Nation: THE G.O.P.'S REAL MISSION

A people has to want something. What do we want now? If the highest goal we can come up with is to grow a little fatter, our days as a great nation are numbered. From that standpoint, our domestic crisis might be viewed as a God-given opportunity.

JOHN GARDNER, addressing the Republican Platform Committee in Miami Beach last week, might have added that the nation's unhappy mood has given the G.O.P. an exciting and historic chance as well. Not since 1952 has the party in power been so vulnerable. Even without an Ike like figure atop their lead elephant, the Republicans have both the opportunity and the will to reoccupy the White House in January and to re-establish credentials that they have not held since Herbert Hoover's day.

Organism for 1968. Tied up with the party's chances of winning is the larger question for the nation: how the Republicans seek to win. They could attempt to capitalize on the electorate's fears and frustrations by promising the cheap and the quick: a smaller tax bite for the middle class and a bigger night stick for the ghetto. Or they could attempt the far more demanding mission of conducting what Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer calls "the politics of realism"—of identifying the direction to be taken and setting the difficult course for the journey.

The convention begins the long process of deciding what kind of organism a party chooses to make of itself in an election year. It labels two men the most qualified of all to govern and lead the nation. It provides a platform that, even though frequently ignored, can indicate the party's direction. It can set a tone and a mood that either help or hurt its ticket.

Senator Everett Dirksen, Platform Committee chairman, set out to write a "pungent" document that "any Republican can run on." It was obviously being molded, however, with Richard Nixon's shoe size in mind. All sides represented on the committee seemed determined to avoid the acrimony of 1964. Yet the proceedings, along with other recent discussions, outlined the party's options on the year's two major issues, Viet Nam and domestic upheaval.

Phasing Out. On Viet Nam, California's Governor Ronald Reagan stood pretty much alone among prominent party men defending the hard line. He pooh-poohed the Paris peace talks as primarily Communist propaganda. He questioned the bombing limitation over North Viet Nam. In the text of his remarks before the Platform Committee, he underlined his hope that "we will fight to win."

Neither Nixon nor New York's Nelson Rockefeller appeared before the Dirksen group. In a statement sent to the committee, Nixon broke his four-month silence on Viet Nam to adopt a position close to Rockefeller's, but with few specifics. Rockefeller's stand came last month in a detailed proposal envisaging step-by-step military disengagement by Hanoi and Washington. Nixon declared: "The war must be ended." He implied that he would treat with the Viet Cong as well as with the North Vietnamese by saying that serious negotiations must include "as many as possible of the powers and interests involved."