McGovern had not convinced them that they deserve more, nor that they are not getting their fair share of the nation's income. And so, he was not going to be able to sell a plan for radical income redistribution--there was no demand.

Whether to propose the negative income tax remained an open question until late August, but the thought of proposing it was finally dropped, a few days before McGovern presented his new tax and welfare reform proposals to New York's Society of Security Analysts. Though the negative income tax was much less generous than the demogrant, it was still a very generous plan. Politically, it possessed most of the same vulnerabilities as the demogrant: it, too, would be hard to explain, it would appear to put many millions "on welfare," and it would be attacked for its cost. The plan was moderate only from a very liberal perspective.

THE ADVICE of politicians and politically-minded aides played a key role in the final decision to drop the negative income tax. From inside the campaign, McGovern was being urged to drop the plan by Van Dyk and Paul Offner, a former aide to Senator Gaylord Nelson who joined the campaign to work on economic issues in mid-August. Offner believes that, until he brought it to their attention, McGovern and Weil had not considered the fact that the plan would put a third of the nation "on welfare", though Weil denies this.

Offner and Van Dyk argued that McGovern should propose jobs for the poor and concentrate on Nixon's mismanagement of the economy. And they persuaded McGovern's liberal Senate friends--Gaylord Nelson, Alan Cranston, and Abraham Ribicoff--to urge him not to propose the Ross plan.

Alvin Schorr, a social work expert who had advised McGovern's Senate Committee on Nutrition, also warned that the proposal would be politically fatal and argued that it was much more feasible to reduce poverty by giving the poor a greater share of Social Security and similar benefits.

AND SO, finally a speech was written which proposed a million public service jobs, increased minimum Social Security benefits, and an upgrading of welfare benefits for poor people who are not covered by Social Security and cannot work. Under this upgraded system, a family of four would receive $4000 in cash and food stamps--a gesture of continued commitment to the $4000 minimum implicit in McGovern's $1000 per person proposal.

But the "question of income supplements for working people who, in spite of their labor, still have trouble making ends meet," was deferred for further study. "I have asked some of the nation's leading economists to continue work on a system of tax credits and tax reductions to assist low and moderate income persons," McGovern said, but added, "The ultimate resolution of this question must be the subject of careful study by both the Congress and the Executive Branch."

And so, income redistribution was buried as an issue of the 1972 Presidential campaign. Efforts had been made to revive the corpse, but they were doomed to failure.

What was the lesson of it all? That complex, progressive proposals have no chance in the political arena? That the only safe campaign is an empty, conservative one? Perhaps. But we might conclude instead that this proposal never had the chance it deserved, that if it had been properly prepared and better understood by the candidate, it might have fared better. We cannot know for sure. The experiment was hardly conclusive.

(Quotes from transcript of Face the Nation courtesy of CBS News.)