Waiting for Lyndon

The typewriters keep up their nervous tattoo, the telephones go on ringing, the tides of paper flow in and out. Yet the White House--and indeed all of Washington--seems to function almost in a vacuum when the President is away. Despite the jet planes, private telephone lines and teletype circuits that constantly link the L.B.J. Ranch with the West Wing, Lyndon Johnson's absence from the capital affects the Administration like a power drain. Though his six weeks' stay on the L.B.J. Ranch 1,384 miles away has not been unusually long in comparison with other presidential absences in the past, the sense of disconnection is particularly strong in Johnson's case because he is so conspicuously omnipresent when he does occupy the White House.

Johnson himself seems impatient to head north. But, as his physicians have pointed out, it takes the average patient up to three months to recover fully from a gall-bladder operation--and the President is a normal patient. Moreover, he has maintained a taxing schedule of appointments with Administration officials, whom he has summoned to Texas to discuss topics ranging from aluminum prices to last month's blackout in the Northeast. Nonetheless, Johnson's absence from the capital has unquestionably occasioned an atmosphere of drift and disarray within his Administration. Indeed, he is about to enter the most difficult phase of his presidency so far.

Squabbles & Scandals. Many of Johnson's vaunted Great Society programs are either in limbo or in trouble. Despite his zealous advocacy of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the agency has been languishing for lack of a director from its day of birth. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare has become an unmanageable sprawl of competing and overlapping fiefdoms.

In dozens of cities across the nation, the war on poverty has succeeded mainly in triggering sordid squabbles and scandals. Johnson himself is largely to blame for the fact that Operation Head Start, an immensely successful summer program of preschool instruction for children, has run into trouble. With characteristic bravura, he promised that the program would be put on a year-round basis--without realizing that it will now cost $450 million, when one-third that amount is available.

Box-Score Man. Around Washington, such failures prompt the scornful comment that Johnson is a "boxscore President," one who has racked up a fantastically high average in getting his programs through Congress but does not know how to administer them once they have become law. There were rumblings that the second session of the 89th may not be as acquiescent to Lyndon's wishes and whims as this year's Congress.

Many Administration supporters in Congress already are beginning to question the cost of the programs they voted. Texas Democrat George H. Mahon, chairman of the House Appropriations' Committee and a longtime Johnson pal, said last week that because of the stepped-up war effort in Viet Nam, the Government might find it wise to be far less generous with funds for the Great Society. "In the light of the situation confronting us," said Mahon, "it is urgent that the executive and legislative branches make a determined effort to withhold the actual spending of funds already made available by Congress for programs that can be safely slowed down, postponed or eliminated."

Record Budget. With the cost of the war rising irrevocably--possibly to the point where it will add another $7.5 billion to next year's budget--there will be a continuing threat of inflation.

Last week Johnson conferred at the ranch with his economic advisers, including Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler and Federal Reserve Board Chairman William McChesney Martin, sent word back to Administration officials in Washington to cut back on spending--though next year's budget is almost certain to break all records. As Mahon pointed out, Johnson's Great Society is the area most susceptible to economizing but even so it seemed doubtful that the President could wring out meaningful savings unless he curtails major welfare programs or pet projects such as highway beautification.

The inflationary trend was really recognized by the Federal Reserve Board's decision--against the President's wishes --to hike the discount rate (see following story). However distasteful it may be to him, the President may have no alternative but to raise taxes next year in order to finance the costly welfare programs and an ever-increasing war effort without overheating the economy.

Restive Help. Amid all this, Lyndon's own White House staff was in a state of fluctuation--again. McGeorge Bundy, Johnson's top inside man for foreign affairs, will soon leave the White House. The President has not yet found a successor for Larry O'Brien, his top Capitol Hill liaison man, who was appointed three months ago as Postmaster General. Bill Moyers is growing restive in his job as White House press secretary. Johnson's No. 1 handyman, Jack Valenti, is even taking Italian lessons and has hopes of being named U.S. Ambassador to Italy some time in the future.

On top of his multiplying domestic problems, the President also faced a difficult round of diplomatic negotiations. Only days before Pakistan's President Mohammed Ayub Khan, Britain's Prime Minister Harold Wilson and West Germany's Chancellor Ludwig Erhard were scheduled to arrive this week, Johnson reluctantly decided against meeting them at the ranch and chose to fly back to Washington for the busy week of conferences.

Newspeak. Week in, week out, the burden that weighs most heavily is, of course, the war in Viet Nam. In three statements during the week, Secretary of State Dean Rusk bluntly and brilliantly reaffirmed the U.S. position (see Box), while the President emphasized that he had no moral alternative to the war unless the Communists would give him one.

In fact, Hanoi sounds, if possible, more arrogantly intransigent than ever. North Viet Nam's government last week made a special point of deriding as "fabricated legend" the breathless U.S. press reports of last month that Hanoi had offered to begin peace talks in late 1964. The Communists' fanatical belief that they will conquer South Viet Nam found expression in the weirdly convoluted Newspeak used by the North Vietnamese regime to defend its aggression: "The whole world, including the American people, now are stirringly supporting the patriotic struggle of the South Vietnamese people. Why, then, have the people in North Viet Nam not the right to support their kith and kin in the South, who are living in blood and fire because of the U.S. war of aggression? Who gives the U.S. the right to urge the North Vietnamese people not to support the South Vietnamese people and let the aggressors freely massacre their kith and kin in the South?"

To which President Johnson, who of late has restated the U.S. case for involvement in Viet Nam almost weekly, replied in a speech telephoned to the A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention in San Francisco: "We are there because, for all our shortcomings, for all our failings as a nation and a people, we remain fixed on the pursuit of freedom as a deep and moral obligation that will not let us go. Our devotion to freedom is unyielding. So, too, is our hope for peace. Those who insist on testing either will find us earnest in both."

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