Sweet and Sour Political Rhetoric

CAMPAIGN rhetoric is not always up to the level of 1884, when a Republican helped doom his candidate by calling the Democrats the "party of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." But this season's accumulation of banalities, balderdash, wit (sometimes unintended) and invective is impressive enough. Some of last week's prize entries:

> "I think we can safely say that the only consistent thing about Senator McGovern is his consistent inconsistency."--Spiro Agnew.

> The investigation of the Hiss case "was basically a Sunday school exercise compared to the amount of effort that was put into this [the investigation of the Watergate break-in]."--Richard Nixon.

> "I've changed my positions on fewer fundamental issues than any other person I know of who's ever run for the presidency."--George McGovern.

> "That's very much like Scrooge trying to take credit for the spirit of Christmas."--McGovern, referring to Nixon's attempt to take credit for the increase in social security payments.

>"I have made a commitment, and I make it here again today. There will be no tax increase in 1973. However, there is one problem with that commitment. There will be no presidential tax increase. There could be a congressional tax increase."--Nixon.

> "What really makes my heart bleed is that these bleeding hearts don't have any sympathy for the people that stand in the South Vietnamese marketplace when rockets were deliberately aimed at them."--Agnew.

> "Things are so confused now we don't know if we're dealing with the old Nixon or the new Nixon or the old, old Nixon or the new, new Nixon or even with the old, old, old Nixon."--Sargent Shriver.

> "I guess we've got to just accept the fact that McGovern doesn't have a plan for America. All that the fractional and truncated plans he offers seem to do is make him very popular in some sectors in North Viet Nam."--Agnew.

>"I think there's been enough killing and dying for a corrupt regime. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't be willing to die for something that represents the best that we want to protect in the world."--Eleanor McGovern on whether she would be willing to die for the Thieu regime, as Julie Eisenhower and Pat Nixon had said they would.

>"Nowhere in the Bible, not even in Revelation, is it written that black people have to vote Democratic. McGovern went to France to get a running mate before turning to a black brother here at home."--Alban Niles, a black Democrat for Nixon, speaking at a Republican dinner in Los Angeles.

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