Preview of '68

As the 90th Congress ended its cantankerous first session last week, Lyndon Johnson gave the nation a preview of his re-election campaign. A dominant theme in 1968, he made clear, would be the mass--and the meaning --of legislation he has extracted from Capitol Hill since he took office. And for whatever laws the President wanted and failed to get, Republican obstructionism would take the blame.

In appearances at Central Texas College in Killeen, the Space Assembly Facility at Michoud, La., and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention at Bal Harbour, Fla., Johnson mixed folksiness, fire and factitiousness to concoct a politically potent brew. Over and over again, he poured scorn on "the complainers, the critics, the doubters" and those ubiquitous "nay sayers." Repeatedly he called the roll of his Administration's breakthroughs: Medicare, aid to primary and secondary education, the poverty program and all the rest. Predictably ignoring the fact that he himself slowed down innovation and sought to curb spending increases in the past year, he called for more, more, more.

Without getting very specific, Johnson seemed to be promising a revival of the Great Society. That euphoric phrase itself had fallen into disuse in the Administration that popularized it, but at Killeen, Johnson used it twice--with emphasis. "We are rich enough," he declared. "Now the big question is: with your stomachs full, has it pushed your heart out of position where you no longer care?"

Nugent in 2000. At Killeen, he felt most at home sentimentally: "My grandfather drove his longhorns across this prairie on the way to Abilene." But it was at Bal Harbour that he was more comfortable politically. Amid the shards of the Johnsonian consensus, most of big labor remains loyal. A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany has already endorsed the President for reelection. The latest federation convention whooped through a resolution supporting the Administration's Viet Nam policy and, with Walter Reuther absent, there was barely a skeptic to be found. Instead of end-the-war placards, Johnson spotted one promoting LYNDON NUGENT IN 2000*.

With 2,500 enthusiastic union delegates before him--applause punctuated his 35-minute speech 39 times--and a network TV audience, Johnson reminded his listeners of what he has done for them lately and not so lately, including two civil rights laws, immigration reform, an array of urban programs ranging from model cities to rat control, consumer-protection statutes, air-pollution control, minimum-wage increases and, inevitably, "81 months of solid prosperity to break all records in American history." Promptly and conveniently, the Labor Department announced that unemployment from October to November fell from 4.3% to 3.9%, while unemployment among Negroes decreased from 8.8% to 7.3%.

One-Way Buggy. Johnson gave credit to the 90th Congress, but, he preached, "we need great Congresses again, not just good ones." And in his choicest invective, he excoriated the Republicans, particularly in the House, for making the 90th's first session un-great. "In vote after vote," he declared, "the House members of the other party lined up like wooden soldiers of the status quo." Rather than provide constructive alternatives, the Republicans sought to bury good bills "in a blanket of rhetoric beneath a wave of reaction."

The longer he spoke, the broader his attack became. He started by specifically chastising House Republicans for votes on particular issues, then expanded his assault to include the "old Republican buggy [that] can go only one way and that is backwards, downhill." Johnson enjoyed himself immensely. On the way back to Washington and in subsequent appearances signing consumer-protection legislation, he was as perky and peppy as his mutt Yuki.

Wild-Eyed Engineer. Wooden or not, Republican troopers felt the wounds. House G.O.P. Leader Gerald Ford immediately retorted: "The Great Society of Lyndon Johnson has become a runaway locomotive with a wild-eyed engineer at the throttle." Johnson's speech was so widely acknowledged as blatantly partisan that Ford and Senate Leader Everett Dirksen had no trouble getting half an hour of rebuttal time three nights later on all three major networks.

Their trouble set in when they attempted to make a politically effective response. In a sleepy, somewhat supercilious dialogue, Ev and Jerry spent most of their time defending the Democratic-controlled 90th Congress, berating the Administration for inflationary policies, and bragging that because of added Republican strength, the 90th is able to stand up to the President where the 89th had not. Dirksen rightly observed that while many Democrats backbit the President on Viet Nam, "the wooden soldiers have not only been sustaining the Commander in Chief, but have been sustaining the live soldiers in Viet Nam."

Certainly Ford reflected the popular mood when he said that cutting Government spending was a better way to fight inflation than raising taxes, as Johnson proposes, but the fact is that Congress failed either to raise taxes or make an appreciable dent in spending. The Republicans tried, to be sure, but the only specific saving Dirksen would gloat over was foreign aid, the program with no broad lobby in this country. And when Ford attacked the "pretty bad record" of the 89th, he was forgetting the millions of voters benefiting from that Congress's historically significant output. The present Congress, while producing some good legislation, was far from a standout performer during its first session (see box).

Thus Johnson, for all the unjust hyperbole of his attack, seemed to have the advantage in any debate over legislative accomplishments and failures. He could claim, with considerable accuracy, that the big bills enacted in the past four years grew from Administration proposals. Any minor adjustments and improvements added by the Republicans are difficult for the authors to explain and for the voters to remember. So the Republicans are left with some rather technical proposals, such as the block grants to states rather than subsidies for specific undertakings that characterize many federal programs, and a record of legislation opposed and appropriations trimmed.

*Dynasts will have to wait until 2004 unless the constitutional age requirement of 35 is amended downward.

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