Washington Report: Many Happy Returns?
Sisyphus
WKSHIHGTOH REPORT MANY HAPPY RETURNS? The voters have taken the Republican party to the woodshed for a thorough political spanking. Fortytwo incumbents in the Congress were defeated in...
...Meeting with leaders of countries, the "economic summit" (in fact a piece of window-dressing), and a continuation of Secretary Kissinger's peripatetic foreign-policy missions were identified as specific achievements...
...In the face of hard times, each member of Congress, 535 of them, is more likely to react like the corner grocery store--defending its own interests, however legitimate, but lacking the breadth to act on its own initiative in the interest of the sum of the parts...
...Through examining Washington and his struggles during the revolution, his inspiration at the Constitutional Convention and his trials as President, the reader is clearly reminded of the long ordeal America experienced before nationhood was truly achieved...
...Moreover, members of the Ford Cabinet seem to be in business for thernselves--Butz, the Scrooge, at Rome...
...Again through his Press Secretary, the President released what was described as a "notable number of achievements . . . a tone of stability and continuity in foreign policy, openness and candor in domestic affairs, cooperation and reasonableness in (his) dealings with Congress...
...And indeed upon completion many a reader will want to repair to the larger fourvolume version...
...Compounding these difficulties are rising prices---sugar selling for 18 cents a pound retail 11 months ago now costs about 55 cents, and the price of a basket of farm-grown food for a family of four has risen $197 this year...
...Somehow, the government, both executive and legislative branches, seems demoralized as well as ineffective...
...But George Meany, who holds the strings on some of the lib-lab Democrats, opposes wage and price controls...
...The other guys ran and now find themselves in Congress...
...the second, economic bad times...
...Therefore, the more capable decided to stand aside and let the other guys run...
...Senators-elect began dreaming of achieving the Presidential nomination of their party two years from now, even before they were sworn in as Senators...
...One recalls the dozens of Democrats elected in 196 a, elected not for themselves, but in reaction to the Presidential candidacy of Republican Senator Goldwater...
...One was anger over the attempted Watergtae coup d'6tat, whose dimensions have not yet been fully revealed...
...In addition, the President, a conservative, probably hopes that such an announcement will accomplish two other purposes: 1 )--bolster the sagging support for Nelson Rockefeller, his beleaguered Vice Presidential nominee, whom Republican conservatives don't like...
...Unless we go to war with Argentina as a result of his night-club escapade, Representative Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, appears to remain strong enough to quash substantive tax reform for another two years, although there will be efforts at the organizational caucus of House Democrats in December to weaken his control...
...As for the economy, the Ford Administration itself has finally been forced to acknowledge that rising unemployment, shrinking industrial production, and increasing inventories of such items as unsold new cars suggest times are not the best...
...Their campaigns indicate they are far less reflexively internationalist and, more specifically, they are more instinctively anti-Soviet than both their newly elected Republican counterparts and the Johnson and Nixon/Ford Administrations...
...Kissinger, wherever he pitches camp...
...There is no prospect of increasing energy supplies for at least I0 years, yet except for WIN buttons and other exhortatory declamations, there is no effort to insist on a policy of fairshares conservation--i.e., rationing...
...Dennis of Indiana and Mayne and Sherle of Iowa...
...The incoming Congress is a mixed bag...
...It may be premature to draw a definitive political profile of the newly elected members of Congress...
...SISYPHUS BOOKS 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Critics' Choices for Christmas THOMAS E. CRONIN As we begin to move into our Third Century as a nation we are witnessing, understandably enough, a considerable amount of nostalgia about America and a more meaningful searching reappraisal of how it all began...
...it is another for political authority to play chopsticks when a concerto is called for...
...Two of this year's more outstanding books are biographies of two men who helped found and share this first new nation...
...Democrats greeted the election returns with prideful smiles...
...Here too the reader is taken back to the nation's early trials, and to a figure whose numerous contributions to our political heritage are impossible to measure...
...But, there are clues...
...Herblock, the cartoonist, is wearing a NIM button these days--"WIN" upside down and reversed--signifying, he says, "Nothing In Mind...
...Two matters of national concern reinforced local considerations that led to their defeats...
...Overall, too, less predictable than the Humphreys and Mondales...
...This new effort is much more than a condensation...
...The barons of the Congressional committees were beginning to refer to the President as if he were a "lame-duck," when he was only 100 days in office...
...Significantly, newly elected Democratic liberals appear to differ from those coming through the door in the 1940s, '50s and '60s...
...Their record, or the perception of their legislative record, will help determine which political party holds the White House in 1977...
...Some Democrats elected to the House were "throw-aways," that is, many received their party's nomination because prospects at the time for election were not favorable...
...and Morton, pushing the oil companies' fortunes...
...The Democrats in Congress do have the numerical strength to enact a coherent economic program that will reverse the price spirals and put jobless Americans back to work...
...It is one thing to strum unrealistically on a people's aspirations...
...Democrats in Congress or in the nation, through their national party, have no economic program...
...The obvious building blocks are wageprice controls, tax-reform and public-service employment...
...Flexaer is the author of a previously published prize-winning four-volume study of Washington...
...Enough Democrats, particularly newer ones, remain skeptical of th~ value of public-service employment to impair passage of any massive program designed to absorb the unemployed...
...The President, well-acquainted with the wily ways of these chieftains of which he was once one, was probably obliged to say something along these lines in terms of his political future, even if he hadn't quite made up his mind...
...Moreover, having been a leader of a minority party, his statement was a natural defensive maneuver...
...In many respects 6 December 1974:236...
...But what intrudes itself more forcefully with each major Presidential action--or inaction--is whether Gerald R. Ford of Grand Rapids isn't over his head...
...Economic power surpasses their political authority...
...Th~ Watergate conspiracy against civilian government disturbed Americans more than politicians realized and incumbent Republican members of Congress received the brunt of the electoral punishment...
...On the other hand federal office-holders operating as a national coalition of conscience with moral baggage and open-faced idealism would reverse this downward trend...
...Most of these new Democrats were defeated for re-election two years later at the next Congressional election...
...Jefferson The President: Second Term (Little, Brown, $14.50) by the noted Jefferson biographer Dumas Malone offers us a splendid companion volume...
...If the next two years become government by drift, Americans' interest in voting may dwindle further...
...Third, Democrats are not on guard against the day when Americans realize that change is not equivalent to improvement...
...Because House Democrats under his nominal leadership don't have a program for anything, it is difficult to understand what the "mandate" is for...
...it is a lucidly written new appraisal and doubtless the best single volume available on this central political architect...
...Staunchest supporters of Richard Nixon were among those defeated for re-election--among these, Reps...
...The voting was against Republicans, not in favor of Democrats...
...Democrats overlook or ignore the fact that the voters turned out Republicans for reasons that had nothing to do with Democrats---Watergate and the economy...
...Several of this year's more significant books deal with the nature of leadership now and when our country began, and with the problems that yet await us...
...In addition, they appear less confident in the efficacy of Commonweal: 235 government-run programs of assistance...
...To these ends, Ford will probably be successful...
...And few of them, frankly, were ever missed---or heard from again their contribution being simply the defeat of entrenched retrospective incumbents...
...Fortytwo incumbents in the Congress were defeated in the November elections--all were Republicans, except four...
...In this connection, President Ford in mid-November sent word through his Press Secretary that he intends to seek a term as President in his own right...
...We'll see about that...
...Nevertheless, there will be a report card issued by the voters on the Democrats, even though they speak with many voices...
...At this rate, the President will next restore Calvin Coolidge's after-lunch nap to the White House schedule...
...No one who begins reading it will want to set it aside...
...James Thomas Flexner's onevolume biography of George Washington, Washington--The Indispensable Man (Little, Brown, $12.50), is a stunning performance...
...Not much can be expected of them, even if the Democratic party leadership in the House were capable of enacting a constructive legislation program...
...And, institutionally, Congress is a more skilled nay-sayer, a spoiler, a compromiser, a ratifier of Presidential proposals than it is an originating agent of constructive national policy, particularly when it comes to resuscitating an ailing economy...
...Moreover, the voter turn-out was the lowest in 32 years--38 percent nationally...
...2)--make it more difficult for Ronald Reagan to establish a staging area for his efforts to become the 1976 Republican Presidential nominee...
...Carl Albert, the weakest Speaker of the House of Representatives in 40 years, said the Democratic victories suggested a "mandate...
Vol. 101 • December 1974 • No. 9
