AMERICAN NOTES: A Choice, Not an Echo

Richard Nixon is sometimes given to hyperbole—as when he proclaimed his New American Revolution or said after the first moon landing, "This is the greatest week in the history of the world," a claim that slighted certain events like the birth of Christ. At a press conference last week in the Oval Office, the President declared that the differences between himself and George McGovern this year presented American voters with "the clearest choice in this century."

The claim was only moderately extravagant. On defense, on foreign policy, on most economic assumptions, in their view of America's role in the world, Nixon and McGovern are instinctive opposites. In some cases, though, like the question of guaranteed annual income, the differences may be in rhetoric and degree rather than in principle. In addition, Nixon seemed to be ignoring 1964, when Barry Goldwater proclaimed "a choice, not an echo." Perhaps more significant, the President was forgetting 1932, the year when F.D.R. defeated Herbert Hoover in one of the deep-sea changes of American life. Whether McGovern's program would affect the U.S. as deeply as the New Deal did is an open question. The issues of 1972 have not yet been clearly drawn. Only after McGovern has solidly staked out his positions will the scope of the choice be obvious, and even then the decision might turn on such nonsubstantive issues as personality and credibility.