Yellow Leaves on the New Frontier:

...Surely it is worth asking why an Administration led by the young and robust should now seem so middle-aged...

...It is possible that this demoralizing duality between the too-quickly obtainable (in Congress) and the impossible-to-achieve (in foreign affairs) accounts for the waning enthusiasm for the new Administration among intellectuals...

...But to understand is not necessarily to abdicate judgment...

...they wonder if the pose of stoic resignation on the part of White House aides is not a bit overdone...

...During his first Administration, President Eisenhower sought similar power, although he subsequently repudiated the proposal...

...Truman, it will be recalled, plunged headlong into battle, throwing hand grenades with cheerful abandon...

...IN DOMESTIC MATTERS, much of President Kennedy's program consists of legislation passed in previous sessions of Congress but vetoed by Eisenhower in the name of the Sound Dollar...

...The same risk inheres in Mr...

...Compare this with the all-out Blitzkrieg of the kind that President Truman used to launch...

...Those who have brooded over the matter see at least three general areas (apart from foreign affairs, which requires a separate article) in which the President might give a sharper design to the contours of his Administration: cultural, economic and political...

...Limited political warfare is a fine instrument for fighting on familiar terrain...

...Then, the agenda emptied, the President will have to start from scratch and establish a new set of legislative priorities...

...But competent economists contend that an answer to the problem may be imperative if the Government is to speed up the rate of growth, rationalize the wage-price cycle and reassert some degree of control over decisions that are semigovernmental in scope...

...When a problem with Congress comes up, someone has observed, the President's first instinct is to reach for the telephone, not to issue a combative statement...

...he was as much interested in having an issue as in winning a fight...

...Doubtless this condition cannot be corrected by executive fiat, but the President could do a great deal to enlarge the cultural facilities of this city—Washington is now the only major capital without an opera house...

...Surely this is an area in which the President, by inclination as well as conviction, could move in a forceful and systematic way...

...Perhaps the Puerto Ricans could be induced to send a PeaceCorps-in-reverse to the mainland, where the natives are about as serene as jumping beans on a barbecue grill...

...The one instance in which the President did decide to strike out boldly—Cuba— only provided a melancholy confirmation of the dilemmas one confronts in trying to use a bulldozer on the slagheap...

...The case of Cuba—to mention what has become a distasteful fourletter word in Washington—was only the most calamitous instance of how policies initiated by the old Administration could blow up in the hands of the new...

...Alas, the law was passed, and at the age of 30, the crusader lost his national purpose and expired...

...In contrast, Kennedy's initial program contained little that was daring or unexpected...

...Much of the letdown was unavoidable, and indeed was foreseen by the President himself...

...It is widely appreciated here that for the first fiscal year the President would be bound—or better, trussed—by the final budget left by Dwight Eisenhower...

...After his "Operation Bootstrap" had succeeded in raising living standards on the island, the Governor launched "Operation Serenity"—the annual Pablo Casals music festivals are part of the campaign...

...This would mean a drastic reorganization of the present crazy-quilt of city, country, state and Federal jurisdictions, at least on a functional basis adequate to cope with regional needs...

...Indeed, Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon—the hardy Anastas Mikoyan of American politics—laid the foundation of the Alliance when he was Under Secretary of State for Eisenhower...

...To a considerable degree, however, poverty has ceased to be a central political concern, although pockets of misery do persist...

...it was scarcely novel...

...This is simply an isolated example of the kind of campaign the President might undertake which would rekindle the glow among his intellectual constituents...

...A few years ago Russell mused about the problem of living to be 80, and he confided that one secret was to avoid any ambitions that could be achieved in a lifetime...

...If they are adopted—notwithstanding the dour forebodings of the American Medical Association, the National Association of Manufacturers and Senator Barry Goldwater—the Republic would probably survive the shock with a minimum of adjustment...

...Steel is the classic example of the new development: A handful of companies can now manipulate the market in a way to operate profitably at 40 per cent of production capacity...

...The Kennedy Administration, just six months old, has become the source of sour wisecracks among those who perhaps expected too much, too soon...

...Karl E. Meyer, an editorial writer for the Washington Post, is the author of The New America, a volume recently published by Basic Books...

...It is said that when Kennedy returned from his European tour, he was struck by the relative cultural poverty of Washington in comparison with Paris and Vienna...

...The President's requests are trimmed within the limits of the obtainable, and backstage pressures are used to bring the legislation through the battlements on Capitol Hill...

...Clean, incisive action of the kind so congenial to Kennedy is difficult in dealing with the ambiguties of Berlin or Laos...

...There is little that is really exciting about the Congressional jousts, and it is impossible to view world events with anything but stoic despair...

...In Congress, the Administration has tended to adopt the tactics of Limited Political Warfare—or LPW, to put it in the acceptable local jargon...

...For several years, Senator Kefauver's Anti-Trust Subcommittee has conducted a penetrating investigation into what are known as administered prices...

...Certainly the existing structure is being strained to the breaking-point by the growth of what Lewis Mumford calls megalopolis— the endless urban ribbon, stitched with superhighways, which stretches across the country...

...But the first step for political leadership is to draw attention to the problem, something which Kennedy is in the best position to do...

...Indeed, the health plan is merely a pallid Fabian shadow of the welfare legislation enacted 80 years ago in Germany by that wellknown anarcho-syndicalist, Chancellor Bismarck...

...They may not be solved by one Congress, or one Administration...

...In addition, the much-heralded Alliance for Progress which Kennedy is now trying to construct in this hemisphere is mainly an amplification of plans originally initiated in the last year of the previous Administration...

...Symptomatically, when a book about the first one hundred days entitled Let Us Begin was recently issued, the disenchanted were quick to urge an emendation: Let Us Begin Again...

...The paradox can be explained by contrasting Kennedy's approach to Congressional and world problems...

...John Fischer, the astute editor of Harper's magazine, has remarked that the gasoline engine may be to our present Federal system what gunpowder was to feudalism...

...Is THERE a middle ground of controversy which, if more fully explored, could give a lift to the Administration...

...It may well be that some basic modification of our system will be needed to cope with these conglomerations of power...

...Various proposals have already been introduced calling for some degree of public supervision over administered-price industries...

...Before his inaugural, Kennedy confided to a newspaper friend that he was concerned about the moment when the new faces would lose their bloom, and when the inherited weight of old problems would create the impression that little had changed...

...The third area touches on the structure of our political system...

...In LPW, frontal attack is avoided and main forces seldom exposed to direct combat...

...Not only was he the first Catholic tenant in the White House, not only was his margin of victory cruelly thin, but also there could be nothing like the clean break with the past that FDR was able to make with the Hoover Administration...

...This includes such measures as aid for depressed areas, housing legislation and pollution control programs...

...New York City is the example in extremis of the strangulation fostered by the motorcar...

...Manifestly, there is no easy answer to the distortion in the economy caused by the administered-price sector...

...Thus, the chief adventures along the New Frontier seem to consist of scrabbling in the bushes for rabbits, or shouting at the clouds to stand still...

...All this is a truism...

...There is a feeling that the strategy of the new Administration has invited disillusion by centering public attention on two polar points: the hopelessly insoluble at the one extreme, and the alltoo-easily obtainable at the other...

...At the same time, in the realm of foreign affairs the President has had to cope with problems that fall at the other extreme—shapeless, irritating, unbudgeahle slagheaps of frustration which cannot be removed by kicking, cajoling or even by recourse to the telephone...

...In economics, a major postNew Deal development involves the growth of vast concentrated industries which now operate in cheerful disregard of the competitive pricing system...

...Kennedy's para-military brand of politics...

...In fact, some have observed unkindly that Truman would have been disappointed if Congress had enacted his Fair Deal program in 1949: It would have robbed him of topics for his blustery sermons...

...Taken together, the committee's findings suggest that great corporate principalities are now virtually states within a state, largely unaccountable to government, stockholders or the pressures of the market...

...To some observers, who are sympathetic to the President, it seems as if the tactics of the new Administration have hastened the aging process...

...The disparity between the muscular, let's-get-moving rhetoric and the stalemate abroad may help to explain why the voice of America has sometimes been reduced to an unbecoming sputter...

...too—some sere and yellow leaf can already be detected along the New Frontier...

...By Karl E. Meyer YELLOW LEAVES ON THE NEW FRONTIER Young Administration now seems middle-aged as setbacks abroad mar domestic successes Washington Although it is still summer in the Capital—and a depressingly hot one...

...political fights resemble guerrilla skirmishes, sporadic raids, flanking movements...

...These three suggestions form what are known in organizational jargon as "frontier problems...

...Other items, including Federal aid to education and health care for the aged through Social Security, are venerable chestnuts, the traditional unfinished business on the liberal agenda...

...In the chain of Presidential succession, Kennedy came into office virtually handcuffed to his predecessor...

...Thus Thomas Jefferson in 1301 used his Inaugural Address to extend soothing reassurance to his Federalist opponents—and then quickly proceeded to embrace the most significant features of the policies he had once attacked...

...Rather, it is the prospect that it will be almost wholly adopted...

...Those closest to the problem feel that new regional instruments will have to be created if the burgeoning cities are to solve the fundamental problems of transportation, city planning, water supply, sewage removal and a host of related problems...

...Moreover, the historicalminded are quick to remind critics that the first task of a new President after a closely fought campaign is to reassure the vanquished...

...it is less well-suited to arousing popular feelings when the purpose of the battle is only dimly understood...

...Schlesinger therefore urged that the focus should shift to the qualitative aspects of American life—education, improvement of mass media, better use of leisure, etc...

...It might be noted, in passing, that Governor Luis Munoz Marin of Puerto Rico is leading the way in the cultural area...

...Barring a major eruption in Berlin, the immediate prospect is that the coming months will see more of the same—a continuing stalemate, punctuated by brushfires at the periphery...

...To someone of the President's temper, this prospect must seem especially maddening...

...The President was keenly aware that his position was quite different from that of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933...

...But they offer areas in which the President could take the initiative and persuade the electorate that the country was moving—not inching—in some perceptible direction...

...He recalled a friend who had dedicated himself to the repeal of an ancient British law prohibiting a widower from marrying his deceased wife's sister...

...A story told by Bertrand Russell sums the matter up...

...The borrowing authority requested by the Administration to encourage long-term foreignaid planning may have been controversial...

...The real problem for Kennedy, I would suggest, is not that Congress will spurn his program...

...The price-fixing scandal in the electric industry illustrates the moral problems posed by giantism...

...Several years ago, Schlesinger observed correctly that the primary concern of the New Deal tended to be with the quantitative aspects of American life—with the one-third of the population who lacked the rudimentary physical blessings of modern society...

...One obvious line of attack was once suggested by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in the days before the historian of the Roosevelt era joined the White House staff...