Why Vote for Johnson?
Brand, H.
The Goldwater nomination marks a new departure in American politics. For the first time, a Presidential candidate lends focus to the conservative and reactionary forces in both parties....
...Goldwater is basically the candidate of the wellconnected bureaucrat of the MitchellNewburgh type—a type that defends the interests of the small and mediumsized businessmen and of corporate executives on the make...
...Kennedy did not shirk an even greater risk when he took the U.S...
...The Alliance for Progress, in itself not an unimaginative idea although puny in magnitude, ineffectual in method, and condemned to political sterility, is withering away in the administrative embrace of Johnson's Mann and other Old Mexico hands...
...Ever greater sections of American cities are becoming derelict...
...The clear and present danger...
...He and his crew may be distasteful to all with humanist concerns, but they should not be regarded as fascist adventurers...
...Voting for Johnson may be a political act, but it will not change the relationship of forces in this country, which are heavily weighted towards reaction and neofascism...
...He would require the confidence of in dustry and Wall Street, and he would gain it since he would not likely attempt to dismantle any of the regulatory and protective institutions created during the New Deal, nor do more than modify the economic and fiscal policies which have safeguarded and often engendered high levels of business, though with declining effectiveness...
...Whatever Goldwater and his lieutenants say now, they will not, if elected, want to precipitate a polarization of political forces in the U.S...
...On the contrary, in key areas there exist no issues of substance between the Presidential candidates...
...The bankruptcy of the right will stand revealed if Goldwater wins office, although the failure of welfare-state liberalism would then be not less manifest...
...He would seek to strengthen the legal framework within which the subgovernments operate...
...It would be illusory to believe that he will inspire a liberal-progressive alliance...
...And the war in Vietnam, stepped up by Kennedy, has been intensified by Johnson...
...Yes, it's all possible, but how much difference would it make...
...In his suggestive work, The Deadlock of Democracy, James McGregor Burns sees strong Presidential leadership as the most urgent need of American democracy...
...But this carries an ever heavier price: A profit-based, government-aided expansion intensifies the contradictions in the allocation of resources and human labor...
...President Kennedy's chief budget officer publicly voiced pride at this fact...
...Such an alliance then must come from below...
...But this in itself is a symptom of a deepening political disease: wheeling and dealing has become an end in itself due to the fragmentation of party structure, which now affects the Republican no less than the Democratic party, with no alternative instruments of politics in sight...
...Southern white citizens councils and the nouveau riche who owe their wealth principally to tax and regulatory policies and defense contracts readily identify with this type...
...Can the Department of Interior collaborate more closely with the oil industry than it already does...
...Once in the White House, he would be compelled to broaden his base...
...And need much be said about the extent of substantive agreement between Johnson and Goldwater regarding foreign policy...
...Can Congress pass much more special-interest legislation than it has already...
...Decisive measures to deal with rapidly increasing State and local fiscal difficulties—which are a major factor in the widespread conservatism of the electorate—have been almost totally lacking...
...to the brink over Cuba, a risk which his own aggressive policy with respect to Cuba had led to...
...Social stability would be as much the concern of a Goldwater administration as of its predecessors...
...Ideals of justice and democracy are regarded cynically...
...Growth," is being relied on to facilitate the "trickling down" of wealth, i.e., to create jobs and raise revenues below the Federal level...
...This fragmentation of governmental power has resulted in the growth of virtually autonomous subgovernments — exemplified by the military-industrial complex, as well as by such less prominent collectives as the oil industry, the Farm Bureau, the American Medical Association...
...This is the wrong question to ask...
...yet, neither would he be willing to deal with, or even to understand, the mounting problems of social disintegration — here as well as abroad—arising from the blind impact of technology coupled with the growing disparity in the distribution of wealth...
...Yet, how much more strengthening can he do really...
...But their very centrism—the necessity, as they saw it, to compromise with conservative elements — aborted the consolidation of a liberal-progressive wing which would consign the old two-party system to the scrap heap...
...Can the distinction between, say, the regulatory commissions and the regulated be blurred more...
...However, while Goldwater is their candidate, he cannot be their President...
...If Goldwater wants more of the same, it doesn't make for differences worth arguing about...
...Throughout the postwar period, the wealth of the wealthy has vastly increased, but social problems have kept getting worse...
...arms superiority...
...Key social legislation has been originated by, or could not have been passed without, the support of such men as Dirksen (civil rights), Taft (housing and urban renewal), and Mills (social security...
...Like a moloch, the Federal defense-space establishment devours a vast amount of the public revenue...
...Similarly, Douglass Cater in his Power in Washington — a more subtle if less historically oriented analysis than Burns's — argues that, "The central problem . . . is how to make power in Washington more cohesive...
...Tax policy has favored the big corporations and the wealthy...
...He calls for the abandonment of the "Madisonian model" of checks and balances, which act as a deadlock upon the levers of action, preventing or critically delaying the solution of urgent social and economic problems...
...One-fifth to one-third of the American people continue to live in substandard conditions...
...Both want a firmer rule by the upper classes, by its older, increasingly disadvantaged sectors, and a stop to costly concessions to the urban masses, which erode the power of the conservatives and their institutions...
...The threat of automation hangs over large numbers of workers, blue-collar and whitecollar, white and non-white...
...is that government becomes disintegrate...
...So where are we...
...We have the infrastructure of the corporate state, even though its authority remains largely extralegal still...
...Does it matter then whether Goldwater wins the election or Johnson...
...He would need the support of at least some "liberals," such as Scranton...
...Goldwater is not a Hitler, Dirksen not a Hindenberg...
...There is nothing in the record of the Johnson or Kennedy administrations to allow of an affirmative answer...
...However, both men are beholden to the political system that made possible their rise and ensures their dominance...
...Beyond question, Goldwater would sanction the fragmentation in which Burns and Cater see such danger...
...Can the Public Health Service become very much more considerate of the chemical and drug industries...
...To be sure, comparisons with the Weimar Republic and its fate are not very instructive...
...Nor is Johnson a Hindenburg, presiding over a state which is wracked by economic crisis, opposed by its own civil service and army, and held in contempt by strategically placed socialist and communist factions...
...on the contrary, he will do all he can when re-elected to mend the Democratic party, futile as that effort will prove to be...
...Goldwater would not be able to do anything flagrantly reactionary...
...They have been designed to forestall any serious measure of controversy between the Democratic administration and business...
...It should not be forgotten that conservatives have in the past seen very well the need for social "advancement...
...Rather, Johnson stands in a tradition of centrism which, however, has been a viable politics only when the chief executive was able to rally significant liberal-progressive support—as did both Roosevelts and, to a lesser extent, Truman...
...pessimism and lack of perspective mark public discussion...
...His upstate regulars, Southern Democrats, and reactionary Democratic machines—such as the one in his home state—will not suffice for him to govern...
...True, the danger of a third world war might be enhanced by a President Goldwater, but so it was by Kennedy when, to close a "missile gap" he either knew or could have known didn't exist, he raised the military budget upon taking office by many billions of dollars (see the still highly relevant article by P. M. S. Blackett, "Steps Towards Disarmament," Scientific American, April 1962...
...A rampant commercialism, key prop of the economic expansion and of corporate power, spreads a false consciousness, and heightens the frustrations of job and urban life, which in turn go fat to generate the mass basis of rightist movements...
...While resisting innovation along a path of progressive orientation, Goldwater would not be able to revert to the Truman-Acheson-Dulles line, which was based on the assumption of unchallengeable U.S...
...private concerns over careers and living standards are uppermost...
...only thus can the basis for a strong Presidency be created...
...The current business expansion has in large part been based on defense expenditures: In rebutting Goldwater's charges of inadequate preparedness, Johnson stressed that such spending had risen by $28 billion since the Democrats took office in 1961...
...Such measures have not eradicated existing evils, nor were they meant to...
...Johnson's brand of centrism has been devoid of vitality, marked as it is by anticipatory surrender of policy objectives (e.g., the ridiculously small sums asked for in the foreign-aid and anti-poverty bills...
...But he remains essentially a congressional Democrat, wedded to centrist tactics, and by no means averse to subgovernments, to one of which he owes his rise...
...Johnson may well prefer being a "strong" President...
...The economic policies of the New Frontier have been essentially business-oriented (as is ably argued by Bernard D. Nossiter in The Mythmakers...
...Any attempt by Goldwater to carry out his crackpot ideas in foreign policy would lead not to war as much as it would accelerate the deterioration in America's world position, and deepen the social decay in the developing countries while at the same time making totalitarian measures to cope with their problems more likely...
...Foreign aid has been cut back sharply, especially under Johnson...
...The Federal budget has not been allowed to rise except for purposes of financing defense and the space effort...
...The right question is whether a re-elected Johnson administration will be able or willing to promote change in the lineup of social forces that have catapulted Goldwater and his like into the leadership of a national party...
...Goldwater would have to act in the same sense, e.g., as Eisenhower did in preventing the 1958 recession from spiralling downward...
...Welfare outlays have been kept virtually level...
...Together, they form Goldwater's narrow if tightly organized power base...
...President Johnson has boasted repeatedly of his efforts to reduce the budgetary deficit, despite persistent heavy unemployment and underemployment...
...Rather, they have helped to forestall extreme social unbalance...
Vol. 11 • September 1964 • No. 4
