Boots, Sneakers & Crutches

By law, the Congress is supposed to adjourn by July 31. This year the date went by almost unnoticed--at least by Lyndon Johnson, who knows where golden eggs come from. Still the weary lawmakers are at work, cranking out major bills at a rate rarely matched in U.S. history. And if L.B.J. insists on repaying his campaign debt to labor by trying to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act's right-to-work provision (14-b) this session, they may not get away, in Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen's words, "until the snow flies"--and without having repealed 14-b.

Oddly enough, the President's almost unprecedented success with Congress deeply disturbs some observers. Republicans naturally echo House Minority Leader Gerald Ford's complaint that it has been "a weak, wet noodle" in Johnson's hands. Some independent critics object that important legislation has been rammed through almost without debate--though only a few years ago, when Congress was chronically deadlocked over vital bills, reformers argued that its machinery had become an unworkable anachronism.

In a private study sponsored by the conservatively oriented American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a group of political scientists warned recently that the President's almost unchallenged command over Congress "introduces a verifiable problem of dictatorship." Unless Congress is reorganized and strengthened, the group said, the U.S. will have an "escalating bureaucracy consisting of huge agencies of permanent civil servants."

In practice, of course, Lyndon Johnson can only work through consent and consensus, and even then his policies are resisted by many senior Democrats on the Hill--as Senator J. William Fulbright demonstrated last week by castigating the Administration's decision to land troops in the Dominican Republic (see THE HEMISPHERE).

As Harvard Political Scientist (Presidential Power) Richard Neustadt has pointed out, it is an illusion to believe that Johnson can ride roughshod over Congress. At a recent Washington meeting of the American Political Science Association, Neustadt observed: "Underneath our images of Presidents-in-boots, astride decisions, are the half-observed realities of Presidents-in-sneakers, stirrups in hand, trying to induce particular department heads, or Congressmen, or Senators to climb aboard. A sensible President is always checking off his list of 'influentials.' "

Whether in boots or in sneakers, Lyndon Johnson has unquestionably achieved most of his legislative aims. And when Congressmen finally get home--on crutches?--they are likely to be hailed as heroes in their own right.

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