have laughed appreciatively. have minorities in Maine: "Not blacks, but we have Canucks"-at which Muskie was reported to have laughed appreciatively.

Canucks, also prevalent in New Hamps.h.i.+re, were French Canadians. Muskie thought of them, evidently, as New England's n.i.g.g.e.rs.

The next day a lacerating front-page editorial in the Union Leader Union Leader relayed a relayed a Newsweek Newsweek gossip item that feisty Jane Muskie had challenged the press bus to a round of dirty jokes, and preferred not one but two c.o.c.ktails before dinner. gossip item that feisty Jane Muskie had challenged the press bus to a round of dirty jokes, and preferred not one but two c.o.c.ktails before dinner.

Muskie had had enough. He arranged for a flatbed truck to serve as his stage for a speech in front of the Union Leader Union Leader's redbrick headquarters. At breakfast in their guesthouse in China, Haldeman related to the president what happened next. Snow was streaming down and Muskie was bundled in an overcoat as he picked up a handheld microphone, cameras rolling, determined to prove who was tough: "By attacking me, and by attacking my wife, he's proven himself a gutless coward. It's fortunate for him that he's not on this platform beside me..."

He paused, looked down; he seemed choked up. Perhaps it was a snowflake lodged in his eye, but Dan Rather on CBS, for one, reported he "began to weep." David Broder put it in his lead that he said it with "[t]ears streaming down his cheeks." It became a major news story.

Muskie, forced back on his heels, reluctantly agreed to join a full-dress television debate between all the Democratic candidates (even the "rat" candidate, Edward T. Coll). Richard Nixon showed more than a casual interest in the news. It was evidence his campaign plan to get the Democrats to scratching each other's eyeb.a.l.l.s out was bearing fruit.

A White House staffer, not "Paul Morrison," had written the "Canuck" letter. A man on the White House payroll had hired and supervised the black picketers who greeted Muskie at his Florida hotel. His name was Donald Segretti, and he had also secured a spy to get hired as a Muskie campaign driver-which was how Evans and Novak got the secret memo on Muskie's California property-tax hearings. The director of the Youth for Nixon unit of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, Kenneth Rietz, received stolen Muskie doc.u.ments on Was.h.i.+ngton street corners from a contact known as "Fat Jack." Jeb Magruder, the deputy director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, ran another, entirely separate dirty tricks team. Thus all the fake leaflets, stink bombs, stickers, and press releases claiming unlawful use of government typewriters that were driving the Democratic campaigns insane.

Richard Nixon wasn't exactly their architect. He was more their inspiration and goad. Segretti had been recruited by the man in closest physical proximity to the president, Dwight L. Chapin-his personal aide, or "body man." A former junior executive at Haldeman's old advertising firm, he got together with another Haldeman protege, Gordon Strachan, to effectuate the demands Nixon was always grunting to sabotage Democrats. ("Now, get a ma.s.sive mailing in Florida that's he's against J. Edgar Hoover, a ma.s.sive mailing that he's for busing"; "Put this down: I would say, a postcard mailing to all Democrats in New Hamps.h.i.+re...Write in Ted Kennedy.") They called such false-flag black operations "ratf.u.c.ks"-the term of art of right-wing student politics at USC, of which both Chapin and Strachan were alumni-and they hit on Don Segretti, whose campaign for student senate they had worked on, as the man for the job. Chapin arranged for Segretti to meet with Herbert Kalmbach, who finalized a $16,000 salary for him from one of his slush funds.

Segretti started off on the wrong foot. A former army lawyer, he began reaching out to fellow attorneys he'd known in the Judge Advocate General's Corps to staff his team. He wanted lawyers, he would tell them, because he didn't want to exactly exactly break the law. He'd asked his friend Captain Thomas Wallace, a military judge from Mississippi, if he wanted to infiltrate the George Wallace campaign. Captain Wallace, alas, wasn't interested-and neither were any of the other JAG veterans. break the law. He'd asked his friend Captain Thomas Wallace, a military judge from Mississippi, if he wanted to infiltrate the George Wallace campaign. Captain Wallace, alas, wasn't interested-and neither were any of the other JAG veterans.

Segretti turned to more willing recruits: fellow veterans of conservative campus politics. Political dirty tricks were the bread and meat of the young conservative movement that organized in the early sixties around National Review National Review and the Goldwater for President crusade. Young Americans for Freedom, Tom Charles Huston's old outfit, for instance, set up camp in a hotel for the 1961 conference of the National Student a.s.sociation with a mimeograph machine, walkie-talkies, and a bevy of secret operatives who pretended to be strangers but identified themselves to one another by wearing suspenders-all funded with the help of Bill Rusher, and the Goldwater for President crusade. Young Americans for Freedom, Tom Charles Huston's old outfit, for instance, set up camp in a hotel for the 1961 conference of the National Student a.s.sociation with a mimeograph machine, walkie-talkies, and a bevy of secret operatives who pretended to be strangers but identified themselves to one another by wearing suspenders-all funded with the help of Bill Rusher, National Review National Review's publisher and another former army intelligence officer-and took over the resolutions committee via a phony "middle-of-the-road caucus." The Young Republican National Federation was shot through with so much chicanery that its 1963 convention turned into a chair-throwing brawl. College Republicans put on elections more rank than banana republics: here was where young operatives learned the black art of setting up "rotten boroughs"-fake chapters-in order to control the national conventions.

Then they brought their skills to the grown-ups' game. One especially nasty operator was loaned by the College Republicans to the campaign to defeat the Democratic candidate for state treasurer in Illinois in 1970, Al Dixon. Dixon was having a formal reception to open his Chicago headquarters. This kid a.s.sumed an alias, volunteered for the campaign, stole the candidate's stationery, and distributed a thousand fake invitations-they promised "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing"-at communes, rock concerts, and street corners where Chicago's drunken hoboes congregated. The kid's name was Karl Rove. The RNC soon hired him at $9,200 a year to give seminars on his techniques.

Segretti, Chapin, or Strachan would get a name of some potential recruit. Segretti would call under his alias, Donald Simmons. They would meet at an airport or motel lounge. In Tampa, Segretti hooked up with the former chairman of the Young Republican Club of Hillsborough County, Robert Benz. Segretti explained they were looking for veteran tricksters to "screw up" the Democratic campaigns in the Florida primary for fun and profit. Benz in turn recruited a girl named Peg Griffin. She infiltrated the Muskie office. Another got herself ensconced inside the Scoop Jackson campaign. The memos they stole made their way to the White House.

Jeb Magruder's team's chief operative, Herbert Porter, was the White House scheduling director. One of Porter's masterpieces was hiring a young aide, Roger Stone, to contribute $200 to Pete McCloskey in the name of the militant h.o.m.os.e.xual group the Gay Liberation Front and forward the receipt to William Loeb (though Stone, ashamed of any imprecations against his masculinity, chickened out and made the contribution from the Young Socialist Alliance instead).

Muskie ducked in on Oregon and California, scene of early June primaries. Ratf.u.c.kers slipped his pilot a bogus schedule; he landed in the wrong city; Muskie's entire day was shot. A letter over the forged signature of a McCarthy aide, meanwhile, urged his backers to fall in behind Hubert Humphrey.

The president took in news of these exploits enthusiastically, ravening for more: "Haldeman's fellows have certainly got a source in the Muskie office," he would gloat. "I'm sending you down a copy of a memo they stole." Here was a major component of his grand strategy for 1972-beyond, that is, acting presidential at overseas summits: divide the opposition. All Republicans still bore scars from 1964. They had seen how their candidate's general election campaign was sunk by the infighting of the rival Republican factions from the primary season. That same eyeball-scratching disarray was what they had to engineer in the Democrats. The survival of civilization depended on it.

The most important caper sprang from the president: getting George Wallace to run as a Democrat.

"I don't want him in," he had told Mitch.e.l.l and Haldeman in February of 1971. "We should work this out." What he didn't want was Wallace in the general general election. If Nixon had won all the antiliberal votes that went to Wallace in 1968, he would have won a punis.h.i.+ng landslide instead of a squeaker. He wanted Wallace in the election. If Nixon had won all the antiliberal votes that went to Wallace in 1968, he would have won a punis.h.i.+ng landslide instead of a squeaker. He wanted Wallace in the primaries primaries-to divide the Democrats.

It's hard to reconstruct exactly the steps that led George Wallace to his January announcement in Tallaha.s.see that he was running for the Democratic nomination. He had been on a flight with several other Southern governors and the president from Key Biscayne to Alabama in the summer of 1971; Wallace and Richard Nixon looked suspiciously buddy-buddy after the plane touched down. A few days later Wallace drawled casually to his chief field operator Tom Turnipseed, to Turnipseed's surprise, "I'm tired of those kooks in the third-party business. I'm thinking of going back into the Democratic Party." Three months later, Evans and Novak noticed, the grand jury investigating tax-fraud charges against Wallace's brother Gerald was mysteriously dissolved. Then in November 1971 the Justice Department's civil rights division announced, suddenly and improbably, that Alabama's civil rights enforcement plan "is a much better plan than many states'."

On January 2, 1972, when Dan Rather asked the president whether George Wallace's apparent preparations for another presidential campaign were "a threat to holding this country together," Nixon responded with a hint of a grin that Wallace "is not our problem"-he was the Democrats'. That was a gaffe; George Wallace had not yet announced he was running as a Democrat. The press, fortuitously, didn't notice this-nor another phase of the operation unfolding out in California. John Mitch.e.l.l funneled $10,000 to a disillusioned Wallace supporter, working under a cover group called the Committee Against Forced Busing, who deployed American n.a.z.i Party members to canva.s.s members of Wallace's old American Independent Party to convince them to change their registration to Democrat, ostensibly so they could vote for Wallace in the California Democratic primary-but actually to make sure the AIP voter rolls fell below the number that would allow them to run Wallace on the general election ballot.

Wallace would screw the Democrats, Nixon hoped. But he wouldn't be in the race long enough to screw him.

And so in the middle of March 1972, the Nixon team reaped what they had sown: the Democratic Party's pristine new candidate-selection process, the result of the McGovern Commission's recommendations in Mandate for Change, Mandate for Change, which was supposed to deliver whomever the people in their unsullied wisdom should choose as their nominee, was badly distorted by Nixonian sabotage. which was supposed to deliver whomever the people in their unsullied wisdom should choose as their nominee, was badly distorted by Nixonian sabotage.

New Hamps.h.i.+re was March 7; as Election Day approached, people started complaining about getting calls in the middle of the night from a "Harlem for Muskie Committee." (Muskie's enraged campaign manager, Berl Bernhard, called McGovern's political director, Frank Mankiewicz, and demanded that they stop; Mankiewicz, enraged, asked Bernhard what the h.e.l.l he was talking about.) Muskie, the man who'd weeks before been the most popular Democrat in America-outside the noncandidate Ted Kennedy-ended up with 46 percent in New Hamps.h.i.+re instead of the predicted 65.

The beneficiary turned out to be George McGovern, whose strategists had risked a campaign in New Hamps.h.i.+re on the outside hope that the same country charm that won over South Dakota farmers would work on the flinty New Englanders. He got 37 percent. Partisans of the New Politics claimed it only proved their point about what the public wanted: it was McGovern's "straight, decent, honorable answers" that won him a chunk of New Hamps.h.i.+re's heart. What they didn't know was that the White House had provided them an a.s.sist: McGovern's was the only viable campaign they didn't sabotage, because they thought he'd be easiest to beat in November.

No one knew what Florida Democrats wanted; the appeals there were a confused mess. John Lindsay ran commercials starring Carroll O'Connor imploring Floridians "to vote your hopes, not your fears." Then, sticking a cigar in his mouth, he added in Archie Bunker's voice, "Ya know what I mean, stick with me as part of the Lindsay continguency." (What the point was supposed to be, no one was sure.) Hubert Humphrey's radio ads announced that "the people's Democrat...will stop the flow of your tax dollars to lazy welfare chiselers. He will put your tax dollars to work here at home before giving handouts around the world." Muskie whistle-stopped in a red, white, and blue train alongside "Muskie Girls" in bunny-style suits and b.u.t.tons reading TRUST MUSKIE TRUST MUSKIE and and BELIEVE MUSKIE BELIEVE MUSKIE and and MUSKIE TALKS STRAIGHT. MUSKIE TALKS STRAIGHT. Rosey Grier, the former L.A. Rams star-famous for tackling Sirhan Sirhan after he shot Robert F. Kennedy-was there to add a Kennedyesque touch, or something. When the train pulled in, Grier sang the campaign theme song, "Let the Sun s.h.i.+ne In," from the up-with-hippies musical Rosey Grier, the former L.A. Rams star-famous for tackling Sirhan Sirhan after he shot Robert F. Kennedy-was there to add a Kennedyesque touch, or something. When the train pulled in, Grier sang the campaign theme song, "Let the Sun s.h.i.+ne In," from the up-with-hippies musical Hair. Hair. Muskie's publicity man told a magazine reporter he wished he were working for Ted Kennedy and speculated whether Lindsay wasn't now the Kennedy surrogate. Muskie's publicity man told a magazine reporter he wished he were working for Ted Kennedy and speculated whether Lindsay wasn't now the Kennedy surrogate.

Florida was also a shrieking nest of mutual recrimination. On "Citizens for Muskie" letterhead, the Nixon operatives sent out letters addressed to "Dear Fellow Democrats" (the same salutation Nixon's campaign used in 1962 when it apprised potential voters that Pat Brown was under the thumb of a left-wing organization that had adopted the "entire platform of the Communist Party"). The Florida letter read, "We on Senator Ed Muskie's staff sincerely hope you have decided upon Senator Muskie as your choice.... However, if you have not made your decision, you should be aware of several facts." These included that Henry Jackson had sired an illegitimate daughter in high school and had twice been arrested for h.o.m.os.e.xual activity in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and that Hubert Humphrey had been arrested for drunk driving in the company of a "known call girl" generously provided him by a lumber lobbyist.

Another letter on McCarthy stationery asked his supporters to ignore his name on the ballot and cast their votes for Humphrey. Actual rats scuttled through a Muskie press conference; ribbons tied to their tails read, "Muskie is a rat fink." On telephone poles, Segretti's elves posted giant signs, attributed to a "Mothers Backing Muskie Committee," reading HELP MUSKIE SUPPORT BUSING MORE CHILDREN NOW. HELP MUSKIE SUPPORT BUSING MORE CHILDREN NOW. A Miami newspaper ad implied Muskie was a big fan of Castro's. Democratic millionaires got a letter on Muskie stationery asking them A Miami newspaper ad implied Muskie was a big fan of Castro's. Democratic millionaires got a letter on Muskie stationery asking them not not to donate: Muskie wanted small donors, not "the usual fat cats." to donate: Muskie wanted small donors, not "the usual fat cats."

All was confusion, all was hate-just as Nixon wanted it. The Florida returns told the story of a Democratic Party about as united as the American republic in 1863. George Wallace got 42 percent, giving him three-quarters of Florida's eighty-one convention delegates. Humphrey got 18.5 percent, Jackson 12.5. Poor Muskie, the rat-fink child-buser, got 9.

As for John Lindsay, he had practically moved there-going so far as to don a scuba suit to plumb Biscayne Bay to show his concern about pollution. "As Gene McCarthy made America face the war in 1968, Lindsay now details the battles destroying its cities" ran a timely Sat.u.r.day Review Sat.u.r.day Review cover profile, "The Sun-Kissed Lindsay." "The switch is on to Lindsay" was his campaign slogan. It wasn't. He pulled in 7 percent, only three points more than his fellow New Yorker s.h.i.+rley Chisholm. George McGovern didn't campaign in Florida and got 6. Three-quarters of Florida voted for the antibusing referendum despite a ma.s.sive campaign against it by Florida's Democratic governor, Reubin Askew. cover profile, "The Sun-Kissed Lindsay." "The switch is on to Lindsay" was his campaign slogan. It wasn't. He pulled in 7 percent, only three points more than his fellow New Yorker s.h.i.+rley Chisholm. George McGovern didn't campaign in Florida and got 6. Three-quarters of Florida voted for the antibusing referendum despite a ma.s.sive campaign against it by Florida's Democratic governor, Reubin Askew.

It was hard to say these days what being "Democratic" even meant, now that the leading presidential contender was a governor who had made his political fortune forcing presidents to send out soldiers to get him to follow civil rights laws other Democrats claimed as the party's proudest legacy. Richard Nixon, whose fear of any further irritation from intraparty challenges was vitiated by his 87 percent of the primary vote among Florida Republicans, immediately revised his previous judgment about deferring to the courts on school integration. He spoke to the nation-on St. Patrick's Day-proposing a statutory moratorium on court-ordered busing. Wallace, thrilled, took it as a gauntlet, sending Nixon an open letter: "You have taken a stand against forced busing, but a position against busing is not enough. You can put an end to forced busing by an executive order without undue delay. Your stated opposition to forced busing has fallen on deaf ears in the Departments of Justice and Health, Education and Welfare."

Once more, some New Politics strategists-such as McGovern hotshot Pat Caddell, who ran his own polling firm out of Cambridge, where he was a senior at Harvard-read the Wallace results as vindication. The strong showing for the Alabaman who campaigned against the "pointy-headed bureaucrats in Was.h.i.+ngton" was taken as a sign of an embittered, cynical, and resentful electorate ready to back any candidate who could credibly pledge to tear down the ossified old Establishment. It would prove a questionable judgment.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

The Spring Offensive DONALD S SEGRETTI AND J JEB S STUART M MAGRUDER ORDERED THEIR legions forth into the next battles: Wisconsin, on April 4; Pennsylvania, April 25; Indiana, May 2; Oregon, May 23; California, June 6. In Milwaukee, where every serious candidate was pus.h.i.+ng hard in the state where David had felled Goliath in 1968, Muskie supporters stopped showing up for campaign events: too often, the candidate arrived late or not at all. Deliverymen and limousines kept on arriving at the senator's hotel claiming to have been summoned by "George Mitch.e.l.l"-one of Muskie's close advisers. The staff would then waste precious time arguing with some poor schlub that they hadn't legions forth into the next battles: Wisconsin, on April 4; Pennsylvania, April 25; Indiana, May 2; Oregon, May 23; California, June 6. In Milwaukee, where every serious candidate was pus.h.i.+ng hard in the state where David had felled Goliath in 1968, Muskie supporters stopped showing up for campaign events: too often, the candidate arrived late or not at all. Deliverymen and limousines kept on arriving at the senator's hotel claiming to have been summoned by "George Mitch.e.l.l"-one of Muskie's close advisers. The staff would then waste precious time arguing with some poor schlub that they hadn't ordered ordered several dozen flowers, fifty pizzas, or two limousines at the last minute. Then they'd waste more time arguing over which campaign was working to sabotage them. By then, the whole day would be shot. (The Humphrey campaign had been able to undo a ratf.u.c.k at the last minute by getting a notice into the Sat.u.r.day several dozen flowers, fifty pizzas, or two limousines at the last minute. Then they'd waste more time arguing over which campaign was working to sabotage them. By then, the whole day would be shot. (The Humphrey campaign had been able to undo a ratf.u.c.k at the last minute by getting a notice into the Sat.u.r.day Milwaukee Sentinel Milwaukee Sentinel saying there would be no free lunch that afternoon with the candidate and Lorne Greene of saying there would be no free lunch that afternoon with the candidate and Lorne Greene of Bonanza, Bonanza, as advertised in a flyer circulated in the ghetto.) as advertised in a flyer circulated in the ghetto.) Ratf.u.c.king took money-and drained money away from throwing a proper national party convention. The 1972 Republican meeting was to take place in San Diego: a nice, quiet, conservative Southern California city, nearby to the president's San Clemente retreat. But the city fathers had not cooperated, and the business community wasn't ponying up.

So the White House approached an angel.

The multinational conglomerate International Telephone & Telegraph had acquired three companies in 1969 in a deal bureaucrats in the Justice Department worried fell afoul of ant.i.trust laws. Thus it was that in the middle of 1971 an ITT lobbyist named Dita Beard convened a lollapalooza negotiating session whose princ.i.p.als included John Mitch.e.l.l, Maurice Stans, John Ehrlichman, Chuck Colson, Bud Krogh, and Vice President Agnew. The upshot: ITT promised $400,000 in donations to help stage the San Diego convention. Mitch.e.l.l would protect the merger.

The deal created more problems than it solved. As the Florida campaigning entered the home stretch, columnist Jack Anderson published a 1971 memo in which Dita Beard exclaimed to her boss that their "n.o.ble commitment has gone a long way." The memo also included the observation, "Certainly the President has told Mitch.e.l.l to see that things are worked out fairly." Its famous last words: "Please destroy this, huh?" Beard's boss didn't.

The reference to the president and attorney general of the United States-now Richard Nixon's campaign manager-as direct parties to a bribe was more than a little embarra.s.sing. So Howard Hunt was sent to cajole Beard into claiming she'd never written such a memo.

"Who exactly do you represent?" Dita Beard's daughter asked of the redheaded stranger who appeared on her doorstep.

"High Was.h.i.+ngton levels who are interested in your mother's welfare," he replied.

Beard's public recantation clamped the lid on what Nixon feared was the biggest threat to his reelection so far. Convention plans were s.h.i.+fted to the island city of Miami Beach: same palm trees and ocean vistas, with the added advantage of placating the networks, which would be able to keep their equipment in place from the Democrats' convention in July.

Still and all, through spring, the ITT lid threatened to blow.

Which was why G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt brainstormed their own solution to the problem. Liddy no longer worked in the White House. Like Mitch.e.l.l, and also former commerce secretary Maurice Stans and former White House a.s.sistant Jeb Stuart Magruder, Liddy had been promoted to a more important job, with the Committee to Re-Elect the President, John Mitch.e.l.l, chairman. (Harry Dent had wanted Magruder's job but Bob Haldeman thought him "too much of a boy scout": he refused dirty-tricks a.s.signments.) Magruder was the committee's deputy director; Stans its treasurer; Liddy "general counsel." And what the general counsel suggested, at a meeting with Hunt and a physician who once specialized in nondetectable "accidents" for the CIA, was that Jack Anderson be a.s.sa.s.sinated-a car crash, perhaps, or a drugging; or, Liddy suggested, Anderson could "just become a fatal victim of the notorious Was.h.i.+ngton street-crime rate." Their consultation completed, Liddy pulled out a $100 bill from Committee to Re-Elect the President funds to pay the good doctor for his time.

Liddy carried $100 bills everywhere for such purposes; he was something of a sink for campaign cash. When Mitch.e.l.l was still running the Justice Department, Liddy met with Magruder and John Dean in the attorney general's office. He came loaded down with easels and flip-charts, like an advertising account executive pitching a campaign for a new national brand, and presented his plan to keep the Democrats out of the White House.

It was called GEMSTONE, he explained. Operation DIAMOND would field a Nacht und Nebel Nacht und Nebel sabotage team ("night and fog," Liddy said, translating from the German; the men would have Mafia experience, he explained, warning, "Like top professionals everywhere, they don't come cheap"). RUBY would tail the Democratic contenders. COAL would push s.h.i.+rley Chisholm for the nomination, EMERALD would eavesdrop on the Democrats' campaign planes and buses, QUARTZ intercept telephone traffic, CRYSTAL float a barge off Miami Beach that would serve a double purpose: as electronic surveillance headquarters and a bordello to lure Democratic luminaries for blackmailable s.e.x. GARNET was a plan for dirty hippies to stink up Democratic banquets. There were also Operations OPAL I, OPAL II, OPAL III, OPAL IV, and TOPAZ. sabotage team ("night and fog," Liddy said, translating from the German; the men would have Mafia experience, he explained, warning, "Like top professionals everywhere, they don't come cheap"). RUBY would tail the Democratic contenders. COAL would push s.h.i.+rley Chisholm for the nomination, EMERALD would eavesdrop on the Democrats' campaign planes and buses, QUARTZ intercept telephone traffic, CRYSTAL float a barge off Miami Beach that would serve a double purpose: as electronic surveillance headquarters and a bordello to lure Democratic luminaries for blackmailable s.e.x. GARNET was a plan for dirty hippies to stink up Democratic banquets. There were also Operations OPAL I, OPAL II, OPAL III, OPAL IV, and TOPAZ.

He saved Operation TURQUOISE-Cuban commando teams slipping by night into the Miami Convention Center during the Democratic convention to sabotage the air conditioners, engulfing the hall in 110-degree heat-for last. John Mitch.e.l.l smiled at that one. What he did not do was order the man who had just marched into the office of the attorney general of the United States to outline a ma.s.sive criminal conspiracy arrested on the spot. When Mitch.e.l.l heard Liddy's proposed budget-a million dollars-he just asked him to come back with a cheaper plan.

"And, Gordon? Burn those charts. Do it personally."

Liddy got it down to a bare-bones $250,000, which would require untraceable cash. The campaign itself, the traditional part, would cost hardly anything: it would consist mostly of the president acting presidential. But the Republicans still had to pay for their convention. They still had to set up campaign committees and local organizations, pay for their ad buys and literature. Magruder and Segretti's ratf.u.c.king operations soaked up a budget of $100,000. Running a campaign plane and a press plane for Agnew would cost $171,088 a month for rental, $35,000 for modifications, $683 per liftoff, $325 per hour in the air, six cents a mile per pa.s.senger for insurance, plus the 8 percent transportation tax.

Saving civilization from the Democrats would be expensive.

And you couldn't exactly, in the wake of ITT, do it by approaching respectable Republican businessmen and asking them to cough up checks to finance ratf.u.c.ks and prost.i.tutes.

Which was where the man who had learned about business at a sausage-casings factory in Chicago in the 1930s came in: Maurice Stans. "Ethics in the sausage casings business were not very high," he would later write in his memoirs. Neither were they at the Committee to Re-Elect the President.

Shakedowns had previously been Herbert Kalmbach's job. In October of 1971, for example, the president's personal lawyer approached the chairman of American Airlines at a dinner and asked him to kick in $100,000. The chairman said he might be able to come up with $75,000. Kalmbach told him he couldn't be sure of the consequences with the Federal Aviation Administration should the full $100,000 not be forthcoming. And so it was. Such corporate contributions were illegal. Companies maintained slush funds to wash the money.

But by the time Stans came on board the old schemes were set to become obsolete. On January 19, the House voted final pa.s.sage of the Federal Elections Campaign Act, 33419. It required the amounts of political contributions of more than $100 to be reported; previously only the contributor had to be listed. Nixon signed it with a flourish: "By giving the American public full access to the facts of political financing, this legislation will guard against campaign abuses and will work to build public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process." He intended to follow its letter, and pound its spirit into b.l.o.o.d.y submission.

The law would go in effect on April 7. A shakedown frenzy preceded that deadline. It worked, for instance, like this. Gulf Chemical sent $100,000 to the corporate account of a Mexican subsidiary, made out as a "legal fee." A Mexican attorney then converted the money into four checks, payable to himself. He cashed them at a bank, then packed the bills into suitcases. It was flown in a plane belonging to Pennzoil and delivered to the office of Hugh Sloan, the Committee to Re-Elect the President's accountant.

A half dozen "pickup men" wandered the nation over those two months; the take was an estimated $20 million. During one two-day period $6 million pa.s.sed through Hugh Sloan's hands. Hints of the backroom orgy seeped out to reporters. "Mr. President," one reporter asked at a March 24 afternoon press conference, "will you give us your views on the general proposition of large political contributions either by corporations or individuals in terms of possibly getting something back for it?"

"n.o.body gets anything back," Richard Nixon replied. "As a matter of fact, I think some of our major complaints have been that many of our businesspeople have not received the consideration that perhaps they thought that an administration that was supposed to be business-oriented would provide for it."

Two reporters wondered in print why this obscure L.A. lawyer Herb Kalmbach had suddenly drawn so many of the nation's largest corporations to his once-modest client list. The insolence sent the president over the edge: "They are out to defeat defeat us," he rambled to Haldeman and Ziegler. "Both have spoken in the most vicious and derogatory terms of RN in the place where you really find out what these people think-the Georgetown c.o.c.ktail parties. The evidence on this is absolutely conclusive. You do not need to ask me where I got it." us," he rambled to Haldeman and Ziegler. "Both have spoken in the most vicious and derogatory terms of RN in the place where you really find out what these people think-the Georgetown c.o.c.ktail parties. The evidence on this is absolutely conclusive. You do not need to ask me where I got it."

The G.o.dfather opened in April: another of those allegories infiltrating movie houses about the rot that hid behind supposedly honorable inst.i.tutions. It was a gangster movie of a new sort: one that proposed that successful gangsters had loving families; and that loving families, if they were successful enough, acted like gangsters. Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece encapsulated the sort of false-front creepiness-"I believe in America" were the picture's first words-liberals had noticed in Richard Nixon since the 1950s. A b.u.t.ton started appearing: opened in April: another of those allegories infiltrating movie houses about the rot that hid behind supposedly honorable inst.i.tutions. It was a gangster movie of a new sort: one that proposed that successful gangsters had loving families; and that loving families, if they were successful enough, acted like gangsters. Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece encapsulated the sort of false-front creepiness-"I believe in America" were the picture's first words-liberals had noticed in Richard Nixon since the 1950s. A b.u.t.ton started appearing: NIXON...G.o.dFATHER IN THE WHITE HOUSE. NIXON...G.o.dFATHER IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

Sweet, gentle George McGovern made himself a vanguardist for campaign finance reform: his political director, Frank Mankiewicz, announced they would get their contributions on record five weeks before the deadline and called on all other candidates to pledge the same. As Wisconsin heated up, McGovern pointed out that only Nixon, Jackson, and Lindsay hadn't done so. "Muskie has been working on getting endors.e.m.e.nts from the top down," McGovern said. "I have been getting them from the bottom up." Of John Lindsay, he said, "A handful of corporate leaders were bankrolling his campaign." Explained a campaign aide, "It's the populism of the prairies against the populism of Park Avenue." McGovern's ability to raise clean money was to be one of his drawing cards, the thousands of small donations he was getting proof of his appeal at the "gra.s.s roots," his long-shot bid's fetish phrase.

His gra.s.sroots financing was, indeed, impressive. A young civil rights lawyer and son of an Alabama dirt farmer named Morris Dees had fallen in love with McGovern after hearing him speak in 1970. Dees was a millionaire in the relatively new business of "direct mail." He'd been an innovator in the field since college, when he began a business to deliver cakes to kids on their birthdays, exploiting a list he had procured of University of Alabama parents as his secret weapon. "The lists" were everything in the direct-mail business. He saw no reason political fund-raising should be different. George McGovern didn't need convincing. In his 1968 Senate race he had tried and failed to hire the king of political direct mail: conservative Richard Viguerie. Dees's first letter for McGovern, early in 1971, got an astonis.h.i.+ng 15 percent response rate. Next he signed up three thousand members for a McGovern "Presidential Club," each of whom pledged monthly contributions; the default rate was a mere 7 percent.

"Gut mail," a staffer called their appeals. Nothing canned-that was what George McGovern was selling. It was why he announced his candidacy in the first month of 1971, and in Sioux Falls instead of Was.h.i.+ngton: leave it to the old pols to make their ritualistic disavowals of candidacy until the most strategically opportune moment. Muskie had been losing in part because he was so mumble-mouthed. McGovern would win by being forthright. His conviction that an untapped majority existed for plain-speaking ideological honesty started reminding observers of Barry Goldwater. "I will not change my beliefs to win votes," the conservative had said in announcing his own candidacy in 1964-in Phoenix instead of in Was.h.i.+ngton. "I will offer a choice, not an echo." McGovern said much the same.

That wasn't the only thing that reminded people of Goldwater: like him, McGovern didn't behave like a candidate who wanted to win. Others avoided the th.o.r.n.y issue of amnesty for draft dodgers; McGovern sallied forth at Keene State College in New Hamps.h.i.+re and said the evils of the war itself had already vindicated them. (Eleanor McGovern, pointing out that only 20 percent of the country agreed, pleaded with her husband to make amnesty contingent on performing alternative service. He stuck to his guns. Sticking to his guns was what he was running on.) In Florida he came out for busing as "one of the prices we are paying for a century of segregation in housing patterns"-and against the s.p.a.ce shuttle program, Central Florida's great hope for economic recovery. He toured Chicago without the blessing of Mayor Daley, an unheard of slight-and then, at the state capitol in Springfield, announced that his delegate slates for the March 21 Illinois primary had to be sc.r.a.pped and re-formed because they didn't meet the McGovern Commission's guidelines for gender balance. He was too good for his own good.

But then maybe this was what it would take for Democrats to win in 1972. The G.o.dfather was in the White House. The old ways no longer seemed to hold purchase. In January, DNC chair O'Brien had put on a good old-fas.h.i.+oned $500-a-plate fund-raising banquet to try to retire the party's debt from 1968. It felt like an old song for which everyone had forgotten the words. Humphrey didn't stay for dinner. McCarthy refused a chance at the podium. Ted Kennedy s.h.i.+fted in his seat, as if he had wound up in the wrong room.

Fred Dutton signed on with the McGovern campaign, along with his fellow RFK compatriot Frank Mankiewicz. Maybe what Dutton told Scotty Reston was right; maybe the emerging Democratic majority really was "'Nader populist' at heart." Front-runner Muskie was sounding more and more like McGovern, promising that Vietnam "will remain an issue for me as long as a single human being dies, not for a cause but for a mistake."

In March, after McGovern's second-place shocker in New Hamps.h.i.+re, two surprising developments in the heart of the Heartland helped convince prairie populists they were right.

The first was in Lordstown, Ohio. A new General Motors plant had opened in the economically suffering region. To staff it, GM followed the new industry trend of hiring younger workers: they got sick less and used up fewer benefits, an important cost hedge against onrus.h.i.+ng j.a.panese compet.i.tion. Meanwhile GM's new a.s.sembly Division was radically reorganizing the production process for greater efficiency. The two developments collided in 1971, when Lordstown changed over models to Chevy's new import-style subcompact, the Vega. The line's old rate was sixty cars per hour. For Vegas, the rate was to be doubled.

The old way was to compensate for such hards.h.i.+ps with fatter wages and benefits. Steady work, and pride in producing excellent machines, had always been blandishment enough to compensate the Vega workers' Depression-scarred parents for the monotony and alienation of factory work. But GM had not counted on the consequences of plunking a car factory full of kids down the street from Kent State.

Working-cla.s.s youth were starting to think like New Leftists: identifying the meaning of life with the struggle for authenticity. Ford's labor relations chief described a "new breed of union member-a younger, more impatient, less h.o.m.ogeneous, more racially a.s.sertive, and less manipulable member." Absenteeism and disciplinary citations doubled. Turnover almost tripled. "Problem employees," the Ford expert said, "almost habitually violate our plant rules." He worried about "a general lowering of employees' frustration tolerance." The New Left had a word for that. They called it alienation. alienation.

The old-line UAW leaders.h.i.+p pushed GM for more wages and benefits. The workers responded, in defiance of their union, by pa.s.sing cars down the a.s.sembly line with parts missing. "Every day I come out of there I feel ripped off," one young worker told a radical labor union researcher. "I don't even feel useful now.... They could always find somebody stupider than me to-do the job." The plant's various cultural factions-hillbillies, blacks, Puerto Ricans, "hippies"-united in February against a new "get-tough" policy against worker absenteeism: 97 percent voted to stop work. The Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal monitored this unprecedented new "quality of life" strike obsessively, in almost the same terms as radicals. "The generation just entering the workforce," the monitored this unprecedented new "quality of life" strike obsessively, in almost the same terms as radicals. "The generation just entering the workforce," the Journal Journal worried in a March 15 editorial, "The Soul Must Panic," were las.h.i.+ng out at "the monster of monotony." Politicians monitored the strike closely, too: here was a new kind of political demand. worried in a March 15 editorial, "The Soul Must Panic," were las.h.i.+ng out at "the monster of monotony." Politicians monitored the strike closely, too: here was a new kind of political demand.

The Lordstown strikers lost; the March 23 settlement answered none of their anti-monotony demands. The heralds of the New Politics took the message nonetheless: that Greening of America Greening of America values and the emerging coalition Dutton described ("humanistic, critical of big business, big labor, and big government") were taking root in the heart of the Heartland, amid the Old Politics' supposedly st.u.r.dy labor base. values and the emerging coalition Dutton described ("humanistic, critical of big business, big labor, and big government") were taking root in the heart of the Heartland, amid the Old Politics' supposedly st.u.r.dy labor base.

The second boost for prairie populist confidence unfolded in Pennsylvania's Susquehanna Valley. It had seemed obvious to radicals and New Politics liberals what Richard Nixon's Justice Department was up to in the trial of the Harrisburg 7. The proliferating gaggles of activists thrown in front of juries as "conspirators"-from the Harlem 4 to the Ford Hood 43-were evidence of conspiracy itself: an organized campaign of repression against anyone who dared threaten the powers that be. "The people of this country will be watching this trial," a defense statement for the Harrisburg 7 roared, "to see if men and women who have cried out to the government, 'Thou shalt not kill' will be put in jail for that."

The conspiracy att.i.tude was easy to mock. (Did you hear the one about the Indianapolis 500? "They're innocent!" the hippie replied. "Every last one of them!"), but this prosecution was obviously Kafkaesque. A nun who taught art history at a college in upstate New York and a pacifist priest were supposed to have plotted with fellow nuns and priests and a college professor to blow up Was.h.i.+ngton and to kidnap Henry Kissinger unless their demand for an end to the war was met. "Overt Act No. 23" in the indictment was that one of the nuns moved from Baltimore to Was.h.i.+ngton.

Soon, the protest community was convinced, they would all be in prison. The Village Voice Village Voice's reporter in Harrisburg, Paul Cowan, had already bought a house in Canada in preparation for the final crackdown. What he saw of the jury selection convinced him it would come soon enough. Mary McGrory of the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post columnized that the defendants had already been condemned: "They have fetched up in a locality where moral pa.s.sion is considered a social error, among citizens who have either decided they are guilty or who smugly declare they were too busy to read about the whole affair." The Justice Department agreed with the radicals: it would be a piece of cake to get a jury of terrified Silent Majoritarians to sentence riffraff like this to an eternity underneath the jail, whatever the weakness of the case. columnized that the defendants had already been condemned: "They have fetched up in a locality where moral pa.s.sion is considered a social error, among citizens who have either decided they are guilty or who smugly declare they were too busy to read about the whole affair." The Justice Department agreed with the radicals: it would be a piece of cake to get a jury of terrified Silent Majoritarians to sentence riffraff like this to an eternity underneath the jail, whatever the weakness of the case.

The proceedings took shape in February as doppelganger to Judge Hoffman's in Chicago: the hulking gla.s.s federal building and sterilely modernist federal courtroom, the obsessively sequestered jury (this time they boarded up the windows of the jury bus), some of the same radical lawyers, the same sort of tough-as-nails Roman Catholic prosecution team (the lead attorney had been plucked from the Mafia beat). The defense once more welcomed the opportunity "to conduct a political trial and get the issues before the American people." A hanging judge boasted of his contempt for the Fourth Amendment: "Speak for yourself. I have nothing to hide," he answered a defense lawyer who said government surveillance "hurts all of us."

Once again, the star witness was a police spy. Boyd Douglas was a fellow inmate of Philip Berrigan's at Lewisburg Penitentiary. He had been allowed into a study-release program at nearby Bucknell University, which was how he helped Father Phil smuggle uncensored letters to Sister Elizabeth-from which they discovered Father Phil's reveries about whether the progress in ending the war would be hurt or hastened by kidnapping government officials as radicals had in Quebec. But before Douglas could take the stand, his credibility as a witness was in tatters. The prosecution accidentally released to the defense a letter he'd written to the FBI thanking them for money to buy a new car and shaking them down for some more: "Considering what I will go through before and after the trial or trials, I request a minimum reward of $50,000 tax-free." He also asked for a faked honorable discharge from the army. It didn't do much for the prosecution's claim that their star witness was a "strict Catholic" and conscience-stricken former New Leftist. Editorials compared Boyd Douglas's $50,000 request to the Nixon White House's shakedown of ITT.

Then Dou