Midsummer Soundings

Out of Washington last week reamed scores of U.S. Congressmen, some bent on fishing and swimming, most with a different objective. Faning out toward Bangor and Balboa, International Falls and Corpus Christi, they were hoping to find out what was on their constituents' minds and sniff the air back home during a ten-day recess that ends this week. At Fourth of July parades and picnics, at backyard barbecues and Little League ball games, the Congressmen spent long hours talking--and listening. What they discovered was a pleasant summertime surface, and beneath it some serious anxieties.

It often takes some probing to bring the anxieties up. In Texas, where Republican Senator John Tower and Democrat Ralph Yarborough were both touring, Houstonians seemed lore interested in the conditions of their drought-seared lawns than in the fate of the Middle East. In Amarillo, at the opposite end of the state, people were fretting over the closedown of a SAC base, not because the move involves any highfalutin' global implications but because it will cost the community $30 million a year in local income.

Casualties & Taxes. But the deeper concerns came out. Viet Nam remains the overriding worry. Most Americans seem resigned to the war; few are enthusiastic about it. Democratic Senator Abraham Ribicoff estimated that his Connecticut aviary contains "about 15% doves and as many hawks," with the rest "basically in agreement with the President's policy." Nebraska's Republican Senator Roman Hruska found impatience and anger over the "almost constantly increasing casualty lists," but discerned neither a desire to pull out nor a consensus for a quick victory at any cost.

With Defense Secretary Robert Strange McNamara in Saigon on his ninth visit in six years (see THE WORLD), many citizens unhappily anticipated a recommendation for still more troops --and a sizable price tag that would surely accompany such a recommendation. Because the budget deficit totaled some $11 billion last year and could possibly go as high as $25 billion in the current fiscal year, a tax increase is pretty much taken for granted around the country. It might be 6%, or it might be possibly as high as 10%.

Like ordinary men, Congressmen have something of a tendency to hear what they want to hear. "Now that the bills are coming due on the Great Society," said Republican Representative Clarence Brown Jr., many Ohioans are worried about "what our Government is beginning to cost." But Iowa's Democratic Congressman John Culver, a Harvard classmate and former aide of Massachusetts' Senator Teddy Kennedy, found during a six-day tour through nine of the state's most populous counties that his constituents are less critical of expensive domestic poverty programs than he had foreseen. Some even sought assurances that the best of them, such as Head Start, would not be crippled by cutbacks.

In Washington, similarly, Democratic Senator Warren Magnuson said he found the voters less concerned over higher taxes than whether enough money was going into raising American society to high standards of excellence. "They're suffering the penalty of prosperity," he says, "worrying about transit, pollution, and how to handle the people." Particularly promising to Magnuson is the new Puget

Sound Area Air-Pollution-Control Group, set up by the state legislature this year.

Flags & Fire Bombs. Race relations remain a paramount concern, but a good number of Americans seemed as reluctant to confront the issue as did Congress during the first six months of its session. Though Cincinnati has already suffered nearly a week of destructive Negro rioting this year, for example, Republican Brown found his constituents as much disturbed by flag burnings as they were by "black power" fire bombs. But Detroit's able Democratic Congressman John Conyers Jr., himself a Negro, detected a growing impatience that is characteristic of the ghetto dweller in a dozen U.S. cities. "Bitterness," said Conyers, "is heaped on bitterness" by congressional slowness in meeting Negro demands. Congress intends to cope with the malcontents on its return with an antiriot bill aimed at such agitators as Black Power Leaders Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, who openly incite disorder.

In every constituency, there was talk of congressional corruption. Legislators found a strong desire for some reasonably effective ethics code for both Houses. Kentucky's Republican Senator Thruston Morton was often asked by his border-state constituents about the cases of New York City's Negro Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, who was "excluded" from the House for misconduct, and Connecticut's Senator Thomas Dodd, who for his misdeeds suffered a vote of censure. So was San Diego's Democratic Congressman Lionel Van Deerlin. "I get quite a few questions whether the Senate dealt as firmly as it should have with Dodd," said Van Deerlin, "and whether its action lends substance to Powell's charge that there is a difference between black and white treatment."

New York's upstate Republican

Congressman Daniel E. Button was disturbed to find that "Congress is in generally low repute," attributed it to the fact that "Congress does a bad public relations job." There is widespread feeling that lately it has been doing a bad job, period--not exactly a ringing cheer to follow a man back to work in Washington.

Proper Judgments. In a sense, the complaints reflect what President Johnson told the delegates at the National Convention of the Junior Chamber of Commerce in Baltimore last month. "It is good," said the President, "that we have a system where we can freely talk about what is wrong because when we have the proper information, we make the proper judgments." Not just like that, of course, but more often than not--and sooner or later, which is the hope, and record, of the U.S. system.

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