Washington

on the World Today

WASHINGTON commentators have tried in vain to discover an earlier President who might be compared with Lyndon Johnson. They have suggested Harry Truman and Andy Jackson, and even President Johnson’s political mentor, FDR. Then, just as everyone was concluding that LBJ was unique, unlike anything that has ever happened to Washington before, he wrote a letter to Alice Roosevelt Longworth praising her father, TR, as “the first modern President,”one who converted the Republican Party “into a vehicle that was at once venturesome and hardheaded.”

The Texan was comparing himself with the Republican Roosevelt! Both, of course, were ranchers who loved the soil and the frontier, both utterly untiring, restless, eager to get tilings done, and vain. Both remind one of the wit’s paraphrase of Lord Acton that to a politician absolute power is absolutely delicious. And both, as the President suggested in his modest way, are “venturesome and hardheaded.” Otherwise, the differences are more apparent than the similarities. But “venturesome and hardheaded” describes LBJ at least as well as TR. LBJ also likes “prudent” applied to himself, hardly the first word one would think of in describing TR.

If Johnson is ever placed completely on the defensive and is pinned down by his critics, the country may have real cause for alarm. He would have to burst out somehow. Like TR, he must at all times have a feeling of motion, of forward movement. Fortunately, circumstances have conspired to place him in the White House when the times are right for him.

There is today in Washington a strong feeling of forward movement. The President’s program is venturesome, but it is hardheaded in the sense that it is within the realm of the possible. He is a little ahead of the country, but not much. Congress belongs to him more than any Congress has belonged to a President in thirty years. Politically, he knows how to make the most of every circumstance, especially when the opposition is bewildered, decimated, and tormented. Most important of all, the nation is entering a period of its history when it can afford the Johnson program.

Economy in the Pentagon

Four years ago, President Kennedy asked for substantially larger defense outlays at the same time that he outlined his ambitious domestic programs. It was not surprising that Congress hesitated to do both. Now, however, the emphasis on defense is less because the Kennedy buildup succeeded in its great purpose. Not only is the cost of defense declining in absolute terms; it is declining even more in terms of the percentage of the nation’s total income and the percentage of tax income devoted to defense.

If the President can make even a little progress in negotiating a disarmament agreement, additional billions will be released for tax cuts and internal improvements. For the first time, there are hints that we may be approaching the period when a total test ban is a possibility. Scientific advances may soon make it possible to provide adequate policing against underground tests. The political obstacles, indeed, are believed to be greater than the technical ones. Already Secretary McNamara has effected savings of $2.5 billion annually; the President has saved an additional $.5 billion in other areas. He can apply at least a part of the $3 billion saved, plus new tax revenues generated by economic expansion, to the needs of the Great Society.

No economic fact is more significant in 1965 than that defense is taking a smaller bite of the nation’s income. No political fact is more significant than that the programs which President Johnson is advocating have had substantial public support for several years, some for longer. He has introduced few important new elements; the consensus was there for him to fashion and develop.

With the task force reports before him, with his own uncanny understanding of the workings of the federal system, with the ideas generated by the men he inherited from the New Frontier, the Johnson program emerged. He was not turning his back on the world when he said that we now can devote “increased attention to the character of American life.” He warned in his Inaugural Address that America can never again take pride in isolation. Despite this emphasis, there were those at home and abroad who were dismayed by his only brief references to foreign problems.

In none of his addresses did the President show a full awareness of the dangers that still exist. Nor did he emphasize the fact that we still carry heavy responsibilities as the free world’s leader. If America’s President does not sound the trumpet, who will? His further reduction of his foreignaid request at a time when aid officials are convinced that real and measurable progress is being made in many places was disturbing.

Yet the President appears not so much to be turning his back on foreign affairs as to be adopting new tactics. He is a man who dislikes debate, who dislikes discussing a subject in public until he is ready to act.

His programs for health, education, urban development, conservation, natural resources all fall within the limits of what is acceptable and what is possible. He is not asking for the world. He is not demanding his entire package at once, just most of it. Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill predict that this will be a fruitful legislative year; they think it must be.

New medical frontiers

While thousands of words have been written about the President’s consuming interest in education and his attempt to overcome the opposition to increase federal aid, President Johnson likewise has an abiding interest in and concern about health. The report of his Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke is a historic document. It should influence the development of medical education, research, and practice for many years.

The commission assessed the nation’s health needs in terms that appealed to the President. It said that the latest advances in the treatment and prevention of heart disease, stroke, and cancer are not being properly delivered to the people, and it proposed a practical, private-initiative way of delivering them. The “tragic gap" between the latest knowledge and the average hospital or private practitioner can be closed by a more intimate relationship between practitioners, medical research, and education, in a nationwide system of clinical centers.

Dr. Michael E. De Bakey, the noted Houston heart surgeon and chairman of the commission (and the man who operated on the Duke of Windsor), said that the commission’s program was not socialized medicine “but an answer to socialized medicine.” He said that the goals were “neither impractical nor visionary — they can be achieved if we so will it.

Dr. De Bakey might have added that President Johnson is as vigorously opposed to socialized medicine as is the American Medical Association. But the President knows, if the AMA does not, that unless the benefits of new medical knowledge are made available to the people through private medicine, with government grants to research and clinical institutions if necessary, there will be a demand for some other method.

Birth control in the open

In connection with the advance in medical knowledge, Johnson made history by becoming the first President to say that he would “seek new ways to use our knowledge to help deal with the explosion in world population and the growing scarcity in world resources.”President Kennedy demonstrated courage in 1963 in publicly endorsing fertility and reproduction studies by the United Nations and by the National Academy of Sciences. He backed the National Institutes of Health in contraceptive studies. Now President Johnson has freed government officials to take bolder steps in an area of the utmost importance.

Significant first steps have already been taken in some countries to check the population explosion. While the United States government has not furnished birth control assistance to other countries, some private American foundations have done so. Moreover, the Agency for International Development (AID) has helped a number of countries establish health centers and child and maternity clinics. Notably in Taiwan and South Korea, the local authorities are using these health centers to dispense birth control information. There has been a high rate of public acceptance. Within about five years if the programs are continued, these two countries expect their population growth rate to drop by one half.

The new conservatives

On Capitol Hill, there is a feeling of confidence. Three rules changes in the House gave the leadership new and much-needed power. The negative power of the House Rules Committee cannot be so great as it was in the past. The election of Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan was an encouraging indication that the Grand Old Party’s death wish may not be fulfilled. Perhaps it takes a staggering defeat to induce reform and rebirth.

Ford failed to gain the election of a progressive, Representative Peter H. B. Freylinghuysen of New Jersey, as Whip. Congressmen do not like mavericks. And the House Republicans who were dissatisfied with Representative Charles A. Halleck of Indiana because he had become a symbol of the old guard nevertheless work easily with Representative Leslie C. Arends of Illinois because he is likable and gregarious, and they voted to retain him as Whip.

It has been argued in some quarters that the fifty-one-year-old Ford, a handsome and articulate conservative, is no real improvement over the sixty-four-year-old Halleck. But in politics appearances at times can be as important as substance. Halleck was the embodiment of the old Republicanism. He stood for the past and against change. He was known nation-wide as the cartoonist’s delight, a present-day William C. Fields.

While Ford’s voting record closely parallels Halleck’s, the old leader could not work with the GOP progressives. Ford can and will. He has promised to find “positive alternatives” to Democratic proposals. To help, he persuaded William Prendergast to become research director for House Republicans. It was an excellent move. Prendergast is widely respected in this city of politicians. He was research director of the Republican National Committee until booted out last summer by the Goldwaterites. A scholarly conservative, he has ideas and the ability to express them.

Similarly, the election of Ray C. Bliss of Ohio as chairman of the Republican National Committee puts in charge of the party machinery a professional who ranks with the most expert either party has had in many years. If anyone can provide the technical leadership the GOP needs, Bliss can do so. After the 1960 election, President Kennedy kept asking why he lost Ohio, which almost everyone expected him to win. The answer was always, Ray Bliss.

Son of the Kingfish

While House Republicans were turning to Ford and a more modern image, Senate Democrats were turning to Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana and a traditional political image. But he may be as unpredictable as his famous father, the Kingfish. He seems to have the canny political instincts of a Johnson without any of the moral fervor or humor of a Humphrey. His record of opposition to Administration measures is astounding: he opposed foreign aid, medicare, the test-ban treaty, and the civil rights bill. Now he is in a position in which he must support the Administration.

At forty-six, Long is second only to Chairman Harry F. Byrd of Virginia on the powerful Senate Finance Committee. His place there gives him great power, which he used in garnering votes in his race for Whip. Despite Long’s record, Washington does not expect him to outsmart the President or to block his major programs. Both are realistic politicians, and the new Democratic Whip is determined to prove to his legion of critics that he is not a backwoodsman who has no positive assets except an ability to demagogue. But whatever the result, Long’s election points up again the strength of the Southern senators, the inability of Northern progressives to agree among themselves, and the contradictions and weaknesses in our party government.

Mood of the Capital

Since January 20, Washington has felt a great sense of relief over the fact that a Vice President is installed in office. Washington hopes that Congress will waste little time in submitting a constitutional amendment to provide for the filling of a vacancy in the office. Because Washington has known Hubert Humphrey the man, it may have a higher appreciation of him than those who have known him only as a verbose, fighting liberal. His bubbling energy and exuberant manner have brought sharp criticism. But he has the saving grace of humor and personal warmth. A more delightful and witty companion could hardly be found.

And certainly no other human being could be found who is more unlike the man who picked him to be Vice President. Some in Washington are rubbing their hands in expectation of conflict. LBJ was the most cautious of parliamentarians; HHH the boldest. Both are compulsive talkers, but in public the President can talk for hours without saying anything controversial. The Vice President loves public debate, itches for a fight, and delights in headlines as much as the President.

These conflicts suggest a clash. But those who know Humphrey best are confident that it will never develop. He may blurt out some statement that will displease the President; it would be too much to expect the ebullient Humphrey not to go overboard in his enthusiasms sometime. But he is a master psychologist, too. He will pay the President due deference, assume a modesty he does not have, and work in the vineyard.

One example will suffice to show that he knows his duty. In the old days, Humphrey breezed through the White House lobby with words of greeting and a quip for his friends in the press corps. He was a familiar figure, talkative and vastly entertaining. Since November he has carefully avoided the public lobby. He is in and out of the White House as often as ever, and he now occupies an office across the way in the Executive Office Building. But he uses a back entrance to the Mansion. There is only one spokesman for the Johnson Administration. When Humphrey talks, he clears everything with Lyndon first.