Nation: MOVING AHEAD, NIXON STYLE

IT has long since become a cliche to talk of the caution and deliberation of Richard Nixon's presidency, which sometimes makes the White House seem like Miltown Mansion. But last week, for a change, the people's business was humming at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and on Capitol Hill at a tempo brisker than any heard since Lyndon Johnson's happiest days—and the tune was pretty much the President's. Nixon returned to the capital early in the week from his round-the-world tour with stops in Asia and Rumania; six days later, he flew to California for a month's vacation on the Pacific oceanfront, with a state dinner for the Apollo 11 astronauts in Los Angeles scheduled for this week. It was what came between jet journeys that counted.

While Nixon's relations with Congress have sometimes been clumsy, he won his toughest congressional battle to date when the Senate narrowly went along with his request for funds to start deployment of the Safeguard antiballistic-missile system. Though he had originally planned to defer tax reform for a while, he was happy to claim some of the credit for the historic tax bill passed by the House last week.

No Danger of Wipe-Out

Then he set out to make a little history of his own. Nixon has never been famous for social innovation, but he proposed fundamental reforms in the nation's welfare system. If enacted and if successful, the changes—measures liberal Democrats have often talked about —could become the major domestic accomplishment of his Administration. In a persuasive TV presentation, he spoke of a "New Federalism" in which "power, funds and responsibility will flow from Washington to the states and to the people." And he put forward a plan for federal-state revenue-sharing that could eventually make the slogan mean something.

It is Viet Nam, of course, that remains the most urgent problem. Nixon is expected to announce soon another reduction in U.S. combat troops in South Viet Nam. The inside betting now is that by January the President will have withdrawn a total of 125,000 servicemen —nearly a quarter of the U.S. forces there. And it is Nixon, for all his public defense of the military, who is initiating a constriction not only of American might in Viet Nam, but also of the U.S. armed forces generally. The latest move came last week with the Pentagon's announcement that the 9th Infantry Division would be deactivated.