"MEET THE PRESS" NBC-TV 863

Governor Agnew: No, I am not, but I do feel it is very important
tor the Governors to support the candidate who is most likely to
emerge victorious, provided that the philosophies expressed by the
various candidates are compatible with the individual support.

Mr. Furgurson: Governor Agnew, you were elected as a rather
liberal Republican in a campaign in which your opponent's operation
had racial overtones. But in recent months you yourself have said
things, including your current reference to the riots in Baltimore and
your criticism of some parts of what the Poor People's March is doing,
which indicate that you have undergone a shift in your attitude on
such matters.

Is this correct, or do you merely feel that you are reflecting the
sympathies of the voters in Maryland?

Governor Agnew: I don't try to reflect the sympathies of anyone
where it would do violence with my own opinions and my own con-
victions. The point I'd like to make most emphatically at this point
is that I feel I am more liberal today than I was when I took office,
that I have an even stauncher conviction about the need for equal
opportunity and the removal of discrimination, but that I feel in
some cases the identification of these problems has been so perverted
by extremists who are attempting to connect the civil rights movement
with things totally divorced from it, the efforts of the new left to link
up with the civil rights movement and to do away with the honor that
we traditionally pay our country. The making of nationalism into a
nasty word, or patriotism into something we should abhor rather
than support, has not changed me, nor has it changed my convictions,
but the thrust and the identification of what we are trying to do in
this country is changing because too many people are concerned with
what is happening in these extremist movements.

Mr. Furgurson: Do you want to put your finger on any of these
extremist leaders that you have spoken of?

Governor Agnew: I have identified them before, and I see no use-
ful purpose in attempting to recap them because I am afraid that I
might do some one of them dignity by leaving him out.

Mr. Broder: Governor Agnew, you said that you had been very
impressed by Mr. Nixon's conduct in this campaign. What kind of
leadership is it when every time there is a crisis or every time someone
is assassinated in this country, Mr. Nixon goes into a moratorium and
disappears from the public scene?