New York, June 6—Congressman Paul McCloskey is the gentleman from California who proposes to Dump Nixon, which is the elegant phrase we are encouraged to use nowadays, and of course the very use of it contributes to the humpty-dumptiness of Mr. Nixon’s image. Imagine, by contrast, a movement called: Dump Lorenzo the Magnificent? Somehow, the words cannot navigate their way out of one’s mouth.
Speaking of mouths, Mr. McCloskey uses his with extraordinary looseness. The kind of things he goes about the country saying—that Mr. Nixon and his ambassadors and representatives are liars and enemies of the Constitution, that they are engaged in unlawful and genocidal activity, “exactly the same thing we hanged the German generals for”—would have made Joe McCarthy blush for the immoderation of it all. But, of course, in criticizing Nixon, every good liberal is expected to sound like Herblock, and nobody is going to blow the whistle; especially not against Pete McCloskey, an attractive war hero whose grasp of the issues is, well, indistinct.
Comments