Society: Loosening Up

It is 1973, and the neighborhood draft dodger triumphantly has returned home from Sweden to take one of the newly created jobs at Freedom Fleet, Unltd., a bus company shuttling ghetto children to racially balanced schools in the suburbs. After work, the ex-expatriate picks up his date at the friendly corner abortion parlor, stops next door at Pot City for some A capulco gold, and then trips off to Timothy Leary's Dizzy-land, a new chain of rock-'n'-roll-your-own nightclubs springing up in abandoned American Legion halls.

IF George McGovern is elected President, such might be the exaggerated vision conjured up by his severest critics as well as his most ardent admirers. Though outlandish, the projection suggests something of the difficulty that McGovern faces in promulgating his social policies: how to allay the fears of one group while sustaining the hopes of the other. When he first declared his candidacy 17 months ago, Dark Horse McGovern could afford an image of permissiveness to solidify the allegiance of his youthful followers. Now, as the surprise Democratic front runner who needs to broaden his constituency, the proponent of "straight talk" is spinning out a few left-to-right curves on the more crucial social issues:

AMNESTY. McGovern once left the impression that, save for deserters, he favored unqualified amnesty for "those who, on the grounds of conscience, have refused to participate in the Viet Nam tragedy." In the Nebraska primary, where the amnesty issue was used against him, he hinted that he might recommend some form of volunteer service for draft evaders: "If I had left the country rather than participate in war, I would want to do that."

Since then he has not mentioned that possible proviso, preferring to point out that his attitude on draft evasion was shared by Presidents Lincoln, Coolidge and Truman, all of whom granted amnesty following previous wars.

BUSING. Of all the Democratic contenders, McGovern was deemed the strongest advocate of busing to achieve school desegregation. Shortly before the Florida primary, however, a column in the Washington Post claimed that McGovern was on the verge of softening his stand on busing. The report was true; McGovern was considering a shift in position, but the Post's revelation caused such a furor among his supporters that he held back.

Similarly, on TV's Issues and Answers, he allowed that he might look with favor upon the nomination of Senator Robert Byrd to the Supreme Court, despite the conservative record of the West Virginian, who is antibusing. Next day McGovern retracted the statement. His present stand is that he is "sympathetic to parents who are concerned about their children being sent to inferior schools" and that he "wouldn't be distressed" if the Supreme Court ordered lower courts to "back off" from extensive busing directives in metropolitan areas. He nonetheless still believes that busing is an "important tool for breaking down some segregation."

ABORTION. "Abortion is a private matter which should be decided by a pregnant woman and her own doctor," McGovern has said. "Once the decision is made, I do not feel that the laws should stand in the way of its implementation."

In Nebraska last month, responding to accusations that he favors abortion, McGovern insisted that there must be regulating legislation: "You can't just let anybody walk in and request an abortion." More recently, he has submerged his personal beliefs about abortion, stating that it is an issue that each state must decide.

DRUGS. McGovern opposes the legalization of marijuana. He does, however, favor reducing the charge of possession from a felony to a misdemeanor punishable by fines and not prison sentences. As for hard drugs, he says that no penalty is too harsh in dealing with the "murderous, unprincipled" pushers.

On occasion he has tempered his current stand on marijuana by suggesting that, pending further research into its possible deleterious effects, a more promising approach might be to regulate the weed along the same lines as alcohol and tobacco.

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