Time for Debriefing

...Not that the idea of reasoning together is bad...

...That is why, in retrospect, the two most significant remarks of this campaign were William Miller asking South Bend workers, who were just recovering from the sudden Studebaker shutdown, if they were willing to give up their jobs to immigrants, and Goldwater telling a suburban shopping center crowd in Bucks County that he was sick and tired of having minorities running this country...

...True, Johnson and Humphrey spoke of the cities and the explosions taking place on their doorsteps...

...They may also be forced to sit down with Republicans or anyone else who can help create situations that will promote the political tensions (as opposed to social tensions) which motivate cities into action...

...This is not a far-fetched idea, as the faint rumblings of reform in New York indicate...

...And because Goldwater played, ineffectively but prophetically, on these fears and tensions, the nation is squeamishly grateful to him for exposing the naked nerve of its confusing political climate...

...Here the ideas must come from the grassroots, not the grass-roots of entrenched party machines that perpetuate political deadweight in office, but from serious political activists...

...It is just that far from being a rallying cry, the Presidential exhortation sounded more like a political Bufferin against the Goldwater headache...

...Within this unstated but expanding coalition looms a full political structure, carrying the seeds for a politics of militant consensus...

...They know there are still school boards to infiltrate, city council seats to be won, mayors to be elected, governors to be pushed into state capitals, legislatures whose reapportionment must be blocked, courts to attack, and population shifts to deny...

...If nothing else, it tells you where the conflict and the militant supporters are...

...Our urban areas desperately need some healthy independent political conflict that goes beyond the problem of civil rights...

...Paul Danaceau, a free-lance writer, currently lives in Washington...

...Thus, although Goldwater has been beaten, his major issue remains highly volatile and waiting for the man who knows how to use it...

...THE BATTLEGROUND, then, is more local than national at this point, and the Democrats and other liberal groups must accept this premise or have the foundation cut out from under them...

...For although it takes happy hearts to trundle off to the Great Society, there are still those who don't want to go—not just there, but anywhere...

...Regardless of what he meant—perhaps Goldwater was really thinking of Congressional lobbyists and pressure groups— these speeches gave substance and content to his crime-in-the-streets and morality arguments and exploited, with potentially terrifying results, the social tensions that have challenged the nation's local politi- cal structures...

...It is this after-effect—the staying power of the Goldwater supporters and the pressure they will continue to exert—that is the new fact of American political life...

...AFTER THE JOHNSON VICTORY Time for Debriefing By Paul Danaceau Washington What the Democratic party needs in the immediate aftermath of its victory—what any good political winner needs after an allout battle over a single issue—is debriefing...

...By one of the weird paradoxes of the election, it turned out to be Goldwater, with his warped populism, who articulated the problem most graphically...

...In the hands of a fanatic, this split—between city and country, between the enlightened and the fearful—is a wild horse to ride...

...Unless we can solve this problem, nuclear responsibility may not make much difference...

...but in America, there may be more time for the attainment of a common name, a common policy, and a common sense of political destiny...

...Goldwater's defeat has effectively eliminated the issue as a prime consideration...

...It is also why the size of the Johnson vote has relatively little bearing on the future...

...But the liberals can expect some fairly good legislative proposals from the White House, such as Federal aid to impacted urban areas and a widespread program of free education that President Johnson has proposed in speeches and White Papers on economic issues...

...They cannot expect too much from Washington...

...The Right wing, rooted in fundamentalist, rural mistrust and fear of the city, is recklessly fumbling toward an alliance with long-time city residents who feel trapped and frustrated by their surroundings, and suburbanites who operate on a theory of urban colonialism: drawing wealth from the city, retreating to suburban homes, and paternalistically discharging civic responsibility through the Community Chest...

...It has yet to suggest movement, drive, excitement or intellectual creativity...

...Both seem part of his plan for the national government to become "a constructive partner in creative federalism...

...And thanks to both, they have been drawn more and more into the organizational truths of political life —as was shown, for example, in the uncanny job of organizing groups in behalf of the civil rights bill...

...And although the situation is tailor-made for Democratic liberals and anyone else who wants to join them, success is going to depend not on waiting for recognition from the local parties but on trying to take them over...

...Moreover, Goldwater's people know, perhaps better than any other group in the entire American political spectrum, where the issue will be joined...

...Since the New Hampshire primary almost nine months ago, Democrats have been campaigning against Senator Goldwater on the issue of nuclear responsibility and war and peace...

...As the result, they now run the risk of being issue-blind...

...No activist minority faction has a right to expect great encouragement from a party in power—especially one that, with the new-found support of big business, stands to be the large centrist home of the status quo...

...This means that the Democrats, who for months have been campaigning against Barry the Bomber, may be forced, if they are serious enough about the cities, to campaign against their own people on occasion...

...Goldwater knew—and on this his claim as a political figure rests —that fear is an essential part of the political process...

...Beginning with Goldwater's announcement the day after his nomination that he would make the streets safe, right up until he cancelled the controversial film Choice because, as he said, it was "racist," this antiurban accent permeated the GOP nominee's campaign...

...But that is as it should be...

...In other words, can we neglect what Samuel Lubell has called the "menacing development" of the "intertwining of racial antagonisms with governmental units...

...Paradoxically, for the benefit of the Great Society, Lyndon Johnson needs immediate pre-empting—and by his own party...

...But as the nation moves toward a more mature understanding of the cold war, we must seriously question whether we can afford to accept Richard Neustadt's theory of politics as usual at home while handling a crisis a day in foreign policy...

...It was Goldwater who was able to bring the urban crisis overdramatically to the fore because of his unique campaign: the first since William Jennings Bryan's, in 1896, that was basically anti-urban and even anti-Northern urban...

...What Goldwater was trying to promote was the same condition Harold Lasswell described almost 30 years ago when he said of the middle-class: "In Europe, their disunion has bred the politics of catastrophe...

...for the years ahead...

...With Goldwater defeated nationally, the country cannot afford to refrain from substantive criticism of Lyndon Johnson's programs...

...But if properly saddled by him, it is almost impossible to stop without shooting...

...Nor can serious Democrats afford not to participate in this criticism...

...Especially in defeat, it retains its purity—neither tainted by national power nor compelled to submit to compromise...

...Yet because the nuclear issue was dominant, the Democratic leadership posed this issue only late in the campaign, and even then, within the limits of an incumbent Administration campaigning for reelection...

...For today the liberals seem not just primed but strong enough for some good fights around the country...

...A particularly healthy result of such a resurgent liberal force would be to provide some sensible opposition to the "Come, let us reason together" argument of President Johnson...

...One national danger created by the election is that the vast and clear field of support and action that Barry Goldwater—because of his intemperate and almost incorrigible positions—abdicated to Lyndon Johnson may be regarded as a natural condition...

...With Lyndon Johnson in the White House, we have done as well as could be expected...

...Failing such take-overs, the least that will be required is the maintainance of strong pressures from liberals to keep the status quo honest...

...The other important question, though, cannot be answered from the top: Namely, what role will the cities themselves play in this "creative federalism...

...Having survived on a diet of civil rights and disarmament for many years, they have at last had a full-serving of both and can turn to specifics...