The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

on the World Today

WHETHER members of the House of Representatives should continue to be elected for two-year terms, as the Constitution prescribes, or for four-year terms running concurrently with a presidential term is an old argument among politicians and political scientists. It is safe to assume that there will be no change. But it is useful, in looking back at the last election and forward to the new 88th Congress, to consider the House.

The Founding Fathers created the House as body closest to the people. Senators originally were elected indirectly through state legislatures. Election of House members every two years was decreed to keep them close to the electorate, and in many ways it has. Of course, a House member is barely in his seat after one election before he must begin plotting the next, or so many of them contend. As a general rule, the first session of each Congress — that is, the first year of each two-year term — is more relaxed than the second. In the second year, as 1962 demonstrated, representatives are very conscious of both primary and general elections and are more sensitive to the possible effect on the voters of legislation they have under consideration than they are in the first year.

The new Congress will not differ from its recent predecessors in these or other respects. In 1963 the President will send up a program of leftovers from the previous Congress, matters like medical care for the aged and aid to public education in one form or another. These will be fought over once again, with a degree of success it would be rash to forecast. There will be new issues, such as the promised tax cut and the related tax reform. Again, there is likely to be a struggle of great intensity and of considerable importance.

Yet the outcome of the 1962 congressional election, especially of the election of House members, was such that the pace of progress, as the President secs progress, in domestic affairs is not going to be materially increased. One can read the election returns, as the Administration does, as showing more demand for medicare than resistance to it, but the net change in votes was not very great.

On the more crucial issue of speeding up the national rate of economic development, the election returns offered little enlightenment. Those who want a spending cut with a tax cut doubtless will contend that they were sustained by the voters, and so will those who argue that only a tax cut with continued spending can boost the economy. The fact is that the conventional wisdom of the former position is still very strong, perhaps stronger in the Congress than in the country, and therefore it will take a combination of education and pressure by the President to put through a tax cut without a big cut in spending, which would defeat his purpose of recharging the economy.

The margins for or against the President’s domestic programs in the new 88th Congress will probably be about as close as they were the past two years. A rundown of the new members, man by man, does show reason to expect a few more pro-Kennedy votes from the same number of nonSouthern Democrats, chiefly because of the big infusion of New Frontiersmen from the expanded California delegation. Every vote will be needed.

Not much change in Congress

The initial battle in January will be the same as it was two years ago — the power of the House Rules Committee. In the 1961 showdown, it took all of the formidable influence of the late Speaker Rayburn plus the glow of the new President’s election after eight Republican years of White House occupancy to squeeze out a bare five-vote margin to trim the Rules Committee’s autocratic power. Just how the issue will be put will be matter of discussion until shortly before Congress convenes on January 9. The outcome, however the issue is put, will be crucial in that it will set the tone for the two years of the 88th Congress’ life. If Kennedy can win this time by a few more than five votes, he hopes to squeeze through some of the domestic programs which fell by the wayside the past two years.

Essentially, however, a look at the election returns shows that the nation voted for moderation. The extremists of both right and left — and those of the tight were much noisier and better financed — did not get very far in 1962. But moderation does not mean stagnation; it means progress in the field of human welfare — of the welfare state, if you like— but at a moderate pace.

The new governors

Most of the attention in the various races for governor last fall was focused on those Republicans from whose number could come the 1964 presidential nominee — Rockefeller, Romney, Scranton, and Nixon, perhaps Hatfield. The view in Washington is that with Nixon’s elimination, Rockefeller is the man to stop, and it will be very difficult to stop him. But the real meaning of the 1962 gubernatorial elections is to be found in something other than presidential-ticket dreaming. A look across the nation reveals extensive ticket splitting by the American voter, with a predilection for throwing out incumbent governors regardless of parties. It seems apparent that the voters, at least those in the more populous and more urbanized states, are dissatisfied with the kind of state government they have been getting. In many states tax increases played havoc with an incumbent’s chances for re-election.

From this viewpoint, it is remarkable that Rockefeller won so handily, though he did not quite reach his plurality of four years earlier. For Rockefeller had increased taxes and had done a great deal to modernize state government services.

Scranton in Pennsylvania and Romney in Michigan both, in effect, campaigned on a pledge to do what Rockefeller had done — revive state government. Their success or failure in this venture quite likely will have a lot to do with the future of state government. Nixon’s defeat by Brown in California doubtless was compounded of many factors, but surely one of them was a feeling by many that Brown, in his own way, had at least run a responsible government responsive to the major problems of his state.

It is of more than passing interest, too, that while Scranton won, his GOP senatorial running mate, Van Zandt, lost, and that while Romney won, his congressman-at-large running mate, Bentley, also lost, there being no Senate race in Michigan. The voters voted the man, quite clearly, and they separated state issues from national issues.

The effect of the cuban crisis

Politicians are going to argue into the indefinite future as to the effect last November 6 of the Cuban crisis. For one thing, it probably did bring out a larger total vote than was otherwise indicated by the pre-crisis signs of general voter apathy. But which candidate was helped? Here again, one must come back to moderation.

President Kennedy, when he did act, acted with both speed and determination. But in retrospect, he was not reckless; he did not demand of Khrushchev an unconditional surrender, which no major opponent could grant short of military defeat. Probably the defeat of veteran Republican Senator Capehart in Indiana did more to silence the war hawks in the United States than any other single election result. That men such as Bentley, Judd, and Van Zandt (who had called his opponent, Senator Clark, a coward over Cuba) went beyond the moderation the public wanted, whereas the President stuck to it, now seems evident.

The Cuban crisis, of course, also demonstrated once again that in foreign affairs it is only the Chief Executive who can act. The Congress can advise, it can hamper or heckle, but it cannot lead. And if the President leads firmly, as he did in the events of October, the Congress will quickly fall in behind him.

Central to American foreign policy is the growth of what Kennedy has called the “Atlantic partnership.”Here psychological problems are very important, and the strong but not bellicose Kennedy stand on Cuba has strengthened the power of America’s word in its commitments to Berlin. But the nuclear-weapons issue is still unresolved, and is likely to remain so for some time.

Disunity in the Communist bloc

It could well turn out, however, that the biggest decisions of 1963 affecting all mankind will be made not in the West but in the East. Indeed, the most spectacular long-term development this past year was not the movement, however halting, toward unity in the Atlantic alliance but the increasing disunity in the Communist bloc. Differences which began in low key back in 1958 broke into open thunder by 1960. and by the time of the Cuban crisis and the Chinese attack on India in late 1962, were at an all-time high.

What occurs in the West, of course, directly bears on relations within the Communist bloc. Thus, as the State Department’s intelligence chief, Roger Hilsman, recently pointed out: “Behind his [Mao Tse-tung’s] picturesque phrase, ‘East Wind prevails over West Wind,’is Mao’s insistence that Moscow should be the one to push the West around. In fact, if you look back on the Chinese Communist position in every crisis you will find Peiping has urged Moscow to “go for broke" — in 1958, it was Lebanon; in 1959, Berlin; in 1960, the Congo; in 1961, Berlin again; and now in 1962, Cuba.” This indeed is true, and hence Cuba has been of the utmost importance.

Cuba, Americans quickly learned, was not just an issue involving Fidel Castro but a direct confrontation between the United States and the U.S.S.R., the two nuclear giants. But it was something more — an additional strain on Soviet-Chinese relationships, which led the Chinese to cry out aloud that Khrushchev was acting the man of Munich in pulling his missiles out of Cuba.

The crisis in Communist bloc relationships is marked by what has come to be a personal dislike of Khrushchev for Mao and vice versa. But it has grown far bigger than the two men, and the death or disappearance of either or both would do no more than temporarily mitigate the rift between the two key Communist nations, and especially between the Party hierarchies which run each of them.

It is still true, as American officials constantly warn, that, in Hilsman’s words, “the Communist ideology, with its goal of world revolution, still provides an overall basis for unity between Peiping and Moscow.” But things have reached such a state that a break between the two of at least the proportions of the 1948 Soviet-Yugoslav break is now a definite possibility; indeed, some consider it inevitable. If such a schism comes, it would be of monumental importance, though its ultimate results would be most dangerous to guess.

Furthermore, the Chinese attack on India is likely in the long run to have an almost equally important result in destroying the illusion that somehow knowledgeable men of goodwill can be neutral between Communism and democracy. Of course, it will not resolve the problems of the democracies, but it already is blunting the penetration of Asia, Africa, and Latin America by Communist ideology.

Mood of the Capital

In the Cuban crisis Kennedy found himself, and the Kennedy Administration passed the critical test of its ability to perform under fire. After Kennedy’s 1961 meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna, the President was so shocked by the Soviet leader that he felt he must decide in his own mind whether in a final showdown over Berlin he could accept nuclear war. His associates reported that he had come to the decision that he could and would, if there were no honorable way out.

Cuba suddenly and unexpectedly tested that determination. Happily for Kennedy and the world, the United States did not have to go to war, nuclear war. But there appears to be no doubt that the President was ready and willing. While the major developments of the October crisis are on the public record, a good many facets will remain hidden until the historians get at the documents years hence. Yet enough hints and bits of information are available to let it be said that preparations for the worst had been made, along with the decision to face it if necessary.

Cuba was a quick crisis; there was little time to philosophize; there was time only for bold decision and quick but not reckless action. The air of confidence, but fortunately not of overconfidence, which has resulted should help see the Administration through new crises, be they over Berlin or something else.