IF RICHARD NIXON can be beaten in 1972, it is essentially because he is still fundamentally vulnerable to the same force that beat him in 1960--and might well have beaten him again in 1968 if Robert Kennedy had lived: a corrected and decidedly hostile black vote.

Richard Nixon--Milhous, Nixon!, et al. not withstanding is no fool. Like any good political card player, he knows where his hand is strong. Given the backing of Big Money and the solvency of the national Republican party Nixon knows he holds the Ace and King of Diamonds for the upcoming campaign. The success of a series of $100-a-plate-and-up dinners and other fund-raising ploys has also made him long in the Diamonds suit.

Despite his either to end the War or exorcise the Duo, depression and inflation, from the national economy, Nixon has retained his strength in Clubs, his trump suit in his victory. Carefully choreographed announcements of troop withdrawals and diplomacy and the statistical of declining crime rates have the AMVETS, Knights of Columbus, and Clubs card carriers of middle America the belief that the President is down the war and cracking down crime and disorder. Moreover, Nixon been able to "deescalate" in without alienating the career military, military industries or the numerous middle communities whose post-Korean economic growth has been directly proportional to the size of the defense budget; because Nixon has not de-escalated expenditures. As a result Nixon has strength in Wallace Country, largely because towns like Huntsville, Alabama what keeps their bread buttered.

To be sure, the have been breaks in the ranks. Even within party, with McCloskey leading a defection the left and Ashbrook leading one on right. But Nixon has managed to a generally accepted illusion that the is in the process of a directed from Vietnam--he has been so at this hidden-soldier trick that he . The issue of Vietnam will not be an the campaign"--and that his Administration is preparing itself to grapple with the Issues, both domestic and diplomatic, Nixon's second term.

"NIXON'S TERM," one is at once startled and by the notion. The first three year his Presidency have been a persuasive of the leitmotif of his '68 : "Nixon's the One!" He may not be the want, but he is the one you're with. At --writing a piece on the first anniversary State was one of my own--the Nixon affliction seems to threaten to worsen from the chronic to the malignantly permanent.

Fact: Twenty years ago today, Richard Nixon was Vice-President of the United States. The 18 year olds who discovered yesterday what their chances are of becoming the last American to die in Vietnam and who may, if they live that long, vote for the first time in November were as yet unborn, and as a result, can not read a particular meaning from that fact. But many of their parents can, and must feel a certain nagging respect for the man when they contrast his conspicuous survival with their own sense of dissolution and decline.

Clearly a medium of the Nixonian message has been applied to Madison Avenue. Improved make-up and stylized lighting have erased his five o'clock shadow and Nixon-speak--Vietnamization, Phase II, incursion, game plan--and alliterative Agnewese ring in the inner ear. But no amount of pancake and greasepaint and well-placed Fresnels could gloss Nixon's profound physical gracelessness. There is a fatal slowness about the man that pervades his surprise announcements on national television with the forced enthusiasm and unsuccessful electricity of Ed Sullivan bringing on Baldy Laird and his Vietnamese Dancing Bear as the headliner of another really big show.

Charisma never was and never will be a negotiable asset of Nixon's, but the man who brought us the forgettable public tragedies of Checkers and Cambodia and the toothless tiger of Phase II has proven that we do not value charisma as much as we think we do. Or that, more precisely, charisma is not the sine qua non that it is cracked up to be. His career testifies that a patient, practised and lucky player can finesse a winner from a political hand as apparently irreparably weak as Nixon's was after his defeat in California in '62.

"I think the idea is rather prevalent among a great number of people that what the country needs is a spectacular, if not flamboyant, charismatic figure as a leader," Nixon has said. "There are some others, however, who might say that when you really have a crunch, when it is really tough, when the decision made in this office may determine the future of war and peace, not just now but for generations to come, that you had better make the choice in terms of an individual who is totally cool, detached and with some experience. Now I am not describing anybody, of course..." Nixon said, poker-faced.

III

ONE CAN WIN at political poker through a number of proven strategies: a Fair Deal, a Square Deal, a New Deal. If Nixon wins in November, the strategy of the Big Sleep will have to be added to the list of successful political approaches.

A modern Rip Van Winkle, emerging from a 20-year siesta in Sleepy Hollow, would probably vote for Nixon in September because it would be the only name on the ballot he would recognize. Moreover, he would not only recognize the name but also the style, for as Nixon himself notes, his style has not been adapted to keep pace with the times.

Since '68, Humphrey has let his sideburns down. Wallace has de-emphasized race in his rhetoric, and McCarthy has tergiversated on the mere question of his candidacy. Through it all, Nixon has been as fundamentally constant as the northern star. "I don't intend to change my style," he has said. "I determined that when I came into office. Of course I couldn't if I wanted to."

It is precisely Poor Richard's recognition of the limits of his adaptability that has allowed him to accrue a certain strength in the Hearts suit of his political hand. Through two decades of social change, he has remained recognizably unfashionable, but through his ability to defuse this weakness as an issue he has managed to survive--as if he had been granted a divine exemption from the laws of Darwinian adaptation--to the point that he has lulled many voters into the political sleep of resignation and parlayed his personal weaknesses into strengths. What was derided in a Congressman as trickiness is in a President proclaimed by Time as the "flair for secrecy and surprise that has marked his leadership as both refreshingly flexible and disconcertingly unpredictable...(and made Nixon) undeniably Man of the Year."

Like any good poker player running a bluff, Citizen Richard does not adapt, but forces adaptation: "I am the President!" Deal with it.

In so doing he has carved a formidable political image on the national consciousness: Nixon is the one who in spite of all of the hostile indifference of the deck has bluffed future shock.

IV

HOWEVER, IT IS UNDENIABLY CLEAR that Nixon is bluffing, hoping that he can finesse a return ticket to the White House. Completing a suit-by-suit survey of his political hand for '72, one is suddenly aware of the reason for the bluff. He has a fatal void in Spades.