Some of the Issues Are Missing

The candidates had been named, the campaign was formally under way, and now came that traditional time for politicians and pundits to draw up lists of the issues that would presumably dominate the U.S.'s political dialogue until November.

Inevitably, some of September's is sues would wilt away before Election Day. Just as inevitably, others would sprout in full forensic flower. But last week, as what promises to be an extraordinary campaign began in earnest, perhaps the most extraordinary political fact was that some of the hardiest quadrennial issues did not figure to be issues at all.

There was, for example, the economy. Whoever heard of a U.S. presidential campaign without the economy as a major issue? This could be the year. Democrat Lyndon Johnson can claim prosperity, and although Republican Barry Goldwater may not think that that prosperity is free-enterprising enough, he can hardly mount a serious attack against it.

Slide-Rule Rebuttals. In the same sense, every four years there is a big argument about which is the party of business and which is the party of labor. This year that argument also seems academic. Businessmen know they have nothing to lose at Goldwater's hands, but they also like Lyndon. Last week, as evidence, the President played White House host to a batch of leading businessmen who have come out for him. As for labor's leaders, they are almost unanimously anti-Goldwater. This does not, of course, necessarily mean that the rank and file of union members will follow the leaders, and the working man's vote remains one of 1964's imponderables.

Other tried and true topics do not seem to be developing in 1964. Goldwater would love to have a meaningful argument over Government spending. But Johnson, even while spending more than any peacetime President in history, has blunted the issue with a few military cutbacks and a general pose of thriftiness. Perhaps more than anything else, Goldwater deeply believes that the Johnson Administration is diluting the nation's military strength in the name of cost-performance analysis; but he has yet to prove his point against the slide-rule rebuttals of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Barry rails against the intrusions of big government into private life; but he has yet to make a winning issue of his complaints. The farm issue? It is quite conceivable that neither candidate will make a major speech about it.

Some Sweeping Statements. What, then, do shape up as the issues that will decide the election? In the most general terms, it seems likely that Johnson will concentrate on Democratic domestic achievements, ignoring the U.S.'s overseas dilemmas.

For his part, Goldwater will keep hammering away at U.S. failures abroad, particularly the costly, losing war in South Viet Nam. At home, he might be expected to profit from the civil rights issue. It will almost surely win him electoral votes in the South. In pre-campaign figuring, it was generally assumed that he would also gain in the North from the "backlash" of white resentment against excesses of the Negro revolution. But if there were any such backlash, it would have shown itself last week in a Democratic primary in Michigan's 16th Congressional District (sec story on Page 23), and it failed to materialize.

But Goldwater has never counted on the backlash, or sought to take advantage of it. Rather, he has so far found his most effective domestic issue to be that of national morality. He made a big point of it in his Prescott, Ariz., kickoff speech last week. He argues for national leadership that will end lawlessness and violence on the U.S.'s city streets not merely by force but by example.

The Deciding Factor. So in the end the campaign may shape up not so much as a collision between sharply conflicting philosophies as between two sharply conflicting personalities.

Goldwater hopes to project himself as a man of strong convictions, gruff and honest, who is challenging many of the basic assumptions about recent American life and can supply the moral corrective, while he pictures Lyndon Johnson as too unconcerned with traditional values to be able to restore the country's real strength. Johnson hopes to project himself as the compassionate father of all, mindful of frailty, prudent in all things, as opposed to a heartless, reckless Goldwater.

Many political theorists nurse the notion that upper-case Issues are the only things that count; they tend to treat political personality as an interesting but unimportant sidelight to any presidential campaign. But personality and issues are inextricably intertwined.

It is the first order of business for any national candidate to establish a personal image that gives credibility to his stands on issues. He must also try to convince the American voter that his opponent is so wrong-minded, ignorant, incompetent, mendacious or just plain wishy-washy as to be disbelieved in any statement about the issues. In 1964, the election outcome could depend on whether Johnson or Goldwater best projects his intended image. In short, personality may be the biggest issue of all.

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