Nixon's Complaint

For a moment last week Richard Nixon reclaimed one of the old rhetorical battlegrounds that Spiro Agnew vacated recently when he assumed his loftier persona. In an address before the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, the President attacked "the so-called opinion leaders in this country." Specifically, Nixon was angry at "the leaders of the media, the presidents of our universities, professors and some of our top businessmen" for not supporting his bombing policies or his May 8 decision to mine Haiphong harbor.

As he sometimes does, the President struck a note combining truculence and self-pity. His critics have failed, Nixon went on, "to understand the importance of great decisions and the necessity to stand by the President of the United States when he makes a terribly difficult, potentially unpopular decision."

Those critics might reply that the President's current policies are demonstrably not all that unpopular. The more difficult--and therefore usually the more dangerous--a decision, the more clearly it is the duty of "opinion leaders" to raise questions, doubts and warnings. Whatever the ultimate historical verdict on the bombing and mining, a free press cannot be a cheering section or a propaganda arm of the Government--even if a longed-for settlement in Viet Nam might bring about a truce as well between Nixon and the reporters who, after all, are paid to maintain a critical eye.

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