What Businessmen think of President Nixon

AT a time of economic uneasiness, social turbulence and foreign war, the nation's top businessmen still express confidence in President Nixon, but that confidence is wearing thin in several critical areas of policy. While business leaders approve of the President's economic policies in general, they fault him on several specifics. Their most pressing concern is inflation. On the broader issues, they back Nixon on the war in Viet Nam but show some misgivings over Laos and Cambodia and disapprove of his handling of student dissent. Their opinions could presage a wavering of business support for Nixon in 1972.

Those are the findings of a TIME-Louis Harris poll of 537 high-ranking U.S. businessmen, ranging from chief executive officers to key executive, financial and operations vice presidents, who run the companies on the FORTUNE list of the 500 largest U.S. industrial firms. They are precisely the men who gave Nixon some of his most ardent support in the 1968 election. Two-thirds are Republicans (only 10% are Democrats and the rest independents), and fully 84% voted for the President. The poll was taken last week, after Nixon had announced the invasion of Cambodia and just before the eruption of the massive campus protest over that move and the deaths of four students at Kent State University.

Short-Lived Recession. The businessmen's heaviest criticism of the President focused on the economy. Two-thirds gloomily judged the economy to be in worse shape today than it was a year ago, and 78% said that Nixon's policies had contributed to the stock-market decline. Only 40% felt that he was doing a good job in bringing inflation under control, and just a third agreed that he was doing well in keeping down the cost of living. Even so, most approved, 59% to 40%, of the President's economic policies in general, and nine out of ten felt that the Johnson Administration was basically to blame for the country's economic ills.

All together, 55% of the business leaders believed that the economy is now in a recession, and another 9% were of the opinion that it is headed toward one. The first group divided almost evenly on whether the recession would be relatively short-lived (six months or less) or last a year or more. More than four-fifths thought that the nation would have continuing inflation combined with rising unemployment during 1970, but judged that unemployment would be kept within bounds that they considered manageable. To the businessmen, Harris concluded, inflation was a far more urgent worry than recession. Most guessed that it would take more than a year to bring inflation under control. Remarkably, 20% said that it would never be controlled.

What to Do? When it came to offering new solutions, however, the businessmen seemed as much at a loss as the President. A majority of 59% thought that margin requirements on stock purchases should not be lowered --just a few days before the Federal Reserve Board lowered them. Half felt that the Federal Reserve should cut the discount rate to fight the recession, and the same number opposed any more rapid increase in the money supply.

Unlike the general public, which in other polls has approved for a year the idea of using wage and price controls as an anti-inflationary weapon, three-quarters of the businessmen opposed the notion. A smaller number, 53%, felt that the income surtax should not be extended. But an emphatic 89% suggested that federal spending should be cut. What else might the President do? Most significantly, 59% felt that he should do more jawboning--persuasion backed up by the power of his office --to keep down wage and price increases. Jawboning to whom? Nixon has diligently followed a hands-off policy toward both union demands and company price rises. Not surprisingly, 69% of the businessmen took exception to Nixon's attitude toward labor's wage demands, while 51% found fault with his handling of corporate price increases.

Only 43% of the executives judged that business was better off with a Republican in the White House; 47% figured it did not make much difference. Curiously, despite their gloomy judgments on the economy, most businessmen felt that the prospects for their own companies were bright. No fewer than two-thirds expected their company's profits to be higher in the coming year, and only 7% expected their profits to be down. Just 11% thought that their company's employment might drop, and 16% believed that their capital expenditures might be lower; the majority divided on whether employment and capital spending would rise or remain the same. Taken all together, those predictions indicated a certain brittleness in Nixon's business support. Should their expectations for their own firms be thwarted, businessmen could rapidly turn against him.

Faint Praise. It often happens in polls that people tend to be more generous toward the President on general issues and more critical on particulars. The businessmen were no exception. Overall, Nixon received the plaudits of 72% for the job he is doing in the White House, and even more, three-quarters, voted him a competent manager and administrator. Similarly, 60% approved of his appointments to high office: Federal Reserve Board Chairman Arthur Burns won the approval of 66%; Paul McCracken, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, of 55%; Treasury Secretary David Kennedy of 54%; Budget Director Robert Mayo of 49%; and Commerce Secretary Maurice Stansof 40%.

Nixon's foreign policy won fairly wide support in the business establishment, though there was an apparent glimmering of doubt. His handling of the war in Viet Nam was approved by a margin of two to one. That support dropped to 55%-37% when it came to Laos, and to 49%-34% on Cambodia; 17% were uncertain what to say--an indication of business concern over the possibility of wider war. On the issue over which many Americans fault Nixon grievously, racial integration, businessmen divided evenly: half approved of his policies and half opposed them. Nixon scored far lower in his handling of student protesters: 57% of the executives disapproved of his tactics--perhaps, Polltaker Harris suggests, because so many have sons and daughters in college.

Question of Confidence. Ultimately, the key test of support--the one that counts most in the voting booth and in the board room--is how much confidence the President personally inspires. In that test Nixon won the approval of 59% of the executives polled. The figure indicated that Nixon might not get as big a vote from big business the next time around. Though the President won handily in a test runoff against Senator Edward Kennedy, 89% to 6%, and Hubert Humphrey, 85%-14%, he lost the support of 10% when paired with Senator Edmund Muskie. Nixon would get 74% of the executives' votes, compared with Muskie's 23%. Harris concluded that "today's grumblings about the President could turn into massive disenchantment." As much as anything else, that will depend on how well Nixon manages the Administration's economic policy over the coming months.

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