The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

on the World Today

WHEN the Eisenhower Administration took office eight years ago, its policy was motivated by the Taft-Eisenhower agreement to decrease, or at least to limit, the role of the federal government. Before long this was evident in many ways: taxes were cut, the level of the bureaucracy declined, “No new starts” became the motto in many fields other than just reclamation. In world affairs it was still popular to speak of “the American century” and to look forward to a continuation of the dominant position of the United States around the globe.

Now, as the Kennedy Administration is about to take office, the prospects, compelled by events abroad and the presidential campaign at home, augur for a beginning full of furor in contrast to the quiet staff work which marked the first months eight years ago. What is now immediately ahead is certain to resemble in many ways the famous “First Hundred Days” of the Franklin Roosevelt Administration back in 1933.

Even before John F. Kennedy takes the oath of office at noon on January 20 the turor will have begun, specifically with a quarrel in both Senate and House over rules of procedure under which the new, 87th Congress will operate. The Senate will argue over a change in Rule 22, which permits the filibuster; the House will argue over curbing the autocratic power of its Rules Committee.

Of the two issues, the latter is far more important. The filibuster of late has been an anticivil rights weapon, but Kennedy has promised to use the already existing executive power, as Eisenhower seldom did, to make advances in civil rights. Unless the grip of the conservative-controlled House Rules Committee is loosened, any Kennedy measure of a liberal-progressive nature is likely to end behind that roadblock.

In these initial skirmishes, even before the new President takes office (because the Congress meets two weeks before inauguration), Kennedy must depend on his Capitol Hill leaders, House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who will hold his post until he takes the oath as Vice President on January 20. Their inclination is certainly to leave the filibuster rule as it is but to loosen the Rules Committee grip by some device or other.

Johnson, on becoming Vice President, will turn over the majority leadership to Senator Mansfield of Montana. But Mansfield, now Johnson’s assistant, is not a man to insist on a large role for himself. Johnson and Rayburn are as wise in the ways of Congress as any other two leaders of Congress in our history; both are devoted to the liberal aims of their party and to making the Kennedy Administration a success. The closeness of the election makes a working triumvirate an imperative, and by every indication Kennedy is intent on just that.

The Republican—Southern Democratic coalition has been somewhat strengthened by the election of two additional GOP senators and twenty-two Republican congressmen. But mere mathematics does not tell the true story. The Democratic majorities remain very large, big enough for victory and not so big as to be unmanageable. All eyes, of course, will be on the new President and how he measures up to his own concept of the office.

The presidential power

“The history of this nation — its brightest and its bleakest pages — has been written largely in terms of the different views our Presidents have had of the presidency itself.” Senator Kennedy said these words at a National Press Club luncheon last January 14. Taken with the kind of campaign Kennedy waged throughout 1960, they tell a great deal. His theme was that the nation faced a choice between “the contented” and “the concerned.” Whatever may have influenced individual voter choices, there is no doubt that millions are concerned about our country and where it is going, or not going, at home and in the world.

To say that the closeness of the election means that Kennedy has no real mandate is to fly in the face of history. Since 1840, Kennedy is the tenth man to be elected without a majority of all the votes cast for all candidates; in two cases, the winner had a smaller popular vote than the loser. The President elected with the smallest percentage of the popular vote in American history was Abraham Lincoln.

The mandate is, in fact, what the President makes of it. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the Harvard historian, more than a year ago wrote a little pamphlet about what he called the “inherent cyclical rhythm in our national affairs.” He took the view that in this century there were periods of “positive government” from 1900 to 1920 and from 1930 to 1950, with periods of passivity in the decades 1920 to 1930 and 1950 to 1960. What Schlesinger then contended was that the pendulum was about to swing again, sometime in the early 1960s, to another period of action.

As Kennedy said after his election, he had made it clear during the campaign that the nation must have action and that, if elected, he would provide it. For that matter, Vice President Nixon, as the campaign went on, also began to pledge a movement forward. The difference was in degree.

Kennedy’s pledges

Kennedy’s domestic campaign pledges were more specific than those in the foreign field. There is no doubt he will try to make good on such issues as medical care for the aged under social security, aid to depressed areas, a $1.25 minimum wage, federal aid to education, and some sort of farm measure.

In the foreign field the task will be more difficult, for no President is alone master of the conditions he faces; he is limited by the shape of world events, especially by the actions of Moscow and Peiping. In the foreign field, too, the President-elect will have to depend on his Secretary of State to a considerable degree, however much he intends, as Kennedy doubtless does, to make the critical decisions. For it is the Secretary of State who must run the day-to-day business of diplomacy, the thousand choices which together make policy between the big decisions. It is the Secretary who is in constant communication with the ambassadors around the world and who must do much of the preparatory work in coordinating the views of State, Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission, and others.

The test of a President is, of course, what he does or fails to do. In Kennedy’s case, the test will come early in his term, in the first session of the new, 87th Congress. As an activist President, he will use every weapon at his command to win acceptance of his program in Congress. This includes not only patronage and personal phone calls but the subtle, or not so subtle, pressures a President can exert through the power of the White House on members of his own party.

Much is going to depend on the condition of the nation’s economy by late January or early February, when President Kennedy gives his first State of the Union Address. Those who oppose more foreign aid, for example, now contend that the closeness of the election means that Kennedy has no mandate for such spending. But that is not necessarily true. What does result from the closeness of the vote is a requirement for more skill by the President in approaching Congress with his requests and the necessity to find the broadest-based foreign policy. In this respect, Kennedy’s early meeting, at his own initiative, with Nixon was a welcome sign. So was his effort to coordinate plans with his Vice President-elect.

Johnson’s influence

Lyndon Johnson worked tirelessly for victory, and Kennedy is indeed indebted to him for the electoral votes won in the South — not totally, but to a larger degree than is usual in the case of a vice-presidential candidate.

Johnson has a consuming ambition to be a national statesman rather than the sectional candidate he was tagged as by his liberal enemies. He never sold the idea that he was a Westerner rather than a Southerner. But now he will have the opportunity to rise above section and to be an immense aid to the President in putting over legislation of the broadest national and international importance. The help he received in the election from the Spanish-American population of Texas has made him more appreciative of the problems of those in the lower economic brackets.

A President is President of all the people, even though far from all of them voted for him. Kennedy’s election was the result of efficient bigcity machines, massive support from suburbia, and the overwhelming approval of such groups as the Negroes, the Jews, and union labor. His farm support was much less than expected and was compensated for only by his Southern support.

The Catholic issue has been resolved. Most Washington observers think that Kennedy will be so scrupulous on separation of church and state that the fears of many who voted against him on religious grounds will evaporate through the experience of having a Catholic in the White House.

The civil service

Just how much of a house cleaning Kennedy will conduct after January 20 is hard to foretell. His inclinations toward a broadly based government, politically speaking, are evident enough. He has always said that like-minded Republicans, especially in defense and foreign policy, would be welcome.

When the Eisenhower Administration, after twenty years of Democratic control of the White House, sought to gain control of top policy posts it created what is known as Schedule C — posts exempt from civil service. At last count there were 1216 such posts, almost all at the top salary brackets, but only 360 of them were rated as policy-determining in character. These are the key posts, which almost certainly will be filled by new men. Some Schedule C jobs pay up to $18,500 a year; about 430 are in the range of $10,000 or less. Other employees earn far less, since they are chauffeurs or confidential assistants and secretaries.

The vast bulk of the bureaucracy, however, will continue in office. Among this group are men and women of outstanding ability, some now badly used, who are looking for leadership and inspiration from a new Chief Executive. Others are hacks about which little can be done and nothing is likely to be done; such is the peril of civil service.

Mood of the Capital

Whether the new President will meet the “high hopes” of his campaign song will be suggested by the tone he sets at the very outset of his Administration. His inaugural address and his State of the Union message; the kind of men with whom he surrounds himself; the nature and the success of the program he submits to Congress; the extent to which he tackles the tough issues of Pentagon organization, of gold and dollar drain (where President Eisenhower fortunately helped by ordering a cut in military dependents abroad), and of many other fields — all these will contribute to that tone.

On the asset side for the new President are youth, vigor, intelligence, an ability to make use of the nation’s best brains, political shrewdness, and a sense of history and of America’s destiny in the world of the 1960s.

The election returns showed that a great number of Americans have been infatuated with the pleasures of the “affluent society.” In a sense, then, President Kennedy’s major task is to lead the nation into the rugged period ahead; to create a new national consensus that the easy days are gone for good, that belt tightening is not just a phrase but must become a reality; and to alter radically the widespread attitude that whatever government does affecting industry is somehow evil.

He must give Americans a larger opportunity to participate, through such proposals as his youth corps idea, under which young men could serve the nation abroad in nonmilitary tasks as a substitute for two or three years of service under the draft.

Under the American system the President alone speaks for all of us; if he is inaccessible or inactive, the nation suffers. Americans have been made more aware by the presidential campaign of the great task facing them; now it is the problem of the new Chief Executive to respond to his mandate. The nation can only pray that he succeeds in his task.