A Bit of Limbo

Day after day, planes dropped down on the runway of the L.B.J. Ranch.

Each aircraft brought in its coterie of Washington officials for long intensive talks with Lyndon Johnson -- about the budget, the State of the Union message, the war, the Great Society. The President's appointment schedule was so full that he sometimes had difficulty keeping up with his high-priority desk work.

Yet beneath the hubbub of business and busyness, an aura of secrecy and uncertainty lay over the Johnson presidency. The President himself had be come so remote and uncommunicative that reporters began calling his stay at the ranch "the long silence" -- a silence that was only briefly broken by a press conference at week's end.

Lyndon Johnson is usually quieter at this time of year because he is a man who likes to preserve his options, but this year the lid is tighter than ever --probably because the options are fewer and harder to choose among. Last year, Cabinet members and top Administration brass headed straight from their ranch-house sessions to brief reporters on spending plans or to tell the press of the President's thinking on the progress and problems of the year past.

This year, practically all of them left the ranch closemouthed and then secluded themselves back in their Washington offices.

Drafts & Decisions. The result was, so far as the nation knew, that all manner of problems and questions remained in a state of unsettled limbo. The first galleys of the President's budget message for fiscal 1968 began arriving last week in Budget Director Charles Schultze's office, but, said a White House aide, "every fourth word is a blank." The budget is expected to be roughly $130 billion, with $70 billion to $75 billion of that for defense. Just where the money will go depends on such pending decisions as whether a Nike-X anti-missile missile system should be deployed, how much will be spent on a supersonic transport and how much Government paper can be sold to the public in 1967 -- a factor that can vary the final size of the budget by $5 billion or more. And, of course, the President had not yet announced his decision about a tax hike, which could depend just as much on the Government's need for revenue as on a desire to cool the economy.

In the past, it has also been traditional for a President to leak some significant elements of his State of the Union address so that incoming Congressmen might have some notice of what to expect. Presidential Press Secretary Bill Moyers, who leaves to be come publisher of Newsday in February, has already completed several drafts of the address, and flew down to the ranch last week to talk it over with Johnson. Yet there have been no meaningful hints about what Johnson intends to concentrate on, and the silence has led, in fact, to speculation that the State of the Union address may be delayed until late January instead of being delivered shortly after the Congress convenes on Jan. 10.

Apparently unaware of the President's plans and intentions themselves, the members of the Administration have been reduced to making meaningless and sometimes embarrassing noises in public. Last week Secretary of Commerce John T. Connor predicted an expanding economy, but the only cliche he dared use to buttress his faith was that the Government would continue "a sound mix of fiscal and monetary policies." Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz, attacking reports of a "credibility gap" in the Administration, questioned the credibility of the press in reporting budgetary news--of which there has been precious little.

Climate of Uncertainty. Though Lyndon Johnson was keeping mum about his plans, he has already committed himself to several new pieces of legislation that will be costly, such as a 10% to 15% across-the-board hike in social security. The President has hinted that there will be major new legislation in the area of child health, particularly in dentistry; half of all U.S. children under 15 have never been to a dentist.

There will be some expansion of Medicare benefits to cover the disabled receiving social security--1,300,000 more people on top of the 19 million already covered--and there is a good possibility that the Administration will seek new legislation covering air and water pollution, welfare benefits, nursing-home construction, health manpower and the reorganization of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

In the climate of uncertainty, just about every department in Washington expects to undergo a budget hold-down.

As an assistant secretary of HEW put it: "There has been a deceleration of our acceleration." That was just about as illuminating as most of what came out of the Johnson Administration last week.

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