Outflanking the President

As part of his continuing scheme to keep the South in his column in the 1972 election, President Nixon took an extraordinary step two weeks ago. He disavowed a school-integration plan for Austin, Texas, drafted by his own Department of Health, Education and Welfare; he ordered HEW and the Justice Department to "hold busing to the minimum required by law."

At first it seemed a profitable political stroke, for it would surely please Southerners reluctant to desegregate. But he left an opening to the right, and inevitably Alabama Governor George Wallace--the man Nixon hoped to undercut--was quick to take full advantage of it. Wallace pounced last week, sending Nixon a telegram designed to aggravate the already tricky situation in which the President had put himself. Wired Wallace: "The conflicts between your recent statements opposing the busing of schoolchildren and the action of federal departments directly under your control have left our people in a dilemma." Nixon took the bait: he put out word through Press Secretary Ron Ziegler that federal officials who supported busing programs too strenuously would find themselves in new jobs in --or even outside of--the Government.

With Relish. Wallace replied shrewdly. He decreed that a 15-year-old suburban Birmingham white student, Pamela Davis, should be assigned by the Jefferson County school board to the predominantly white Minor High School. Under a federal court order, Pamela had been assigned to Westfield High School, 22 miles from her home and 95% black. One day later, Wallace pressed the issue further by proclaiming his intention to reopen one of the 140 all-black or largely black schools that had been shut down in compliance with a court ruling. "My order transcends the orders of the court," he snapped.

Wallace's motives were all too clear. His actions, Wallace said, "will set a precedent in this state of carrying out the wishes of President Nixon." The relish with which Wallace repeatedly spoke of Nixon's "wishes" reflected Wallace's glee at catching the President out.

Rattlesnake. Nixon has said, consistently if unenthusiastically, that he will enforce the federal court directives--as indeed he is required by law to do. The Government's only logical recourse is to file a suit to halt Wallace's violation. Yet if the President forces a showdown with Wallace, he will undoubtedly alienate the white Southern voters he has courted so assiduously. No one in the White House is admitting that Nixon committed a strategic blunder, but one aide probably summed up the feeling in the Nixon camp when he said of Wallace: "What a rattlesnake he is."

The Alabama Governor surely does not mind a bit of name-calling so long as he accomplishes his purpose, which is to outflank Nixon on the right. Wallace won five states, primarily from Nixon, as a third-party candidate in the 1968 presidential election, and patently hopes to win more if he can squeeze his way into an even more conservative position on busing than Nixon's own.

For all his shabby cynicism, Wallace set Nixon up like a good bantamweight working out a deadly series of combinations. For the past month he let rumors build that he was going to challenge federal integration requirements, and fed the rumors by pushing a $1,500,000 bill in the state legislature that would fund 200 additional state troopers for the coming school year.

Psyched Up. The President caught it from the other side. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission, headed by the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame, jumped on Nixon for demanding that busing be held to the legal minimum. "What the nation needed," said the commissioners, "was a call for the immediate elimination of the dual school system and for support of all those school officials who are forthrightly carrying out their legal obligations. Unfortunately, the President's statement almost certainly will have the opposite effect." One embittered HEW staffer conceded that the school officials "are more confused now," adding, "they feel the rug has been pulled from under them." Busing, as the President well knows, is widely unpopular both North and South; yet some communities are beginning to get used to it. Besides, critics feel that Nixon's stand will damage the cause of integration quite apart from the busing question. Complained James R. Johnson, a black Jackson, Miss., school board member: "People here were finally psyched up to accept busing and integration. But now the President has given fire to the conservatives."

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