UNHAPPY NEW YEAR FORESEEN FOR JOHNSON ADMINISTRATION ©
By George Novack
The Johnson administration enters 1967 in a much weaker position at home and abroad than it enjoyed on New Year's Day 1965. Two years ago, after his overwhelming electoral victory, the president was master of all he surveyed from the windows of the White House. He had a clear mandate for his proposed programs and large majorities ready to do his bidding in both houses of Congress. He could draw on an immense reserweir of goodwill among the citizens anticipating the promised bounties of the Great ociety.
His supporters, relieved that the bomb-rattling Goldwater had been so decisively repudiated, hugged the illusion that the conservative Republican's defeat assured no further expansion of nilitary operations in Southeast Asia. How remote this _preescalation period of the Vietnam war seems today!
Since the shock of the first air attacks upon north Vietnam in February 1965, the nation's confidence in the sure and beneficent guidance of the man from Texas has steadily deteriorated. In a world news roundup on ABC TV network December 28, White House correspondent Bill Lawrence declared that the most important development of the year in national politics was the phenomenal’ decline in the president's prestige and popularity.
The broad consensus, from big ‘business to organized labor and the black voters, upon which Johnson sought to take his stand has been eroded beyond repair. A sizeable segment of leading figures in his own party are even questioning his continuance in the White House after 1968.
This decline is all the more surprising in view of the uninterrupted boom that has accompanied his years in office and the array of welfare measures , including Medicare, aid to education and the antipoverty bills, he succeeded in pushing through Congress. However inadequate for the people's needs, this social legislation | was: the most extensive since Roosevelt's New Deal.
Everyone agrees that the Vietnam war is the fundamental reason for Johnson's loss of popularity. Opposition to the war, or criticism of the government's conduct of it, emanates from diverse sources, ranging from unrestrained war hawks who want U.S. bombers to obliterate all north Vietnam and take on China right now to antiwar militants ‘who demonstrate for immediate withdrawal of American troops.
Much of the discontent stems from the economic effects of the war which has stepped up inflation and brought exorbitant profits to the corporations. Housewives are incensed about rising prices in the markets. The unions are much more resolutely fighting for wage increases to cope with higher living costs. The poor are aroused by the cutbacks in appropriations for the popgun war on poverty in order to take care-of the swelling budget for the brutal war upon the people of Vietnam. Negro spokesmen lash out at the administration for its failure to enforce civil-rights legislation or make any noticeable improvements in education, employment, housing or equality for the black masses.
Despite cheerful forecasts from the Secretary of Commerce, it looks as though the U.S. may experience the paradoxical and painful combination of inflation and a slackening of business activity in 1967.
One of the major factors in the estrangement of the administration from the nation has been the widening of "the credibility gap." Johnson's word is no longer taken on faith; he is less and less trusted. Washington correspondents openly accuse him of duplicity, of deliberately misleading the people and the world on great and small matters alike. The Pentagon's sham denial about bombing civilian targets in north Vietnam is only the latest instance where the administration has been caught in a flagrant lie.
Those malcontents who may still be reluctant to squarely oppose Johnson's policies keep sniping at his personal faults. They complain that he is egotistical, overbearing, obtuse, uncouth and mistreats his closest subordinates so badly that, like Press Secretary Bill Moyers, they are forced to resign.
Hatred and distrust have gone to the extreme of a whispering campaign that the president may have had a hand in removing Kennedy from his path. This accounts for the astonishing opinions registered in one Gallup poll. Two percent of the people queried believed that Johnson was in some way implicated in Kennedy's assassination while only one percent pointed a finger at Fidel Castro! Not since the last months of Hoover's
rule in 1932 has the public been so suspicious of a president's lack of candor.
All these feelings were vented in the November midterm elections which were an indirect referendum on Johnson's policies and performance. The heavy political losses sustained by the Democrats were generally interpreted as a slap at the president. Republicans won governorships in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and California, the pivotal. states in a national: election.
These setbacks have disturbed the Democratic politicians. At the Governors’ Conference: in mid-December some Democratic ‘governors were outspokenly critical of the president's leadership and even hinted he wauld be well-advised not to run again in. 1968. Such a revolt, the-Néew York Times editors point out, “would have been inconceivable" two years ago and "improbable even a year ago."
To head off the revolt, Johnson invited a delegation of nine Democratic governors to celebrate Christmas with him at his Texas ranch. But he could not appease the dissidents and their eripes spoiled the festivities. _
The extent of the grumblings in his own party was disclosed ina year-end poll taken by the New York Times which interviewed 125 key Democrats in 30 states about their attitudes toward the president, his programs and his prospects. Of those questioned, 43-percent felt that the party would be better off with a candidate other than Johnson or are presently unwilling to endorse his nomination. This does not mean that LBJ's renomination would be seriously challenged. But the fact that nearly half of a group of representative Democratic leaders were hostile or noncommittal toward Johnson indicates how much ‘he has fallen’ into disrepute. ' .
A West Coast leader, who supports Johnson's renomination said: “Credibility is the biggest~“problem for the party and Johnson. Rightly or wrongly, the President is not being taken -at face value by the American-people..We must recapture public confidence. The President ought to- avoid any appearance of not being candid and forthright | to both the people and Congress.'
The results of the November elections have altered the atmosphere in the nation's capital and changed the relationship of forces between the White House and Capitol Hill. Since he took office, Johnson could expect cooperation from Congress or exact it. Now the Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen has the upper hand and, together with the most conservative Democrats, can decide the pace and the disposal of. legislation in. the coming session. This will thwart many parts | of the president's domestic and foreign program:
Vietnam also remains the biggest stumbling block to improving Washington's relations with other capitals in the world. The administration refusal to:stop bombing north Vietnam or make any serious moves toward the cessation of hostilities continues to irritate and anger a host of powers from U Thant at the United Nations and the Pope in Rome to the countries of the Soviet bloc and the Third World. It has deepened the political and moral isolation of the United States.
However, Johnson: will ‘not budge. He is “bent on staying indefinitely in Vietnan. He has staked the prestige’; and even: the fate; of his leadership upon gaining a favorable outcome of the intervention if Southeast Asia which he and his advisers regard as indispensable for the global military strategy of U.S. imperialism.
Despite the billions of dollars expended:and the massive deployment of men and. equipment in that area, this goal is no nearer realization than it was-two years ago. : Nonetheless, Johnson hopes to come before the electorate in 1968 as the tough and .dauntless commander—in-chief who beat the "Commies" in Vietnam and did not buckle before his "“panty-waisted" critics. He has ‘raised Vietnam into a make-or-break issue ‘for his administration.
Up to now the war has weakened rather than reinforced his hold on power. This | unpopular, undeclared, seemingly.interminable conflict is bound to. create more bitterness among the American people and more resentment against its directors as it goes on and on. And, if Johrison persists in his reckless course, the even more stubborn revolutionary resistance of the Vietnamese freedom-fighters’ may also help bring about his : undoing.