"Text of a Pre‐Inauguration Memo From Moynihan on Problems Nixon Would Face," The New York Times, March 11, 1970.

Excerpt: Before the storm breaks, as it were, on the 20th, would like to send in a few extended comments on some of the longer range issues that face you, but will tend, I should imagine, to get lost in the daily succession of crises.

I would like to speak first of the theme “Forward Together.”

This appeal was much in evidence in your very fine acceptance speech at Miami, and during the campaign the logic of events, and your own sure sense of them, brought it forward ever more insist ently.

In the end it was the theme of the campaign and, in the aftermath of victory, it stands as the most explicit mandate you have from the American people. I would hope it might be the theme of your Administration as well.

It has fallen to you to as sume the governance of a deeply divided country. And to do so with a divided Gov ernment. Other Presidents— Franklin Roosevelt, for ex ample—have taken office in moments of crisis, but the crises were so widely per ceived as in a sense to unite the country and to create a great outpouring of support for the President as the man who would have to deal with the common danger.

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