A Creeping Paralysis

In Paris and Peoria, in Frankfurt and Fresno, the question hovers: has the unfolding Watergate scandal so monopolized the attention of the Nixon Administration that it has ceased to function effectively? The doubts have been most urgent in the field of economics, and there the answer is at least faintly reassuring. The Administration does seem to have pulled itself together sufficiently to shape a new anti-inflation policy. In other areas, the answer is less heartening.

On the day-to-day level, the federal bureaucracy rolls on as before: collecting taxes, mailing social security checks and performing the myriad other housekeeping tasks of Government. But in many matters requiring policy decisions, a creeping paralysis has set in. In one of his first public pronouncements after being appointed Nixon's chief domestic adviser last week, former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird declared:"The Government in some quarters is at a standstill."

For example, the President's proposed trade bill, which would give him greater power and flexibility in negotiating with foreign nations, seems stalled, partly because the Administration's loss of prestige has strengthened the hand of protectionists. Nixon's pledge to formulate a new welfare-reform proposal is getting little push, and there is a notable lack of progress in shaping a new national health-insurance package. A less than adequate effort has been made to round up support for the Administration's special revenue-sharing program, which had been languishing even before the Watergate scandal broke open. Under special revenue sharing, money that has been doled out from Washington for narrowly restricted purposes, such as supplying books and materials to school libraries, would be consolidated into block grants for states and cities to spend as they saw fit for very broad purposes like education.

How much more activity there might have been without Watergate is difficult to measure. For all the White House claims to what its critics have seen as regal power, the Nixon Administration's domestic philosophy has never been activist. Quite the opposite; the President has often proclaimed a desire to reduce Washington's role in national life--or, as he once more vividly put it, to "get Big Government off your back and out of your pocket."

Even some efforts in that direction have been stalled. Earlier this year, the Labor Department's Manpower Administration was told to draw up regulations for dismantling its job-training programs and shifting the responsibility to states and cities under special revenue sharing. The bureaucrats dutifully drafted a plan for publication in the Federal Register on July 1 (the start of fiscal 1974), a mandatory step before implementing an Executive order. Yet the Manpower Administration has received no further instructions, there is no time left to meet the publishing deadline and the staff sits around waiting for the fall of the ax that no one seems to have remembered to swing.

Much of this drift can be laid to the relative disarray in the White House, which was formerly run with the highhanded authoritarianism of a Prussian drill field by the President's two top aides, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.

Since the Watergate findings forced their resignations, the army of bureaucrats and other Government officials are having difficulty getting firm direction. The arrival of Laird at the White House could improve matters. Until very recently the Administration has also been hard put to find good people to fill key Administration slots that require Senate confirmation. At present about 30 are vacant, among them an Under Secretary of Treasury, a Deputy Secretary of Defense and 20 ambassadorships.

The Watergate mess has left its mark in varying degrees on some key departments and agencies. The State Department is operating effectively under Secretary William P. Rogers, but the Defense Department has gone through three Secretaries in less than six months. Elliot Richardson had barely succeeded Laird when Watergate made it necessary for him to take the job of Attorney General and be replaced by James Schlesinger, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

This rapid turnover comes at a time when the military, still dazed by a Viet Nam hangover, is standing wearily on the sidelines wondering which direction to take, what strategy to follow and against which enemy--if any--to plan.

Much of the excitement and spirit of the Environmental Protection Agency diminished when--again because of Watergate--William Ruckelshaus was drafted temporarily to run the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Since the President has now appointed Kansas City Police Chief Clarence M. Kelley permanent FBI director, Ruckelshaus' future is uncertain. His able stand-in at EPA, Robert Fri, now insists he will be returning to private life in a few weeks.

On top of all this, the clout that the President once wielded over Congress has diminished. Last week, for instance, the House thumbed down by 19 votes an Administration minimum-wage proposal and passed instead a more generous Democratic bill that Nixon's aides had handily blocked in 1972 on grounds that it would be inflationary. More such defeats will inevitably come unless the President can demonstrate that he has regained the energy to govern purposefully. The announcement of a new anti-inflation program this week would be the best way for Nixon to start: it would demonstrate that he recognizes which problem has been most seriously aggravated by the Government's paralysis.

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