A Failure of Communication

THE PRESIDENCY

Filled with misgivings about the war in Viet Nam and the violence in U.S. cities, confused by simultaneous demands for retrenchment and vast new spending programs, threatened with higher taxes and still higher deficits, the American public is in a restive, unpredictable mood. Its distemper infects an already cantankerous Congress, heightening the impression of drift and disarray in the nation's capital. In times past, the one unifying force in such a period of malaise has been the presidency. Yet Lyndon Johnson seems strangely insulated from his countrymen's doubts and fears.

One of his favorite rooms in the White House is a small private study a few steps down the hall from his ova! office. Heavy green curtains keep the sunlight out; the phone is muted to reduce noise. Here, under a pair of frontier paintings and a wooden eagle with "E pluribus unum" on a riband streaming from its beak, Johnson studies reports, chats with reporters and staff members. In this womb with no view, he is at ease, cheerful, convinced that the country and the world are in tolerably good condition. His judgment is reinforced by the cables and memos that reach his desk. From a sheaf of papers, he will recite encouraging tidings from his military advisers, a favorable report from Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker on the South Vietnamese election campaign, a note from Jack Valenti assuring him of his popularity. Mrs. Johnson dropped in during one such discourse recently. "That's not what I read in the papers!" she exclaimed.

Nose-Nuzzling. The President, of course, commands far more information about Viet Nam than any of his critics, and he has considerable justification for cautious optimism. His field commanders report that the military effort is going on schedule. The enemy is now being so badly hurt in the South that it is Hanoi that should be beset by gloom. But this is beside the point. Johnson is still unable to communicate to the American people a sense of what the U.S. is doing in Viet Nam, how U.S. interests are at stake as well as South Viet Nam's, the reasons for sticking out a long, enervating conflict.

Similarly, the President has appeared unwilling or unable to convey any sense of urgency about the urban crisis. At one time Johnson would seize the opportunity of a flood to chopper in and show the beleaguered citizens that their President was with them. Instead of being seen on the ghetto battlegrounds this summer, he has repeatedly posed for pictures chin-chucking and nose-nuzzling his infant grandson.

An ever-widening spectrum of public opinion is at odds with his leadership: farmers threaten to withhold commodities unless prices rise; liberals urge a massive new assault on ghetto ills; conservatives demand tough antiriot legislation; critics of the war demand withdrawal or an all-out effort to smash the enemy. Republican support for Viet Nam is eroding. Last week Martin Luther King advocated "mass civil disobedience" to "cripple the operations of an oppressive society." Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke warned of "civil war" unless the President fights for his urban programs.

Eternal Search. Johnson's main response to the rioting so far has been to name a study commission that is not scheduled to make a final report until next summer. Connecticut's Senator

Abraham Ribicoff pooh-poohed the study, saying that the reasons for racial violence were already well-known. "We must end the eternal search for consensus," said Democrat Ribicoff, "and exercise real leadership."

After a period of unusually low visibility, Johnson surfaced last week with a speech, an open letter to Congress, and his first full-dress, televised press conference since March. Despite all the words, he did little to give his leadership image a lift; during most of the press conference he was of solemn mien, his head canted downward.

He did, however, indignantly dismiss press reports that the war is in stalemate as "nothing more than propaganda." To his critics on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is holding hearings to prove its contention that congressional authority in foreign affairs is being trampled upon, Johnson insisted he was within his constitutional rights to conduct undeclared war in Viet Nam. He reminded them of the broad Tonkin Gulf resolution, passed three years ago, in which Congress approved "all necessary steps, including the use of armed force" in

Southeast Asia. If Congress has changed its mind, he said, it could always rescind that resolution.

Laundry List. Johnson also made some logical points to rebut the natter-ings of those who have prejudged the South Vietnamese elections as fraudulent. "We ought not to be astonished," he observed in a White House talk, "that the nation, racked by a war of insurgency and beset by its neighbors to the north, has not already emerged, full-blown, as a perfect model of two-party democracy." But even this statement was probably too late to dispel the public's skepticism about the elections, however ill-founded.

To proposals for a major new offensive on the slums, Johnson replied with a typical laundry list of measures already proposed. Not until these were all enacted and funded would the Administration consider new ideas. Two days after telling Congress that "we can no longer be satisfied with business as usual" when urban problems "are so urgent," he said to reporters that "several billions" would have to be squeezed out of the nonmilitary side of the budget to control the deficit in the current fiscal year. Thus, despite his admonition to Congress, it is clearly still very much business as usual for Johnson.

The Truman Analogy. In the confines of the White House, he works as energetically as ever for his policies. He pours out his arguments to a procession of newsmen and Congressmen, plans long-run sessions with leaders of business, labor and farm groups. He has been meeting incessantly with aides, assuring one of them recently. "This Administration hasn't lost its ass yet!"

His subordinates tend not to argue or to bring up the unpleasant business of the public opinion polls. Indeed one of Johnson's problems is a worsening dearth of idea men and "no" men willing to discuss bad news with him. He favors loyalty, submission and long tenure above all other virtues, and has eliminated gadflies from the White House staff and the higher echelons of Government. The phrase Great Society is rarely heard from official lips now, and there are no new coinages.

Johnson is most comfortable with men of long memory who buttress his own recollection of past Presidents' woes. He consoles himself with anecdotes of New Deal and World War II crises and of Truman's troubled days. "I remember in 1948," he says, "there wasn't a single person I could find who would say a good word about Harry Truman. There were 23 members of the Texas delegation, and only two of us would get on the train and ride with him." Perhaps the analogy explains the currently high influence in the White House of Lawyer Clark Clifford, who helped plan Truman's uphill campaign in 1948. In 1968, for all his sanguine murmurings today, Johnson may find himself in a similar position.

The President likes to think he has avoided some of the errors of his predecessors. And, indeed, he may have. However, the big difference between Johnson and the four Presidents he knew--Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy--is that for all his vitality, his political acumen and his impressive record of legislative achievement, he fails to communicate effectively and consistently with his constituency. Unless he can re-establish rapport with Americans in the coming months, his fortunes and those of the nation are not likely to improve.

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