Challenge & Swift Response

"There's something about the man that reacts to a Kennedy," an aide remarked last week of Lyndon Johnson. To be sure, there is something about the President that reacts to any meaningful challenge to his authority, but the response is reflex and relentless when the defial comes from a Kennedy. True to form, scarcely 48 hours after Robert F. Kennedy became an open rival for the presidency, Johnson launched a massive counterattack. During a week whose pace and tempo seemed more attuned to the windup of a bitter election than to its opening hours, the President made it clear that he was prepared to use all of his immense powers and political wiles to thwart his adversary.

In a foretaste of the campaign to come, the President zipped from his Texas ranch to Minneapolis to Washington with little advance notice. From now until November, this will be the pattern. As one Democratic official noted, "Wherever there's a luncheon or dinner when the President is in flight, there you might get an unscheduled speaker." Back in the capital, he adroitly dominated the headlines. He deployed lieutenants to key primary states. He delivered four tough speeches on the Viet Nam war in six days.

Casually, and with characteristic relish, he announced a series of major appointments guaranteed to make headlines. General William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Viet Nam, was becoming the Army's new Chief of Staff. Did that signal a shift in the Administration's conduct of the war? Poverty Czar Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law of Bobby Kennedy, was off to Paris as the new U.S. Ambassador to France. Did that signify a move to weaken the Kennedy forces, a new American approach to the intractable Charles de Gaulle, a fresh approach to the war on poverty, or all of them? Wilbur J. Cohen, a Washington veteran dating back to the early days of the New Deal, was becoming the new Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Did that presage a new emphasis on domestic programs that have been getting increasingly short shrift as the war has intensified?

Constant Refrain. Whatever the Johnsonian moves meant, they stirred speculation and kept his name and image before the nation. In his speechmaking, the President touched frequently on the myriad crises that have overtaken his ill-starred Administration. He emphasized the "urgent" need for enactment of his 10% surcharge on income taxes and for the adoption of "a program of national austerity to ensure that our economy will prosper and that our fiscal position will be sound." For the first time, he came out with a warm endorsement of the Kerner Commission report on last summer's riots. Having previously all but ignored the commission's exhaustive assessment of the racial crisis, the President somewhat defensively declared: "We thought the report was a very thorough one, very comprehensive, and made many good recommendations."

In speech after speech, his constant refrain was Viet Nam--which, after all, is the issue that prompted Eugene McCarthy to challenge him in the first place and then jet-propelled Kennedy into the race.

Hardest-hitting of all his speeches was a talk in Minneapolis before the traditionally pro-Democratic National Farmers Union. Departing from his text, he spent 20 minutes defending his position both against the "get-it-over-with-quickly" advocates and those who would "tuck our tail and violate our commitments"--but principally the latter. "Most of these people don't say, 'Cut and run,'" he declared. "They don't say 'Pull out.' They say that they want to do less than we are doing. But we are not doing enough to win it the way we are doing it now." Calling for "a total national effort to win the war, to win the peace, and to complete the job that must be done at home," he sounded a theme that he is expected to repeat often: "We love nothing more than peace, but we hate nothing more than surrender and cowardice."

A Set Course. Addressing businessmen, civic leaders and publishers at a State Department briefing the next night, Johnson continued in the same vein. "Let no single American mistake the enemy's major offensive now!" he cried. "That offensive is aimed squarely at the citizens of America. It is an assault to crack America's will. It is designed to trouble and worry and confuse others." But, he said, his jaw set, "We have set our course. We will pursue it just as long as aggression threatens it. And make no mistake about it --America will prevail."

The burden of Johnson's speeches on Viet Nam was that he would continue the conflict on his terms--a limited ground war against the Communists coupled with restricted bombing raids against the North. Implicit in his position, however, was an invitation to negotiations. Typically, the week yielded a spate of hints about breakthroughs on the diplomatic front; the U.S., for example, was talking to the Swiss about yet another feeler from Hanoi that talks would begin if the Americans would only quit bombing the North.

A Way Out. Johnson also had to weigh several other compelling considerations. One was the situation in Czechoslovakia, where the forces of liberalization and change were demanding ever more freedom--and getting it. Perhaps most significant was the demand for a neutral foreign policy. Even a few years ago, Moscow would have rudely condemned or cruelly crushed those making such demands. Now, Russia's rukrs were apparently prepared to yield (see THE WORLD). And a key factor in the Czechoslovaks' insistence on neutrality was apparently the same sort of disaffection with the Viet Nam war that has been plaguing U.S. citizens. In Prague, the new-breed officials who are taking over believe that the conflict is in danger of getting out of hand, resent the levied cost of arming Hanoi, and seem to want a de-escalation of Communist involvement.

A second factor may be influencing Johnson. Last week, as 50,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops scouted the Saigon area for Communists and as others readied a new initiative in the besieged northern provinces, American battle deaths were confirmed to have passed the 20,000 mark. For many U.S. citizens, the war has been altogether too long (U.S. participation is reckoned by the Pentagon to have begun on Jan. 1, 1961) and cruelly costly; now they want a way out. Nowhere was this more clearly in evidence than in a poll of 73,000 Long Island Democrats, in which a scant 8.9% approved of Johnson's policy. A total of 30.6% favored "total military victory," with no limits; 27.6% called for a U.S. withdrawal; and 32.9% urged a bombing pause and greater efforts toward a negotiated settlement.

TV in Bulk. When the President was not standing behind a lectern, cleaving the air with his fists or clasping palms to underscore a point about the war, he was exhibiting a belated concern with the mechanics of presidential politics. What had been a sluggish Johnson effort in Wisconsin was suddenly infused with vigor, as the President's agents scurried about making arrangements, lining up speakers and buying television time in bulk lots.

Top cabinet officials were penciled in for speaking engagements, with Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman kicking off the campaign. Taking note of the double-barreled attack, Gene McCarthy noted wryly: "I noticed cabinet members now travel in pairs. I don't know whether they took this over from the old Communist practice or from what they thought was the practice of nuns in this country."

It was less of a laughing matter, however, when Freeman appeared at the University of Wisconsin. Midway through his speech, he had to quit as hairy hecklers who put up posters reading KILL FOR PEACE and shouted "Murderers!" badgered him unmercifully. "Never in all my years in public life," said a shaken Freeman later, "have I been subjected to anything like it." But his pain may turn to presidential profit. The jeering squad toted McCarthy signs, and their loutish treatment of an invited speaker could boomerang against the Senator from Minnesota.

Modern Medical Miracle. In the three-cornered dogfight, blood was being drawn on all sides, and there was some concern among Democrats that the battle would leave permanent scars. Nonetheless, Hubert Humphrey, ever the optimist, cheerfully noted: "My, how wounds do heal right after conventions! It is a modern medical miracle." And Postmaster General Larry O'Brien, who was one of the late John F. Kennedy's closest political advisers but has pledged "total loyalty" to Johnson, predicted that the Democrats "will have unity in the fall."

Perhaps. Right now, thousands of party officials find themselves torn in two and sometimes even trisected as the contenders seek pledges of support. The odds have traditionally favored the incumbent President, who commands potent leverage. A selective White House survey of Democratic House members, excluding the prowar, pro-L.B.J. Southerners, showed fhat 160 preferred Johnson, eleven Kennedy, three McCarthy. In a New York Times count, Democratic state leaders predicted that 65% of the delegate votes at the convention would go to L.B.J. (for a total of 1,725 convention votes, more than 400 above the 1,312 needed for nomination), with the remainder divided among others--790 votes for Kennedy and McCarthy, 61 for Alabama's George Wallace. Predicted Harry Truman, who survived a bitter party rift in 1948 to win the nomination: "The regular Democrats will go down the line to re-elect the President, unless some damn fool splits them."

Nevertheless, the odds against the first successful challenge to an incumbent President in 84 years may be growing shorter. This week's Gallup poll shows Kennedy pulling ahead of Johnson in popularity among Democrats 44% to 41%, after having trailed him 44% to 45% the week before announcing his candidacy. Mervin Field's California poll showed that in a three-way race in the June 4 primary there, Kennedy would draw 42% of the vote, Johnson 32% and McCarthy 18%; in a two-way race, the survey shows Bobby shellacking the President 54% to 36%.

Skeptical Members. Johnson faces a formidable challenge, for the context of presidential politics has changed almost beyond recognition since 1948, when Truman fought for survival by rallying the old machine pros to deliver him the nomination. For one thing, the bosses today are fewer and less potent than of yore. The Democratic machinery in key states is either barnacled or defunct. Perhaps the only major old-line boss on whom Johnson can rely is Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley, who predictably issued an effusive--and rather offensive--defense of the President by declaring: "Even the Lord had skeptical members of his party. One betrayed him, o'ne denied him and one doubted him."

Johnson must still reckon with the fact that substantially more than three members of his party are now ready to betray, deny or doubt him. They number millions. They see the nation struggling with wearying futility to solve its three major challenges--the endless war, the plague-ridden cities, the troubled economy--and they are tempted to cast about for new leadership. If Lyndon Johnson is to win renomination, he will have to convince them in the months ahead that he has the policies to control the crises, not vice versa.

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