Seasonal Sum-Up

Easter season is a time for Congressmen to go home, where the votes are, and cock attentive ears to the voice of the people. If the voice comes through loud and clear enough, it can change a Congressman's mind about what stands he should take on what issues. In that sense, the spring recess is an occasion for a national summing up. And last week Senators and Representatives around the U.S. achieved remarkable agreement in their findings: the folks back home like President John Kennedy. They are fascinated by his vigor and by his virtuosity in juggling crises the way a gymnast juggles Indian clubs. But there is little ground swell in support of his programs.

"There is a warm, friendly feeling for Kennedy everywhere you go," said Colorado's Democratic Senator John Carroll after talking to constituents. "When I left Colorado last November, the state had just gone for Nixon, and you could feel the hostility to Kennedy. Now I have come home to a completely new atmosphere." California's Republican Representative Alphonzo Bell concurred--up to a point. "I found the people like Kennedy personally," said Bell. "But there doesn't seem to be any broad support at all for his policies." Reported Washington's Democratic Senator Henry M. ("Scoop") Jackson, chairman of the Democratic National

Committee during the 1960 campaign and one of Kennedy's best Capitol Hill friends: "Every Republican businessman I saw back in my state seemed to make a point of coming up to say, 'You know, your man is doing all right. I really am surprised.' But on the issues, they haven't changed their minds."

Defeat & Frustration. Almost every other index attests to Kennedy's personal popularity. In a recent Gallup poll, 73% said they approved of the way he is handling his job, and only 6% disapproved (the rest had no opinion); at the corresponding point in Dwight Eisenhower's first term, a similar Gallup poll showed 67% approval, 8% disapproval.

But Kennedy's triumph of personal style has won him little so far in terms of legislative and diplomatic achievement. He has sent Congress a total of 15 major messages, better than one a week. Yet not much has come out of all the activity. Kennedy won a battle to break the conservative grip on the House Rules Committee by a skimpy five votes, and only then because Speaker Sam Rayburn had staked his personal prestige on the outcome. The President suffered a widely advertised defeat when the House, by a one-vote margin, rejected his proposed $1.25-an-hour minimum wage. Such key Kennedy-backed measures as aid to education and medical care for the aged face hard going and possible defeat.

By an unkind twist of politics, the election that brought John F. Kennedy to the White House also reinforced the conservatives in Congress, and they consider the New Frontier's multi-billion-dollar welfare plans much too expensive. Concedes Washington's Jackson: "The President isn't going to get from Congress everything he asks for."

Building a Fire. Similarly, in his handling of foreign affairs President Kennedy has shown style and hustle. Since taking office he has met with the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,

Denmark and Sweden, plus Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah. West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer is due in Washington this week, Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba in early May, and at the end of May President Kennedy, accompanied by Wife Jackie, will fly to Paris to confer with Charles de Gaulle.

Last week's inquiring Congressmen found little public criticism of Kennedy's foreign policies. But the actual record has been one of continuing crisis and frustration. Kennedy inherited from the Eisenhower Administration a dismal mess in Laos; there is a strong likelihood that Kennedy's solution, a cease-fire leading to a coalition Laotian government, will mean only a brief postponement of an eventual Communist takeover. At the same time the cold war is turning hot in embattled South Viet Nam (see THE WORLD), and, as if the Administration did not already have enough foreign policy problems, it chose last week, for no apparent reason, to issue a denunciatory 36-page blast at Cuba's Fidel Castro (see THE HEMISPHERE).

The Administration itself is concerned with Kennedy's difficulties in translating his popularity into solid achievement. To help get the President's domestic programs moving toward a New Frontier,

Democratic National Chairman John Bailey is undertaking to see to it that local Democratic organizations are briefed on "what Jack wants"; the hope is that Kennedy enthusiasts will sternly call to account the Congressmen who vote against the President. Explained Bailey last week: "We mean to build a grass-roots fire for the President's program." President Kennedy can also appeal directly to the nation for support of his programs, and he intends to do just that if the Democratic Congress continues to thwart him. For, pleased as he is with all the clapping and cheers from the audience. Jack Kennedy knows that his record must be built on more than mere skill at juggling Indian clubs and shiny balls.

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