How to Win by Losing

"The fun and games is over," said the chief of field operations of the U.S. Marshals Service. He was referring to Florida Governor Claude Kirk's week-long theater of defiance against the Federal Government. Kirk had refused to allow a court-ordered school busing plan to take effect in Manatee County. His resistance wilted overnight, however, when Federal District Judge Ben Krentzman finally lost patience, cited him for contempt and threatened to fine him $10,000 a day if he continued to obstruct the court order.

When busing got under way last week, there were no incidents, and attendance was almost normal. Yet resistance, fanned by Kirk's stand, still flickered. Ignoring the fact that some children had been bused up to 40 miles before the court order, many parents claimed it was busing, not integration, that they were resisting. "It's like trucking a bunch of cattle around in those buses," complained Linda Stanky, one of the mothers. Pickets appeared in front of school offices, waving signs: "Give us better minds and less mileage" and "The seat of learning is not on a bus."

Love Feast. Despite Kirk's retreat, he had profited from the bizarre affair. For one thing, he won for his cause a powerful friend in court: the Justice Department. The Nixon Administration sought desperately to defuse the situation and avoid confronting the maverick Republican Governor with troops. Before Kirk caved in, Attorney General John Mitchell, in what one Kirk aide called a "love feast," talked by phone with the Governor at least a dozen times. Kirk had the Administration boxed in: almost any federal show of force would have hurt Nixon in the South.

In a sequence of legal contortions, the Administration backed Kirk's position while criticizing his tactics. Kirk wheedled from the Administration a friend-of-the-court brief supporting his appeal of the Manatee case. This only pointed up the ambiguity of the Administration's position; Solicitor General Erwin Griswold at the same time filed a scathing Supreme Court memorandum criticizing Kirk's tactics.

Thank God. Kirk's grandstanding was intended to boost his sagging drive for reelection, recalling the way Orval Faubus and George Wallace had each profitably played would-be Davids against the federal Goliath while in office. Said Florida House Republican Leader Don Reed: "The overwhelming majority of the man in the street doesn't care if it's a stunt or not. Most people like the idea that the guy's got enough guts to get himself involved." For many in Manatee County, that seemed true. Television Repairman Allan W. May expressed his feelings in a sign taped to the side of his truck: "Thank God for Governor Kirk."

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