Pictures at an Inhibition

By Edwin Warner

A POLITICAL EDUCATION

by HARRY McPHERSON

467 pages. Atlantic-Little, Brown. $10.95.

In Washington, where most political memoirists write in the blood of their foes, Harry McPherson is a kind of vegetarian. A Texas liberal who served on both Lyndon Johnson's Senate and White House staffs, McPherson believes in binding wounds, not opening them. He has a refreshing affection for the processes of government and the fallibilities of the powerful. His sketches and assessments of Washington politicians are unrivaled.

For example, McPherson agrees with the conventional wisdom that Hubert Humphrey is warm, open, self-amused, bursting with affirmation of life. But he also sees Humphrey as a man not ruthless enough to carry through with the consequences of his judgments. Elsewhere, McPherson gets William Fulbright just right: "Bored by the kind of things with which most Senators were agreeably concerned, he was skeptical of man's ability to choose a reasonable course. He sometimes seemed to have a stake in losing, in being isolated and right."

McPherson shrewdly contrasts the congressional personality with the presidential. To be effective, he says, the legislator must master the black arts of the back room; this spoils his image for the general public, which seeks a purer hero for President. John Kennedy understood this, says McPherson, and shirked his senatorial duties while making himself appealing to the public. To Lyndon Johnson, says McPherson, J.F.K. was the "enviably attractive nephew who sings an Irish ballad for the company and then winsomely disappears before the table clearing and dishwashing begin."

L.B.J.'s congressional reputation, on the other hand, shadowed everything he did in the White House. The press recorded his achievements with "dutiful appreciation," writes McPherson, "but as Grand Prix drivers might appreciate a good tractor." He goes on to cite a typical but unfamiliar example of Johnson cultivating his political spinach. L.B.J. once asked a well-known black leader what he was going to tell the press after his visit to the White House. "Just that we talked over some problems of mutual concern," was the answer. "You can't do that," said the President, worried that the man's constituency would think he had been getting too chummy with the Establishment. "You've got to have demanded action on something," coached L.B.J. "What about Annapolis? The Naval Academy's only got a handful of Negro midshipmen. You brought that to my attention, and I said I would see to it that the Navy changed and got some more black faces in the officer corps. I'll do it right now."

Sympathetic as he is to the problem of exercising power in America, McPherson is not blind to its harsh requirements. A passionate dedication to politics, he feels, often masks a reluctance to come to terms with one's personal problems--a theory "borne out in the careers of many political men, the failure of whose lives as husbands and fathers matched their success in public affairs." McPherson prefers a less zealous, less clear-cut sort of politician, like California's former Senator Thomas Kuchel, who refused to be type-cast as a California Republican. In fact, McPherson could well be describing himself when he describes Kuchel: "I liked him not only for his candor but because he remained in the ambiguity of his situation and refused to succumb to an ideology that would free him from it."

Edwin Warner

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