Agnew's Pungent Quotient

He likes to call them his "pithies and pungents," the zinging denunciations of Administration critics that have made him headlines off and on since he assailed "an effete corps of impudent snobs" in a New Orleans speech last October. He has since blasted away at "the whole damn zoo" of young radicals, scoffed at "tomentose exhibitionists who provoke more derision than fear," damned "the didactic inadequacies of the garrulous" and proclaimed that "abetting the merchants of hate are the parasites of passion." Vice President Spiro Agnew concedes that there are hazards in using "intemperate language," but he insists: "If you can get your thought through to the people, it can be worth the risk."

There is no doubt that Agnew has got his thoughts through to the people, but last week his quotient of pithies and pungents was notably lowered. In Detroit he condemned as "emotionaries" those who espouse hysterical dissent, but found reasonable disagreement to be a national necessity. In Washington he renewed his charges of antiwar bias against some major newspapers and TV networks, but defended the freedom of the press, asserting that "Government and the press are natural adversaries." He also argued for a lowering of the voting age to 18. Said Agnew: "I believe that once our young people can sound off at the polls, there will be less need to sound off in the streets."

Out of the Blue. Though his speech-making about youth was conciliatory, a more casual remark about one young American was not. The lone student on President Nixon's new commission on campus disorder, Joseph Rhodes Jr., 22, a junior fellow at Harvard, set Agnew off like a fire bomb. Talking to a New York Times reporter, Rhodes wondered "if the President's and Vice President's statements are killing people." Agnew read the interview and demanded Rhodes' resignation. Rhodes, he said, has "a transparent bias that will make him counterproductive to the work of the commission."

The Vice President's broadside took Nixon by surprise--it came "right out of the blue," said an aide. But the President simply had Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler explain to reporters that Agnew was speaking for himself, that Rhodes would not be replaced because the President wanted "a wide range of views" represented on the commission. Later, outgoing HEW Secretary Robert Finch who joined Nixon's White House staff, observed that the incident only served to strengthen the commission. Said Finch: "It might perhaps have given it more legitimacy and visibility than it had before."

Forage Out. Nixon was "relaxed" about the Rhodes incident, an aide says, and by all accounts the relationship between himself and Agnew remains solid.

One White House source insists that "there isn't any direct rein" on Agnew. The closest thing to any sort of curbing came when Nixon obliquely suggested to Agnew that he broaden his topics beyond dissent and the media. Nixon had his own speechwriters send Agnew some material on foreign policy, the welfare program and postal reform; Agnew was duly heard from in public on all three subjects.

Nixon knows only too well the uses of the vice presidency, and he lets Agnew do for him what he himself did for Dwight Eisenhower. "My political function," Agnew says, "is to forage out in advance of existing policies and generally to project the philosophy of the Administration." The personal equation helps. "We have a similar background," Agnew observes. "I can easily identify. I have not yet misconstrued the President's intentions. Of course, this is a high-risk activity, though I haven't yet fallen off the bridge."

Always His. The pithies and pungents that have kept Agnew on the Nixon bridge are largely his own. Mrs. Cynthia Rosenwald, a Baltimorean who wrote the drafts of many Agnew speeches until she quit recently for family reasons, says modestly and accurately: "I did the part where the audience went to sleep. The really great lines were always his." Agnew, who sometimes uses speeches written by the White House staff, acquired a new speechwriter last week. He is Johann C. Helms, 29, a recent Harvard Ph.D. who gained national attention last summer when he blistered Harvard's treatment of student rioters in testimony before a Senate subcommittee--as Harvard President Nathan Pusey, who never did get to testify, listened uncomfortably.

Helms made his debut last week by working on Agnew's speech for a Republican dinner in Cleveland, which grossed more than $325,000. Since the New Orleans opus in October, an aide reports, the Vice President has become "a very hot item." Just in the past five months, he has been the guest of honor at galas that have earned some $3,000,000 for the G.O.P.

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