How Executives Rate Nixon

BUSINESS executives are usually the most zealous supporters of a Republican President, but they show considerable reluctance about Richard Nixon. In 1968 the President won the votes of 84% of the officers (vicepresidential rank or higher) who run the nation's 500 largest industrial companies. He may well win as many this year, but largely because the executives see no acceptable alternative. James Howell, vice president of First National Bank of Boston, says that many of his high-ranking colleagues, "being typically New England businessmen, would like to support Nixon, but they find it a damn difficult job to do." The chief of one of the blue-chip corporations represented on the Business Council, an advisory group to the Administration, is only slightly more complimentary: "Nixon is not brilliant, or the best we have had, but he is what we've got."

No Lark. Such responses are typical of scores of men in command of major corporations interviewed last week by TIME correspondents. Hardly anyone would be quoted by name. Businessmen dare not risk alienating whoever wields the vast and increasing power of government. The majority are certain that Nixon will win re-election and do not want him to read and remember even the most mildly critical opinions; those disposed to compliment the President often do so privately lest a possible Democratic successor mark their words. Most doubt that Nixon has brought the nation's foreign or economic problems under control--but they also doubt that anyone else would do better. Some company officers still nurse scars of the 1970 recession, which resulted from Nixon's earlier attempts to stop inflation by slowing the economy. Says Robert Rowan, president of Detroit-based Fruehauf Corp.: "It was a hell of a lot easier to make money under Johnson than it has been under Nixon. The last three years have been anything but a lark."

Businessmen almost unanimously fault Nixon for allowing inflation to rage much too long before imposing controls. When he finally did put on controls, however, he won new sympathy from executives, including Democrats. "You have to give him credit for having the flexibility to change from a disastrous policy of tight money and laissez-faire," says Howard Stein, head of the Dreyfus Corp., who was chief fund raiser for the 1968 campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy.

Quite a few businessmen are in favor of controls but annoyed by bureaucratic confusion in applying them. Both Rawleigh Warner Jr., chairman of Mobil Oil, and John Watlington, president of Winston-Salem's Wachovia Bank, say that the Price Commission has accused their companies of not filing required profit reports, although in fact they did. At the Price Commission, says Warner, "the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing." The quickening upturn in business the last few months has allayed many executives' doubts about Nixon, but others still worry that the domestic economic difficulties have been temporarily soothed, not solved. "We are not really holding down inflation," says Ralph Ablon, chairman of Ogden Corp., the Manhattan-based conglomerate. Like many other executives, Ablon is also "very concerned about the balance of payments, the strength of the dollar and the budget deficits."

On the foreign front, most businessmen support Nixon's mining of North Vietnamese ports, but their feeling seems to be at least as much a patriotic rally-round-the-flag reaction as specific approval of the move. The head of a major aerospace corporation told a private management meeting that "even if you don't support the President's war policies--which I happen to--you have an obligation to unite behind him during this difficult time." Other corporate chiefs are nervous about the threat of an intensified war but support Nixon because they believe that he is genuinely eager to get the U.S. out of Viet Nam. There is no discernible support in the business community for staying in Viet Nam and fighting to a finish; even in conservative Texas, many executives would accept a coalition government in Saigon as a way for the U.S. to leave the war "with honor." There will be a noticeable rise in businessmen's support of Nixon if he comes home from Moscow with a handsome new deal for increased U.S.-Soviet trade.

Despite the lack of enchantment with Nixon, there is no Democratic candidate in sight who stands to collect many business votes. Indeed, businessmen become increasingly pro-Nixon the more they contemplate his opposition. Says Fletcher Byrom, chairman of Koppers Co. in Pittsburgh: "The alternatives to his re-election could be so disastrous that you've got to be for Nixon."

England's Way. George McGovern scares businessmen, including many Democrats, because of his advocacy of deep cuts in the defense budget, minimum-income grants calculated to shift $43 billion a year from the more affluent to the relatively poor and, above all, tax changes that would sharply increase levies on corporations and wealthy individuals. One Pittsburgh steel chief describes his reaction to Mc-Govern as "sheer terror." A California conglomerate boss says: "McGovern's whole program is just plain socialism, which will destroy the incentive system that makes this country great. We will go the way England went, and that means that there will be no free world left." George Wallace has no appeal because he represents poor-man's populism. Hubert Humphrey arouses no passionate opposition but little liking either; executives are wary of his political debts to big labor leaders, who are his strongest supporters. A few businessmen believe that Edmund Muskie might have united the nation, but since he has ceased active campaigning, that is little more than wistful thinking.

Connolly Up. At least one nominal Democrat does win enthusiastic admiration: John Connally. Executives admire him as the architect of Nixon's anti-inflation controls and a tough and successful bargainer with foreign moneymen. "Connally has been good," says Harry Topliss, treasurer of Atlanta's Scientific-Atlanta, a maker of electronic instruments. "The problem of our money had to be solved, and he took a firm stance."

Although devaluation of the dollar and currency realignments last December only temporarily shored up the shaky world financial system, executives believe that Connally made much progress toward winning for the U.S. a more favorable monetary and trade position. An officer of a West Coast conglomerate adds that when Connally addressed the Business Council last year, "he had us jumping up and down cheering." Such sentiments suggest that, should Nixon choose Connally as his Vice President, the Texan will give the ticket a charisma that the President himself cannot provide--at least in the eyes of businessmen.

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