The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

on the World Today

LONG recognized as a consummate politician, President Johnson nevertheless has surprised the majority of Washington observers by the skill with which he has included almost every major strand in the American heritage as he has attempted to gather an army of voters under his banner. Few Presidents have made more speeches in their first year than Johnson. His speeches have not often been distinguished for literary style or original ideas, but they have been distinguished for their restatement of the American dream.

His critics say that he is all things to all men, while his supporters picture him as the great conciliator and healer in American life. It can never be denied that he wishes to settle every argument and resolve every conflict so that the nation may unite behind him as the leader of what he likes to call “the great society.”One Washington wag has said Mr. Johnson is above politics and has no interest in partisanship: he just wants everyone to vote Democratic.

Cynics claim that it is the President’s ambition to win more votes in November than any politician ever did before. That ambition helps explain the President’s enormous sensitivity to criticism. It also explains why he likes to speak in broad generalities and to sound a harmonious and optimistic note about the nation and its problems. But the cynics miss an essential point. Johnson is a Texan who for many years suffered in the knowledge that geography stood in the way of his becoming President. He also suffered from the charge that he was at heart a segregationist. An inner compulsion makes him strive endlessly to remove all doubts on both scores.

The President’s philosophy

Two substantial themes echo in the President’s speeches as he carries his message around the country. They are that the nation must be united, avoiding clashes over race, region, or class, and that an industrial-urban society engaged in a cold war cannot act as a predominantly rural society did in the nineteenth century. Those are basic elements in Mr. Johnson s thinking. He is fond of pointing out that a century ago 80 percent of the American people lived on farms while today 70 percent live in urban areas.

To meet the needs of the people, the federal government must contribute to a solution of the manifold problems of modern urban life — housing, education, welfare, mass transportation, health, and civil rights and it must promote policies that stimulate a healthy economy. The President makes his points in language that can be easily understood. “The idea that we are fifty separate countries, that the federal government, representing the destiny of 190 million people, does not have a duty to meet the needs of the people this idea is as out of date as the dinosaur,” he says.

In almost every speech since he became President, Mr. Johnson has emphasized the importance he attaches to equality of opportunity for all citizens. “We must now work to show the American people that our test of greatness will come not from open conflicts between fellow citizens,” he argues, “but from facing the forces of poverty and racial injustice, not from ambitions of our neighbors but from the abundance we must use to enrich the life of our nation.”

Russia comes to the aid of India

When the Indian government announced earlier this year that the Soviet Union had agreed to build the controversial Bokaro steel mill northwest of Calcutta, Washington was at first stunned. Now, on second thought, officials who have studied the problem think that while the damage to the United States will not be comparable with that which followed the cancellation of funds for the Aswan Dam, the loss is nevertheless substantial. Not only has the United States been hurt in the eyes of the underdeveloped world, but American business has lost orders that might have flowed from the Bokaro development. And Moscow has another claim on the sympathy of the Indian government and people.

The Bokaro development was to have been a showpiece of American aid. It was to have been tangible evidence that the United States would not follow a narrow dogmatic attitude in its approach to a mixed society. Russia, Britain, and West Germany previously had helped India build publicly owned mills. The Kennedy Administration agreed that the United States should not refuse India’s request to help build the largest steel complex in the country.

But last summer Congress vetoed the plan, proving again that Congress does make foreign policy. Congress was in full agreement with an earlier report on foreign aid by the Clay Committee which argued that the United States should not assist a foreign government “in projects establishing government-owned industrial and commercial enterprises which compete with existing private endeavors.” After Congress adopted an amendment by Republican Representative William S. Broomfield of Michigan aimed at the Bokaro project, the late Prime Minister Nehru withdrew India’s request for assistance.

This spring, when the agreement was reached with Russia, L. A. Korobin, the Soviet Embassy counselor in New Delhi, chortled, “It took us three weeks to agree to give you what America took three years to refuse.” More than a year ago, President Kennedy told a news conference that India needed the steel and that it would be “a great mistake to refuse aid for the Bokaro project. Congress was on a rampage against foreign aid at that time. Despite the Kennedy appeal, Congress approved the Broomfield amendment. The congressman is still convinced that he was right. “The main issue is private enterprise versus state socialism,” Broomfield said after the Moscow agreement was announced.

If Moscow will provide the assistance without strings attached, as it apparently did in the earlier Soviet-built mill at Bhilai, India, no great damage to Indian freedom and democracy may be suffered. But because of its decision. Moscow is in a stronger position to capitalize on the ill will that was left by America’s failure to do what the late President said we should do. Left-wing Indian officials will be more convincing in the future when they tell their followers that India should not depend upon American help but should look increasingly to the Soviet Union. Soviet propagandists in other underdeveloped lands will make the same argument, using Bokaro as an example. The pragmatic new government in New Delhi, strongly anti-Chinese though it may be, cannot help but be more attentive to advice from Moscow than it was before the Bokaro incident.

Where appropriations are concerned, Congress obviously has a right and a duty to participate in foreign policy decisions. But it often confuses domestic and foreign political interests, as it did when it adopted the Broomfield amendment. It is easy to campaign in Michigan against spending money for a socialist project overseas. But we have socialism at home in a variety of ways that are taken for granted. Until we abandon some of our clichés, our help to underdeveloped countries can never be as successful as it should be.

Goldwater’s views

For a full understanding of the mind of Barry Goldwater two visits are helpful. One visit is with Goldwater to his ancestral home in Prescott, Arizona. There one sees an isolated community that is blessed with abundant land. Its people have an almost unlimited opportunity to live a quiet and unobstructed existence. Men with revolvers on their hips or rifles in their hands are a common sight. Life is simple and in many ways appealing. There are easy answers to everyday questions. Washington is thousands of miles away. Vietnam is a tiny blob on a map. There are fewer than a hundred Negroes in the community.

As Goldwater walks the streets of Prescott greeting old friends and being applauded by them for his unflinching attacks on Communists and bureaucrats, it is not hard to understand the origin of his simplistic view of the world. Proud and independent people, satisfied with their ways and devoted to their freedom, they want to be left alone. They expect their government to strive for the peace and freedom which they want. But they are so completely self-contained in their own lives that they wonder how much government is really necessary.

A second visit that is worthwhile is to a rally of the Youth for Goldwater organization. There was one in San Francisco two days before the Arizona senator won the Republican presidential nomination at the Cow Palace. Some 3000 persons of all ages crowded into the Masonic Auditorium to pledge their allegiance to the man who now has taken over the party of Lincoln. Young Michael Goldwater, recently out of college, spoke first and, in a sense, provided the keynote of the Goldwater appeal. Michael told how his father had repeatedly instructed his children to “be wary of any man who tries to take our land away from us or our God away from us.”

Michael’s statement evoked earsplitting applause. Many Goldwater fans are convinced that there is a vast conspiracy at work to rob them of their land and of their right to worship God. That is why his campaign has become to them a moral and religious crusade.

When the senator told the crowd that there is no peace in the world because of “weakness and cowardice” in Washington, the crowd roared. If only there were no cowardice in dealing with the Communists, most of our problems would disappear.

Turning to domestic issues, Goldwater said that although the Democrats had been in office for four years, they have solved none of the nation’s problems because they have followed “the phony, dangerous, stupid ideas of the New Frontier.” He then turned to two themes that are basic to the Goldwater appeal: patriotism and religion, which he developed as if to say that his political opponents were deficient in both. Certainly the audience in their frenzied reaction to the senator made it clear how they felt.

It was in fervid dedication that the Goldwaterites went about their work in San Francisco. Many of the delegates were disturbed by the issues of presidential control of nuclear weapons, extremism, and civil rights. But there was almost no communication and certainly no debate. The moderates could not make themselves heard, and the columnists, editorialists, and pollsters were dismissed as paid lackeys of the Eastern establishment.

Like Goldwater, the majority of the delegates were weary of high taxes, against spending money on foreigners, frightened by the Negro demand for equality, tired of struggling with difficult allies, and terribly upset over the long and seemingly unending cold war. Goldwater not only symbolized their frustration; he also had a quick and ready answer to every problem. Turn the job over to the military, and let them solve the problem in Southeast Asia. Ignore the civil rights revolt by leaving its solution to the states. End the cold war by winning it in some vague new power play. Strengthen NATO, but otherwise disregard timid allies by going ahead and destroying Castro, tearing down the Berlin Wall, and giving the NATO commander authority to use tactical nuclear weapons.

When Goldwater spoke in those terms he was speaking from the heart and saying what his followers wanted him to say. Nothing could be more mistaken than to question his sincerity or honesty. He has believed these things all his life. They are part of his very being.

They explain his rebellion against the problems of modern life. Instead of having President Johnson’s ambition to meet the issues of an industrial and urban society, Goldwater rebels against them and tries to play them down. He expresses the negative influences that characterized American politics in the dozen years before the Civil War. He is a throwback not to conservative Republican principles but to pre-Republican principles embodied in Whiggery at its weakest.

In addition, the senator’s incredible defense of extremism discloses a radicalism which often has been known in a minor politician but which never before has been the avowed doctrine of a major presidential candidate. When this radicalism is coupled with his eccentric and impulsive foreign policy it causes nearly all of America’s friends to run for cover. There are in Washington today many responsible men in both parties who are more deeply disturbed than ever before in their lives by the implications of Goldwater’s nomination and campaign.