Who's Moving Where?

It began at a Boston cocktail party shortly before the 1960 Democratic Convention. There, M.I.T. Professor Walt W.

Rostow, now one of the New Frontier's fulltime advisers, remarked to Presidential Aspirant John Kennedy: "I know what the first words of your acceptance speech should be: 'This country is ready to get moving again and I'm ready to lead it.' " Kennedy liked the theme, if not the precise wording. After he won the Democratic nomination, he tried it out in several versions. It achieved its most memorable form in a speech in Seattle on Sept. 6: "I pledge you an Administration that will get this country moving again." The phrase became Kennedy's battle cry--and it had an awful lot to do with his victory over Republican Richard Nixon. But by one of the great ironies of U.S. politics, "Let's get America moving again" is once more a paramount issue, two years after the Seattle speech and two months before the 1962 congressional elections. The question is: Whose issue is it? Disillusion. In 1962, the cold war is still cold--a wall exists in Berlin where there was none before; a shadow war, in which the U.S. is deeply involved, continues in Southeast Asia; Cuba has become even more an enclave of international Communism.

But the real preoccupation of the voters seems to be the domestic economy.

Everybody--capitalist, businessman, foreman, laborer--knows that it hasn't been "moving." It isn't bad, but it isn't good.

It hasn't responded to incantations from Washington; and then there was the steel crisis and Blue Monday.

Meanwhile, things haven't been moving in Washington, either. A Democratic President and an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress can't get much of anything passed except defense and appropriation bills, which certainly doesn't add up to dynamism. A sense of disillusion has set in among friends as well as foes, and anti-presidential jokes are funnier and more widespread than at almost any time in memory.

This disillusionment, vague though it may be, still senses the patent failure of Kennedy to live up to his battle cry. The President admittedly has not got the nation moving as fast as he and everyone else would like. So, facing the off-year elections, what does he plan to do about it? In the simplest of terms, he hopes to blame everything on the Republicans.

The President presently plans to spend five campaign-season weekends traveling through twelve to 15 states. Even if he bills some of these voyages as "nonpolitical," he will, of course, be campaigning on behalf of Democratic candidates. And he will insist that it has been the Republican minority in Congress that has, through obstructionist opposition, kept him from getting the U.S. moving again.

This pitch may be harder to sell than to say. It has, in fact, been the refusal of many Democrats to go along with his program that has frustrated his hopes.

Kennedy is fond of shrugging this fact off by lumping Southern Democrats with Republicans as members of the irresponsible opposition. This ignores a couple of the political facts of life: 1) a lot of non-Southern Democrats have voted against Kennedy programs, and 2) the South remains the stronghold of the Democratic Party; without that region Kennedy would never have become President.

Personalities & Bonds. By political arithmetic, the Democrats are certain to maintain control of the Senate after the fall elections, and there is only a slight possibility that the Republicans may take over the House. In both branches, it is the Southern fortress that will make the Democratic difference. In New York, the nation's most populous state. Democrats seem to be in a hopeless state of disarray; Incumbent Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller and G.O.P. Senator Jacob Javits are about the safest bets anywhere for reelection. In the Midwest, even the most hopeful Democratic leaders talk about keeping their losses to a minimum.

In the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast states, where Kennedy got shut out in 1960, the Democratic prospects appear dubious. If Richard Nixon were to unseat Pat Brown as California's Governor, there might be a brand-new presidential ball-game in 1964.

Throughout 20th century U.S. history, the party out of White House power has gained congressional seats in off-year elections. The exception was in 1934--when a Democratic President had a Great Depression working for him, not unfulfilled promises to cure a mild recession working against him. In 1962 there is every likelihood that state and local issues--ranging from personalities to bond issues for new sewer districts--will weigh heavily in the election results. But there is one issue that should be local everywhere: how to get the U.S. moving again, as swiftly as all Americans would like.

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