The Brainwashed Candidate

Many Americans of late have altered their views about the complex and bewildering war in Viet Nam without feeling obliged to offer elaborate justifications. Politicians, too, change their minds, and the good ones do so with such grace that people hardly notice, or such logic that everyone understands. Last week Michigan's Governor George Romney offered so inept an explanation of his shifting views on Viet Nam that it could end his presidential ambitions.

Romney's judgment has never been noticeably clouded by the hobgoblin of little minds. He strongly endorsed the war in July 1965 (before he first visited Viet Nam); he lent qualified support to the Administration's policy at Hartford last spring (17 months after his return from Saigon); and, most recently, he unequivocally denounced the U.S. commitment as a "tragic" mistake. Last week, during a Labor Day interview on Detroit's WKBD-TV, Commentator Lou Gordon wanted to know how Romney squared his current conviction that the U.S. should never have got involved in Asia with the comment he made after a tour of the war zone in November 1965 that "involvement was morally right and necessary."

Replied Romney: "When I came back from Viet Nam, I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get when you go over to Viet Nam."

Gordon: By the generals?

Romney: Not only by the generals but also by the diplomatic corps over there, and they do a very thorough job, and, since returning from Viet Nam, I've gone into the history of Viet Nam, all the way back into World War II and before that. And, as a result, I have changed my mind.

Odd Company. Romney was followed on the Gordon program by some husband and wife swappers, and it may have caused some surprise that the morally upright Governor should find himself televised in such company. But there was no surprise at all over the reaction to his comments.

Of the nine other U.S. Governors who made the 1965 Viet Nam tour with Romney, eight abruptly dismissed the brainwashing charge; the ninth. Wyoming's Clifford Hansen, was vacationing and could not be reached for comment. One of the Governors, Vermont Democrat Philip Hoff, called Romney's statement "outrageous, kind of stinking," adding: "Either he's a most naive man or he lacks judgment." Democratic National Chairman John M. Bailey declared that Romney had "insulted the integrity" of General William C. Westmoreland and former Ambassador to Saigon Henry Cabot Lodge because "they were responsible for the briefings he received." Protested Republican Lodge, who with Westmoreland stood accused--at least indirectly--of having played Svengali to Romney's Trilby: "I never brainwashed anybody in my life."

It would certainly rank as one of the swiftest launderings on record. The touring Governors spent only 31 days in Viet Nam, were exposed to formal briefings for only a few hours. (Oddly enough, one of the two State Department escorts for the tour was Jonathan Moore, now Romney's foreign policy adviser.) The fact is that Romney had done no homework on Viet Nam be fore his arrival there; he conceded that he had never read a book about the country. If he was really brainwashed, suggested one correspondent who covered the tour, it could have been because he brought so light a load to the Laundromat.

Two days after making his comment, Romney appeared in Washington, where newsmen gave him a chance to get off the hook by asking whether he might have been misunderstood. "I was not misunderstood," he snapped. "If you want to get into a discussion of who's been brainwashing who, I suggest you take a look at what the Administration has been telling the American people." With that, he whipped out a newspaper clipping in which Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara was quoted as saying, just before the 1966 election, that draft calls might be cut the following year. "The information was not accurate," said Romney. The Pentagon quickly replied that "it is the Governor who is giving inaccurate information," noting that draft calls for the first ten months of 1967 are down 136,840 from the 1966 total. Said McNamara: "I don't think Governor Romney can recognize the truth when he sees or hears it."

Perhaps the unkindest cut of all, because of its unintentional but magnificent ambiguity, came from Leonard Hall, chairman of the Romney for President committee. "I think it finally comes down to an issue of credibility between Governor Romney and Secretary McNamara," he said. "And given that choice, I have no doubt whom the American people will support."

Quite possibly, Romney did not fully comprehend the implications of that ugly term to brainwash.* In any case, it is unlikely that his opponents in either party will allow him to forget his gaffe--not to mention the cartoonists, who henceforth will surely not miss a chance to picture the Governor's cranium wreathed in detergent foam. And all can do it with impunity, since he did it to himself.

Describing Romney as an "admittedly susceptible man," the previously sympathetic Chicago Daily News asked whether the U.S. "can afford as its leader a man who, whatever his positive virtues, is subject to being cozened, flimflammed and taken into camp." More damaging yet, the Detroit News, long one of the Michigan Governor's strongest supporters, announced in a lead editorial that it can no longer back him for the G.O.P. nomination and suggested that Romney quit the race in favor of New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a man "who knows what he believes."

* The word, derived from the Chinese hsi nao (hsi: to wash; nao: brain), came out of the Korean War. The third edition of Webster's New International Dictionary (1966) defines it as "prolonged and intensive indoctrination, sometimes including mental torture, in an attempt to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes." The newer Random House Dictionary (1966) notes "the use of torture, drugs or psychological-stress techniques," but also points out that the word has been broadened to mean "any method of controlled systematic indoctrination, especially one based on repetition or confusion." The dictionary cites TV commercials as an example.

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