The Nation: State of the Union, State of the President

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Lack of Ease. The Administration's try for modulation indicates recognition that despite its accomplishments and promising starts in some fields, something is missing. To be sure, Richard Nixon can take credit for his reasonably successful conduct of foreign affairs. His attempts to reform vital Government functions such as the welfare system and the Post Office have been thoughtful and innovative. His stubborn tight-money policy to curb inflation, though sound up to a point, eventually became a disappointment. Now he is changing to an expansionary approach, supporting an increase of the money supply and deficit spending. He has done little to conciliate the blacks, and the nation's social problems obviously demand more presidential attention than he has thus far given them.

Beyond that programmatic balance sheet, a central failing of the Nixon Administration has to do with an intangible but important matter of tone. As LIFE comments in an editorial this week, the problem involves an isolation from the public, a certain absence of candor, and even Nixon's lack of ease with his fellow men. "So often a nation wants to hear a President speaking to, and for, all of the people," says LIFE, "and so often it hears a Nixon argument tailored to a segment of the public. The curious paradox of Nixon is that even when he is intellectually prepared to act the statesman, he often explains himself through the inferior stratagems of the politician. Many who might rally to a policy recoil from the dissembling that accompanies it." In the end, says the editorial, "for all its underestimated qualities, the Nixon Administration falls short of the lift or the wisdom that the times require and the country longs for."