Nation: How Nixon's White House Works

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one of them who saw me had lost a son in Viet Nam and he told me, 'Mr. President, if you'd gone in sooner and captured that ammunition, you might have gotten the bullet that killed my boy.' So don't anyone give me any crap about not seeing hardhats."

Far Too Early

Nixon's testy reply raises a further question: Even if he does see all kinds of people, does he listen to them? If he does not, his staff cannot help him. And even if he does listen, the sum of what he hears will not necessarily add up to the ultimate form of communication with the country, which is leadership; only an inner certainty can provide that. In Mandate for Change, Dwight Eisenhower argued: "Organization cannot make a genius out of an incompetent; even less can it, of itself, make the decisions which are required to trigger necessary action. On the other hand, disorganization can scarcely fail to result in inefficiency and can easily lead to disaster." Nixon has an organization of his own design, and it functions the way he wants it to. If it isolates him or if he chooses to isolate himself, he will lose political touch. That would cost him dearly in the congressional elections this fall, and it could end his public career in 1972. But it is far too early in his Administration to make any such judgment.