Fighting the Other War

Before leaving for Guam last week, Lyndon Johnson was preoccupied with another war. In a 9,500-word message to Congress, he outlined programs totaling $25.6 billion to aid the nation's poor--an increase of $3.6 billion--and specifically earmarked $2 billion for Sargent Shriver's Office of Economic Opportunity, combat headquarters for the war on poverty. Predictably, though the figure represents a 25% increase over OEO's current budget, it was nowhere near enough to satisfy everybody. Speaking for the U.S. Conference of Mayors Detroit's Jerome Cavanagh promptly complained that at least $3 billion was needed to do the job properly.

By Guess & Bv God. Johnson is well aware that he will be lucky to get even the $2 billion that he asked for. In the face of mounting congressional complaints about the high costs and muddled management of his domestic programs, he never once referred in his message to the Great Society or to the War on Poverty (he used the tepid phrase Strategy Against Poverty instead). But if the President was not about to charge ahead with vast new schemes, neither was he ready to retrench. He promised more federal aid to rural areas, where 43% of the nation's poor live, requested $1 billion for Community Action programs in urban areas, asked for $135 million to extend the preschool Operation Head Start through the first and second grades.

At midweek the President flew to Nashville, Tenn., to join Lady Bird at the end of her threeday, 1,500-mile tour of Appalachia's schools. "I stood it for two days," he said, after bounding down the ramp of Air Force One and bussing Lady Bird, "but I couldn't last out the third one." To mark Andrew Jackson's 200th birthday, the Johnsons breakfasted at the Hermitage, later visited the home of James Polk, a President whose name often gets lost in the jumble between Jackson and Lincoln but who turned the U.S. into a conti nent-spanning nation by acquiring territory now comprising Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, California and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

Before returning to Washington, Johnson addressed 125 Southern educators and Government officials at Tennessee Governor Buford Ellington's executive mansion in Nashville. Straying from his subject--education and poverty programs--Johnson noted that he was often criticized for spending too much on space exploration. "If we get nothing else from that space program than the photographic satellite," he said, "it is worth ten times over the money we've spent. Without the satellites, I'd be operating by guess and by God. But I know exactly how many missiles the enemy has got."

Westward, Ho! Back in the capital, the President moved to mute growing criticism from labor leaders by announcing that he was delaying his proposal to merge the Labor and Commerce departments. Faced with criticism from an other group--the Governors of the nation's states and territories, who have complained about the confusing proliferation of domestic programs--he had 49 of them over to the White House for a day of discussions and socializing. After a black-tie dinner with them, the President, still in his dinner jacket, choppered over to Dulles International Airport to set out on his long westward journey.

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