Washington

on the World Today

THE opening of a new session of Congress in an election year is always a signal for the launching of political debate. Both parties in 1965 worked together under the tent of the great consensus and under the prod of the great compromiser. President Johnson was unrelenting in applying pressures on Congress to act because he knew that 1965 must be the year of his greatest domestic legislative accomplishments, when Republicans and Democrats alike were free of the imminent prospect of a political campaign.

Now all factions in both parties will have their eyes on the November elections. It will be harder for some Democrats as well as all Republicans to support the President as often in 1966 as they did in 1965. All members of the House and a third of the senators must attempt to make their own records to the satisfaction of their own constituents. The President, being the most alert politician in the capital, already has suggested a short session. Always eager to avoid debate, he wants to restrict it now in the interest of both the elections and his foreign policies. The discouraging news from Vietnam makes it clear that the President will be caught between those who want to do less militarily and those who want to do more.

The President’s handling of Vietnam and other foreign policy issues, few of which his Administration has yet clarified and properly explained, will be critical. On most of them he can delay no longer. Latin America clearly deserves more attention. It is past time for new departures in foreign aid, especially in the agricultural field.

The Malthusian threat is greater today than at any time since the Industrial Revolution. Problems of nuclear sharing and the prevention of nuclear dissemination have been given a very low priority for two years. The future of the alliance and the problems of monetary reform and of international trade cry for attention. The new session of Congress will see more debate on all these subjects than the last session.

SOS to Humphrey

The President has told Vice President Humphrey that it is his responsibility to help re-elect the seventy-one Democratic congressmen who were elected for the first time in 1965. They both know that the task is next to impossible. In midterm elections the party in power generally suffers losses, particularly among freshmen who won because of the help they received in a presidential election year from the President’s coattails.

This year, all other things being equal, Democratic losses should be somewhat larger than normal because the Democrats won a larger number of marginal seats in 1964 as a result of the Goldwater debacle. However, because of the redistricting that has been done in the last few years, the Democrats may be in a somewhat more favorable position than previously. Urbanization is continuing, and the Democratic Party was quicker than its rival to appreciate the importance of the population shifts.

But already there are signs that the GOP is adapting itself to the times. In the 1965 elections, Republicans fared well in several important urban areas, including, most important of all. New York City. Some notable middle-of-theroad party leaders like Charles H. Percy of Illinois and Robert Taft, Jr., of Ohio, who surely would have won in 1964 but for Goldwater, would like to make political comebacks. In his 1964 race for the governorship, Percy lost, although he polled 350,000 more votes in Illinois than Goldwater did; in his race for the Senate, Taft lost, although he polled 433,000 more votes in Ohio than Goldwater did.

The most heartening thing about both the 1964 and the 1965 elections was the renewed evidence they provided that the way to victory in this country usually is either down the middle of the road or slightly to the right or left of center. There have been exceptions, but that is the first great lesson of American politics. The second is that no party can win consistently which refuses to grapple directly with the problems that confront the electorate. The party that attempts to run away from the issues is seldom successful.

The way to win

John V. Lindsay won the New York City mayoralty election because he appealed to the moderates in both parties and because he persuaded enough voters that he would deal with the critical issues facing them. While the Democrats nationally have a better reputation with the voters than the Republicans for facing up to the issues, the Democrats in New York had exhibited fatigue and inertia. They were unable to generate new resolve or original ideas that would capture the imagination of the hard-pressed urban voters.

Whatever the right wing of the Republican Party may think of Lindsay, he has shown his party the path to victory. It would have new hope if it could do as well as he did in convincing voters that it is determined to deal realistically with the nation’s problems. The huge majority which Johnson commanded in 1964, and, from all indicators, still commands, could dissolve in an instant if the voters became convinced that his Administration was as faltering and as tired as the Democratic Party in New York City was. Lime atrophies parties as it does individuals; new or revivified parties, geared to current needs, overcome the weary and the irresolute.

While fatigue has by no means caught up with the Johnson Administration, another deadly virus has. It is the assumption that it knows what is best for the voter and does not owe him a full accounting. Johnson has never liked debate, has never liked a give-and-take news conference, and has never permitted subordinates any latitude at all in publicly discussing and explaining issues. He prefers to operate behind the scenes, then spring a public announcement that surprises and startles but by no means discloses all the facts.

In the view of most Washington newsmen, the secrecy lid is tighter in this Administration than at any other time in living memory. On a single day recently, two of Washington’s most eminent commentators accused the Administration bluntly of misleading the public on serious matters of state. A Republican governor, who is a vigorous supporter of Administration policy in Vietnam, said privately that the single thing most disturbing to him was the President’s refusal to report the facts about Vietnam frankly to the American people.

Tactics in the poverty war

The domestic issue which the Administration likes to talk about least these days is the war on poverty. From the President down, Democrats recognize that the program is in political hot water. Whether Republicans would benefit by a frontal attack on the program is another matter. It was sure political instinct that led the Democrats to wage the anti-poverty war. The American people applauded because they recognized that the nation is wealthy enough to eradicate the terrible blight of want. But whether the Administration used the right tools is debatable. To score political gains Republicans need to show as much interest in the program as the Democrats and at the same time to present better methods of attack.

The confusion in Washington regarding the anti-poverty war is similar to the confusion regarding foreign aid programs. Both were undertaken with the conviction that changes could be effected rapidly. Our experts in the Department of Agriculture might have saved the poverty fighters and the aid administrators much disillusionment, for they learned long ago through the extension service and other farm programs that the first requirement is education, and that takes time. The farm experts know that it is not enough to send an agronomist into an underdeveloped country and expect him to show the people howto meet their food problems. An uneducated farmer can make only limited headway. To the agricultural experts, education is even more necessary than better seeds, sharper tools, and richer fertilizers.

Francis Keppel, the dynamic forty-nine-yearold boss of the vast new federal aid-for-education programs, understands the basic importance of education. President Kennedy summoned him from the deanship of the Harvard School of Education to be Commissioner of Education. Because Keppel is a man of action and purpose, he quickly won President Johnson’s confidence. Now an assistant secretary in Health, Education, and Welfare in charge of all educational programs, he has one of the most critical posts in the government. The new legislation enacted in 1965 affects not only elementary and secondary education but also higher education and specialized education.

“Improvement of education is the first step in any successful fight against poverty and discrimination, as well as the basic support for a growing economy,” Keppel says. “This effort to relieve poverty through better schooling is our most challenging problem and also our most promising development. It challenges us to carry out a basic doctrine of every free society — that education is the key to opportunity and that equality of educational opportunity should be the right of every child.”

Small talk in the yellow room

One of the most beautiful rooms in America is the yellow oval room on the second floor of the White House, where the First Family’s living quarters are located. Two marvelous Cézanne’s are on the west wall. A Peale portrait of George Washington hangs over the mantle on the east wall. The room is

superbly furnished. The view across the south lawn to the Washington Monument is one of the glories of Washington. In this room the President has chosen to stage a revolution in the art of diplomacy.

In the past, Presidents have received the credentials of foreign envoys individually and in private. Each new ambassador was allowed a few minutes or much longer to greet the President and perhaps discuss a matter of business. Now Johnson receives ambassadors publicly and en masse.

The President stands tall under the portrait of Washington. Opposite him behind a center table are fifty or more photographers and reporters. Klieg lights illuminate the room. Lloyd N. Hand, chief of protocol, stands near the President’s left. As the new ambassador is ushered into the room, Hand calls out above the noise of the cameras: “Mr. President, may I present His Excellency, Ambassador Lemberger of Austria.” The President steps forward to meet the ambassador. They exchange a few pleasantries.

The President may invite the new envoy to sit with him for a moment on a nearby sofa. But there is no opportunity for a confidential exchange. When the President rises, the ambassador hands him a large envelope containing his credentials and an address of greeting, which is never read. The President in turn hands the ambassador a smaller envelope containing his formal address of welcome, and then is ready to receive another ambassador.

To impress upon the ambassadors his interest in them the President has from time to time invited groups of twenty-five or thirty for an evening cruise on the Potomac. He also has asked his special assistant, Jack J. Valenti, to give occasional luncheons to which two or three dozen ambassadors are invited. But the President himself keeps his contacts with the envoys at a minimum, believing, unlike his predecessor, that they should conduct their business through the Secretary of State.

Mood of the Capital

For more than two months, with President and Congress out of town, Washington has been concerned with its own local and acute problems. Before the snows fell it could see many examples of the fine work done under the stimulus of Mrs. Johnson’s beautification program.

The city is excitedly talking about the architectural and engineering plans of a much needed subway, which was authorized in the last session of Congress. It is pleased that debate on the location of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts at last seems to be settled and that money is on hand to begin construction on the shore of the Potomac.

Finally, having suffered a heavy defeat in its bid for home rule, there are some signs at least that it is awakening to the fact that home rule is no answer in itself. Washington is the smaller part of a large metropolitan area which should no more attempt to govern itself alone than the West Side of New York should attempt secession. The city’s new building and highway construction programs are, in staggering proportions, in keeping with the ambitions of the Great Society.