An Excess of Moderation?

The predictable party-line statements resounded across Capitol Hill as soon as the President had finished talking. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield managed to see in John F. Kennedy's State of the Union message "the authentic earmark of greatness." To Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen it was "like a Sears, Roebuck catalogue with the old prices marked up." Indiana's G.O.P. Senator Homer Capehart described it as "more inconsistent than any message I have listened to in my eighteen years in the U.S. Senate." And new House Ma jority Leader Carl Albert called it "the finest State of the Union message I've heard since I became a member of Congress [15 years ago]."

It was, in fact, a carefully tailored message. By the number and variety of his proposals, the President clearly hoped to appeal to the liberal penchant for action and forge a political document with appeal to many groups across the nation; by the generally moderate nature of the proposals and the conciliatory tone of the argument, he hoped to appease the conservatives and soften their opposition to his program.

Kennedy asked for a potpourri of programs and powers that would doubtless carry a high price tag. But at the same time he stressed that his real purpose was to increase opportunities for individual Americans rather than build up the state at their expense. "The state is the servant of the citizen and not its master," he said, and he pledged to "give the individual the opportunity to realize his own highest possibilities." He asked for job training for private, not Government jobs, for a spur, not to Government or public works but to private industry through tax credits, and--in his most controversial proposal--for standby power to lower taxes, not raise them.

In phrases that any Republican President might have used, Kennedy couched his plea for tariff cuts in terms of their advantage to U.S. business, urged more loans instead of outright grants for foreign aid, proposed a welfare program stressing "rehabilitation instead of relief," and even, in his controversial plan for medical care for the aged, proposed a pay-as-you-go insurance plan rather than any program of outright aid. He promised to send a new farm program to Congress, but it was strange to hear a Democratic President speak matter-of-factly of the possibility of "a national scandal" as a result of the Government's farm programs.

In something-for-everybody is, of course, the danger of not-enough-for-any-body. Even before his message, liberals were berating Kennedy for acting too cautiously. Liberal Columnist Doris Fleeson predicted that Congress would open "without suspense or a ringing challenge by President Kennedy," and the New York Times warned that "the President must ask himself how much he dares dilute his program in order to get what is left of it approved. The question is dangerous: he could succeed as a politician and fail as a statesman." Last week the Times was disappointed. "This was not a fighting speech," it said.

Congressional conservatives for their part are not in a mood to make fighting speeches, because it is not yet clear what there is to fight about.

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