Washington

on the World Today

LYNDON B. JOHNSON relies on polls more than any other politician since Thomas E. Dewey. Surveys are conducted for the President on almost every possible question. Studies are made for him in every part of the country and on a variety of issues. Various cities are surveyed to see how much support he has from different economic and ethnic groups now, compared with the actual vote for him in 1964. Whatever Washington experts may think, the President is convinced that the polls are accurate.

They tell him that his own popularity remains high despite the deep concern about Vietnam and about rising prices. Polls that pit Johnson against possible Republican rivals all point to the conclusion that if he were running this year against Nixon, Scranton, Rockefeller, Romney, Hatfield, or Goldwater, he would win with a large margin. And where does this Texan seem to be most popular? On the Atlantic seaboard, where intellectuals are supposed to be most critical of him. One recent poll which the President has read to countless visitors showed that in Massachusetts 88 percent of the voters accorded him a favorable report; 76 percent of Massachusetts voters favored him over Senator Goldwater two years ago.

When pollsters specifically ask voters whether they approve of the way the President is handling Vietnam policy or the problems of the economy at home, the vote in his favor drops substantially. In mid-May the Gallup poll found that 47 percent approved the way the President was handling matters in Vietnam, 35 percent disapproved, and 18 percent expressed no opinion. A poll taken somewhat earlier by Louis Harris showed that 53 percent of those polled disapproved the way the President was handling Vietnam. On the question of the job Johnson is doing to control the cost of living, the unfavorable vote rose to a startling 69 percent.

But on neither of these issues does the GOP have any clear alternatives. Opposition to spending on Great Society programs has only a very limited appeal to the voters. The same Harris poll that found 69 percent giving Johnson a negative rating on his effort to control the cost of living was four to one against cutting Great Society programs.

Both polls continue to give the President a favorable but declining vote of confidence overall, and some political experts are for the first time suggesting that Johnson could be defeated in 1968. No one would have considered such a thing only a few months ago. The President seemed to be invulnerable, and the GOP in a hopeless position.

Perhaps Johnson’s recent extreme sensitivity to criticism may be explained by his own realization that his political strength is slipping. As late as February he was saying, in public at any rate, that debate on Vietnam was a healthy course in a democratic society. But a couple of months later he was beginning to attack all his critics broadside. In one week’s time in May he made three major speeches assailing his critics.

The question now is whether Republicans can capitalize on the discontent in November. Their plan at the moment on Vietnam is to attack the Democrats as a party divided, which it is. But how many votes this will win for Republican congressional candidates is in doubt.

On the other hand, housewives disturbed by rising prices may be more easily influenced to vote against the party in power. In 1946, with discontent widespread throughout the country over wartime controls, Republicans offered an alternative, and the country gave them an overwhelming vote of confidence. But this is hardly 1946. Nevertheless, the opposition party, under normal circumstances, should be able to pick up as many as 60 House scats this year and to win a few more Senate seats.

Division both sides of the aisle

Few Republicans are so optimistic, and few Democrats are so pessimistic. The chief reason is that the GOP does not have a clear policy on the issues that count. Neither has it recovered from the divisions that almost destroyed it two years ago. Moreover, the Democrats in Congress have carried out most of the party’s domestic platform pledges, and the President has established a reputation for accomplishment. He is clearly not an unpopular President or a handicap to his party yet.

In the Senate, where a third of the members must seek re-election, the President believes that the Democrats, who now hold 67 seats to 33 for the Republicans, will gain rather than lose seats in November. (Not one of the President’s Democratic Senate critics on Vietnam is up for reelection this year.) It happens that in the seats to be contested more factors favor Democrats than Republicans — and unless everyone is mistaken, the country still is overwhelmingly Democratic. The President has promised to campaign in all parts of the country, Vietnam permitting.

While Democrats are divided over Vietnam, Republicans are almost as divided over the liberalconservative issue as they were in 1964. The socalled “peace” candidates in the Democratic primaries are matched by the right-wing candidates who are harassing established GOP candidates. The John Birch Society has been active in local contests west of the Mississippi.

In Washington State, Republican Governor Daniel Evans and his supporters have waged open war on the John Birch Society. Whether his fight with the Birchers will help or hurt Republicans in the state in November remains to be seen. Evans was responsible for a resolution adopted by the Republican state committee outlining criteria to “draw the line between responsible conservatism and irresponsible extremism.” In a number of other states, right-wingers have challenged moderates in the Republican primaries.

As for extremism in the Democratic Party, many national leaders are convinced that except for perhaps two Southern states, Mississippi and Alabama, the worst is over as far as the party’s historic division over Negro rights is concerned. A White House poll recently showed that the President would command support from only 28 percent of Alabama voters. A Mississippi poll is not available, but it would probably show about the same degree of unpopularity. Other polls show that the President’s support is a surprising 56 percent in Louisiana and 49 percent in Georgia (both Goldwater states in 1964), and 69 percent in North Carolina.

Yet despite Mrs. Wallace’s overwhelming victory, changes are taking place in Alabama, as the primary vote demonstrated. It was the first test of America’s new Voting Rights Act, with nearly 200,000 Negroes voting for the first time in their lives. It was one of the first Deep South contests where candidates did not openly espouse segregation.

While most of Alabama’s white candidates ran on records of segregation, none campaigned openly against the Negro. Many who had segregationist records actively bid for the Negro vote. Even the Wallaces did not abuse the Negro in the campaign. They know that in the future — in fact, as soon as the election in November— they must take into account the Negro vote.

Trade with Eastern Europe?

Partly because of the election-year atmosphere; the President was almost persuaded by his political instincts not to make his request to Congress this year for authority to negotiate most-favorednation tariff agreements with the countries of Eastern Europe. Even when he finally made the request in May, the President recognized that Congress would be unlikely to act on it in this election year.

The day after the request, Chairman Wilbur D. Mills of the House Ways and Means Committee announced that he was opposed to the bill and would schedule no hearings on it.

Supporters of the legislation believe that it is one of the most important measures now before Congress. It would encourage the slow thaw in Eastern Europe, which both Eastern Europe and Western Europe want and which the United States has every reason to encourage. Mostfavored-nation treatment simply means that the same tariff cuts granted one nation are granted to all. It is a longtime principle of American trade policy, denied only to the Communist countries. Exceptions have previously been made for Yugoslavia and Poland.

Recent news from Rumania, which shows it chafing under Soviet dominance, suggests that the time is appropriate to encourage East-West exchanges. Part of General de Gaulle’s appeal in Western Europe is his promise to work for a detente. Yet Wilbur Mills has decided in this instance, against the advice of the President and the Secretary of State, what the foreign policy of the United States should be.

It is ironic that at the time Mills handed down his decision, a large Yugoslav trade mission was being welcomed in the United States because American officials, concerned over the balance of payments deficit, seek larger exports to Yugoslavia.

No one argues that better relations with Eastern Europe would result in enough new trade to improve substantially our payments problem. It would be helped, but the political effects are the more important ones. Because of Vietnam and the still unsettled lend-lease arrangements with the Soviet Union, a tariff agreement with Moscow still is a long way off. But agreements could be negotiated with several Eastern European countries.

Passage of the Administration bill would not automatically grant most-favored-nation treatment to any country. It would authorize the President to negotiate agreements, thus putting him in a position to win significant concessions in the process.

Cutback in spending

After the House Appropriations Committee denied a presidential request for $19.7 million for continuation of work on Project Mohole, the President made a special request to Congress to restore the funds. About $25 million already has been spent on this ambitious project to drill deep into the earth’s crust.

Scientists and Administration officials think it would be a real waste not to go ahead on the project. But the Appropriations Committee was reflecting the general feeling in Congress and in the Administration that nonessential projects must be delayed until there is peace in Vietnam. The President has tried to argue that the war has not seriously cut into other programs, but it has, and Mohole is only one of them.

The President himself has imposed a hold-down on the space program that could have serious consequences. At a time when he has proposed a treaty to govern man’s exploration of the cosmos, he has given away part of his bargaining power by curtailing America’s role in space. Despite the President’s own long interest in the space program, his Administration has allowed the Russians to move even further ahead.

James E. Webb, the NASA administrator, recently testified before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics that in the past year the Russians “have progressed very much more rapidly . . . in terms of clear indications of what they can do, will do, have the capability to do, than we have.” Webb estimated that the Russians are two years ahead of the United States in space power.

The President’s request for $5 billion for the space program in fiscal year 1967 “provides no more than is essential if major projects are to proceed,” Webb testified. “It provides for the future only enough to maintain, and not close off this year, opportunities to use for constructive purposes the assets in know-how and facilities we have been at such pains to acquire.” The budgetary trend has been “downward now for three years,” while the Soviet program “shows every evidence of a continuing major commitment to long-term, largescale operations in space,” Webb told the committee.

LBJ’s tight reins

The charges that President Johnson is carried along by his advisers and is not in full command of the government have been made by responsible men who ought to know better. Every President is to an extent at the mercy of his advisers and the intelligence they give him. But Johnson is by nature suspicious of all advisers. He completely trusts no one. He has an elaborate system of double-checking on the people who constitute his official family. He keeps his advisers on the tightest leash possible, and he knows the strengths, weaknesses, and biases of every one of them.

The President acted quickly and impetuously in the Dominican Republic, but not on Vietnam. He took a strong stand for military and economic aid to Vietnam during his trip there in May, 1961, as Vice President. He prodded President Kennedy to do more than he did to help the Diem government. But when Johnson became President, he hesitated for a considerable period of time before committing large American forces in Vietnam. He had advice on both sides of the question, and he decided to make a clear stand in defense of Vietnam. Only history can say whether he was right or wrong. But there can be no doubt that it was Johnson’s decision.

The President personally makes all the important governmental decisions and far too many that are unimportant. He is not a prisoner of a few. His advisers are no more than advisers. For good or ill, President Johnson is the government of the United States today. Everyone else is a subordinate.

Mood of the Capital

The old cliché about political bedfellows has hidden the fact that nothing causes so many disrupted friendships as politics. Developing a catalogue of political divorces has become a Washington parlor game. The President has fallen out with a host of old friends in the Senate — Fulbright, McCarthy, Hartke, and others. McGeorge Bundy and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., have thrown barbs in public. Dirksen and Ford have been divided by Dirksen’s loyalty to a Democratic President. (That is a friendship that has survived partisanship.)

Robert Kennedy and Nicholas Katzenbach are reportedly scowling. Walter Heller has upset Gardner Ackley, his successor on the Council of Economic Advisers, by his advocacy of a tax increase. The farmers think the Secretary of Agriculture is more interested in low prices for consumers than high prices for farmers. And the ADA thinks Hubert Humphrey has betrayed it.