Thunder All Around

To Columnist Joseph Kraft, "President Nixon is risking almost everything to gain practically nothing" because the best the Administration can achieve is a "fig leaf for defeat." On the same day's Washington Post op-edit page, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak called the President's latest move "dangerously high-risk poker," but speculated that the pot could be rewarding in two ways: by thwarting a fresh Communist offensive in the fall while keeping the Russians far enough below the boiling point to save a Moscow-Washington agreement on nuclear-arms limitations. The Washington Star, meanwhile, declared that "the Rubicon is crossed"; therefore, "the place of this newspaper is behind the President of the United States."

In the wake of Nixon's announcement about sealing North Vietnamese ports and borders while offering new peace terms, columnists and editorialists responded last week with more than the usual thunder pro and con. Much of the language on both sides was tougher than usual. Some of it sounded as if Armageddon lay just over the horizon.

Nightmare. "Nixon has put it all on the line--the war, the election, his future and peace in our time," intoned the Chicago Daily News. "From the bottom of our hearts, we hope it works." As usual, the opposition Tribune saw it differently: "Nixon is taking a risk, but it still looks like a soundly calculated one." The same sort of editorial schizophrenia prevailed in Detroit, where the News praised "the action that took guts," while the Knight Free Press saw Nixon's televised talk as "an incredible nightmare" 'and asked: "Is he so insecure that he is willing to see the world blown to smithereens to avoid being the first President to lose a war?"

Rising to white heat, the New York

Times called on Congress to "curb and control" the Executive Branch: "Nixon is pushing the country very near to a constitutional crisis; Congress can yet save the President from himself and the nation from disaster." But the Times's vice president and star columnist, James Reston, pointed out that Nixon's "new and more specific peace terms may be overlooked and underestimated" in all the rhetoric. "There is nothing here about keeping American air and naval power in Viet Nam, or defending the Thieu government to the end."

Sarcasm. One paper that switched stands was the Denver Post. Noting that "we have consistently supported President Nixon's efforts to wind down the war and bring home American troops," the Post concluded that "it is not worth risking a wider war in order to save Saigon. The President has gone too far, and we hope he can find a way back." The Boston Globe resorted to sarcasm: "We hope that as the crisis develops and we approach the brink of disaster, those on the other side will show as much feeling for basic humanity as the Administration has for saving face."

Many papers rallied behind Nixon. The Richmond News Leader said that "practically every American can take pride" in Nixon's stand. Hearst's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, sometimes critical of the President in the past, now swung behind his "response to Communist aggression." New York's Daily News figured that 90% would back Nixon: "The other 10% could include kooks, would-be Presidents, Nixon-hating politicians, commentators and columnists, domestic Reds and others who have sabotaged the war effort for years and still have a right to freedom of speech and press." The Daily News came close to demanding an end to all dissent, but the nation's press showed no signs of muting the debate.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.