POLITICS: St. George Prepares to Face the Dragon

The fecundity of the unexpected far exceeds the statesman's prudence.

—Proudhon

WITH a cool, shrewd assurance that astounded and dismayed longtime professionals in their party, the neophyte legioris of George McGovern polished off a political miracle in the cramped but controlled atmosphere of Miami Beach's convention hall. The outsiders had barged through the gates of reform to lift the "prairie populist" from national obscurity to the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 18 amazing months. Exuberant only in the early morning hours of their champion's victorious entrance into the hall, they promptly and euphorically vowed to perform a second miracle: the defeat of Richard Nixon. That challenge is not only to the Republican President; it confronts the nation with a historic choice on the kind of society to which it aspires.

In his Messianic drive to unseat Nixon, the minister's son from South Dakota faces even greater handicaps than he did in his astonishing march to the nomination. Although his party suffered no humiliation similar to the one caused by the street violence and turbulence of the 1968 Chicago convention, it emerged from Miami Beach badly split over McGovern's brand of populism and the reformist zeal of his insurgents in taking party control away from its veteran power brokers. At the same time, national approval of Richard Nixon's conduct as President is running at 56%, and a preconvention Gallup poll puts him 16% ahead of McGovern in a two-way race. His sensational summitry has earned widespread praise, even from Democrats. Nixon has skillfully used his presidential powers to take action that could attract traditional Democratic blocs to his side, including his stand against busing and abortion and in favor of aid to parochial schools and relief of the property tax. He moved, however belatedly, to control inflation, and he may yet achieve a ceasefire in Viet Nam before Election Day. History too is on Nixon's side; no incumbent President since Herbert Hoover has lost a bid for a second term.

These formidable facts do not terrify either McGovern or the unorthodox, relatively inexperienced but toughly pragmatic men guiding his campaign. They claim that the conventional political wisdom about the self-interest of various voting blocs, whether labor, blacks, Jews, affluent suburbanites or white-collar professionals is no longer true, and that the blocs are merging into broader concerns that cut across the usual lines, and that regional affiliations are largely losing their meaning. There is a restless, undefinable yearning for change, they say, and it is producing what McGovern termed in his acceptance speech a political ferment comparable to "the eras of Jefferson, Jackson and Roosevelt." "We're just trying to ride the waves that are coming in," explains one of McGovern's top theorists, Fred Dutton, a lawyer who advised both John and Robert Kennedy.