Civilized Eye on the Jungle

No U.S. President of this century has received more personal vilification from press and public than Lyndon Johnson. Since most of the name-calling --though not all of it--emanates from the left, it is all the more surprising that one of the strongest cases for the President is consistently made by a liberal commentator who disapproves of the war in Viet Nam. The New Yorker's Richard H. Rovere, 52, has defended the President simply by keeping him in perspective, by showing that his record does not begin and end with his military policies in Viet Nam.

At the same time that Johnson has been prosecuting an unpopular war, Rovere recently reminded New Yorker readers, the President has also pressed for relaxed relations with the Soviet Union and expanded trade with Eastern Europe. While supporting a military junta in South Viet Nam, his administration has aided several socialist governments in Africa and supported the Congolese government against white mercenaries. Domestically, he has surmounted problems that stymied his predecessors. His ingenuity was on display, for example, when he bypassed Congress to reorganize the government of the District of Columbia and give it a start toward home rule. "In any other period," writes Rovere, "this would seem a rather large and dramatic accomplishment." In the current frantic atmosphere, "it was treated as no more than a triviality."

The Need to Philander. Pervasive distrust of Johnson is almost a national calamity, writes Rovere. Yet L.B.J.'s credibility gap is at worst only slightly greater than that of his predecessors. "A head of state--particularly in a diverse and democratic society," says Rovere, "is necessarily a kind of philanderer, and in dealing with his numerous mistresses, or constituencies, he is bound to make false professions of one sort or another." Johnson is faulted for letting Defense Secretary McNamara go, writes Rovere, but the remarkable fact is that he has kept on many Kennedy appointees who might have left earlier if Kennedy were still President. Those who have resigned he has generally replaced with men of equal ability. "If it weren't for the war in Viet Nam," says Rovere, "he would be a great President. Despite Viet Nam, he may look like a great President 20 years from now."

At a time of anguish over Viet Nam, the commentator who can disparage the war yet admire the man who wages it is a rarity. Yet Rovere has made a career of putting politics in perspective without being any the less interesting for his balance. Not that balance was his first approach to politics. Like many another intellectual New York boy of his time, he flirted briefly with Communism in the '30s and wrote for the New Masses until the Nazi-Soviet pact disillusioned him. After short stints with more conventional publications, he joined The New Yorker in 1944, and has strayed only rarely to write an occasional piece for other publications.

With its emphasis on idiosyncrasy of personality and its aversion to political rhetoric, The New Yorker has been just the right vehicle for Rovere. Commuting not too frequently between his home in Dutchess County and Washington, he writes one piece a month on the average, and avoids the scramble for news in the nation's capital. This limits his audience, but it is an urbane and important one. "He casts a very civilized eye on what to all of us here is the jungle," says Washington Columnist Joseph Kraft. "He is one of the most sophisticated men writing on politics."

Begetters of Violence. Rovere's views on politics and people have held up well over the years. His books of collected columns (The Eisenhower Years, Senator Joe McCarthy, The American Establishment, The Goldwater Caper] are worthy guides to the eras they describe. Only The General and the President, a biography of Douglas MacArthur that he co-authored with Arthur Schlesinger Jr., is less than fair to its subject. Never one to join his fellow liberals in wholesale condemnation of the Eisenhower Administration, Rovere gave it credit for easing tensions, creating a "new consensus" after years of dangerous divisiveness, and--despite bellicose talk--pursuing a steady and relatively peaceful foreign policy. At the same time, he faulted Ike for failing to "keep abreast of the intellectual ferment, the technological ferment, the struggles for equality."

Nobody has put McCarthyism into perspective more astutely than Rovere, and his interpretation of McCarthy as an adventurer without much plan or purpose is now widely accepted. "It was a striking feature of McCarthy's victories and of the surrenders he collected," wrote Rovere, "that they were mostly won in battles over matters of an almost comic insignificance. His causes celebres were causes ridicules." But if the danger of McCarthyism was exaggerated, he feels the present era is genuinely frightening. Such is the rancor of anti-Johnson protesters that Rovere actually fears for the safety of the President if he campaigns in the big cities next year. Begetters of violence are everywhere on hand. "The protest movement," he says, "is desperate for martyrs."

His own opposition to the war in Viet Nam stems more from a consideration of internal U.S. politics than of international factors. In a recent eloquent article, he expressed doubt that the U.S. could long support such a war without profound internal alteration--and not necessarily for the better. "Both the best and worst spirits among us are turning inward more than they were before, and are given more to seeking individual grace and salvation"--and avoiding external responsibility.

Yet in this revulsion against the war, Rovere discerns some signs for hope. Almost everybody from the President on down, he feels, favors keeping the war limited. The President not only avoids patriotic rhetoric in defense of his policy; he even makes speeches against war. "Those who support the war, like those who oppose it, appeal not to the patriotic heart but to the bleeding one. This is without precedent. This seems to be the first war of modern times in which all the leaders of a large belligerent power agree that there is no glory in it for any of them. Among politicians competing for public favor, hawks and doves are in conflict only over means; their common end is to get it over with as soon as possible."

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