The Word from Washington

...but spot us one touchdown and we'll take Stassen, even money...

...POTOMAGUS...

...Its sporting aspects aside, however, we suspect there is much less to the dispute than meets the eye...

...To the West Europeans, who have been clamoring for some form of nuclear deterrent, the American ABM decision came without prior notice or consultation—a practice that should have caused no surprise in view of President Johnson's established style of conducting foreign policy...

...And there is no excess of optimism among the moderates that the Republicans will be able to avoid committing suicide again next year, despite President Johnson's far lower margin of popularity...

...forces from that unhappy land "would be not only a tremendous cruelty but also a tremendous stupidity...

...Stokes, a forty-year-old Negro attorney, is now given a better than even chance of winning the election for mayor this month...

...Johnson said last month with more than a modicum of self-righteousness...

...In New York, former Vice President Nixon has been directing a painstaking program of mending fences and forging the type of organizational strength that won the nomination for Barry Goldwater in 1964...

...If the threat is as grave as the President predicts, will $7 billion worth of tax increase stave it off...

...Were we to deploy a heavy ABlVI system throughout the United States," he said, "the Soviets would clearly be strongly motivated to so increase their offensive capability as to cancel out our defensive advantage...

...And if not, why not really reform the tax structure, close the loopholes, perhaps even do away with that holy of holies, the oil depletion allowance...

...The danger, we suspect, is more political than economic—a record "peacetime" deficit in the offing in an election year...

...The hitch, of course, is that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Congressional patrons of the military want to commit the country to a heavily-deployed, or "thick," antimissile defense system—complete with a vast national network of nuclear shelters...

...The word from California, for example, is that Ronald Reagan is a far more formidable contender for the GOP nomination than he is given credit for in other parts of the country...

...The Hell-on-Wheels Medal for automotive ingenuity (Civil Rights Division) goes to a heads-up outfit in Leesburg, Virginia, called B&H Enterprises, Inc., for developing a twenty-ton anti-riot tank now being peddled to police departments...

...relations with the NATO representatives Mr...

...And the wise thing...

...Unblushingly the apostles of fiscal prudence in the House have voted themselves new mileage fees...

...He admitted as much when he talked to Democratic fat-cats at a fund-raising dinner a few weeks ago, and he even joked about it...

...You cannot have peace in the world without force because there are evil men in the world...

...The momentum toward an enlarged nuclear arms race mirrors the economic and political momentum that is needed to fuel the gigantic industrial machine created by the Cold War, the space program, and the new technologies...

...We don't seem to have gotten any further since then, except more and more entangled...

...Yet the "mad momentum" is churning toward that very objective that McNamara decried with eloquence and logic in his San Francisco speech—a fully-deployed anti-Soviet ABM at a cost of more than $40 billion...

...At his side on the table in the House restaurant was a book by a French journalist about France's war in Vietnam...

...In private discourse, Mr...

...Johnson is less charitable...

...Unstintingly the war in Vietnam is bankrolled to ' a point that is now sure to exceed the officially acknowledged $30 billion a year...

...He exFischetti for Publishers Newspaper Syndicate '1 belong to the Birch Society, the Klan, and the Minutemen but I still have a little hate left over for anyone calling when I'm in the tub/' plained: "It is necessary to use force and the man who doesn't believe in force will soon be a slave...

...A five-billion-dollar program, to be sure, but one that the Pentagon has certified to be "thin...

...This is the challenge of the Republican progressives and moderates, such as the friend with whom we lunched in the House dining room the other day...

...If a weapon system works—and works well—there is strong pressure from many directions to procure and deploy the weapon out of all proportion to the prudent level required...

...Unhesitatingly the Senate has voted a generous installment for the supersonic transport subsidy, which may well turn out to rival the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) line as the egregious boondoggle of our day...

...The Word from Washington It is a fascinating contest, the game of chicken being played by the President and Congress to determine which will come first, the tax surcharge or cuts in Federal spending...

...The military is talking thin and thinking thick...

...4 Forgive us for rushing the annual award season, but in at least two of our categories entries already in hand have clinched the top prizes well ahead of the deadline...

...In his San Antonio speech about the war in Vietnam, President Johnson conceded that "many sincere and patriotic Americans" harbor doubts about his Administration's policies...

...Despite all the well-justified public lamentation over the state of race relations in Cleveland, the city's voters redeemed its reputation by giving the Democratic nomination to Carl B. Stokes...

...From where we sit, the popular thing—de-escalating the war and its staggering costs—might, just this once, turn out to be the responsible thing, too...

...And slenderization is a mass production industry, along with trimline television, lean automobiles, and linear sofas...

...And therefore the United States—even with the new anti-ballistic missile capability—would in no way be disposed to fall back to a Fortress America concept, leaving Western Europe hostage to Soviet nuclear or ground attack...

...On Capitol Hill, the arguments of the economizers have an insincere and hollow ring...

...He's probably right about Miller— what ever happened to him, anyway...

...The pressures for an anti-ballistic missile program are rooted deep in the American "military-industrial complex," to borrow a phrase from that famous honorary non-Socialist, Dwight D. Eisenhower...

...Our Pragmatic Churchman Award (Don't-Turn-Even-One-Cheek Division) goes to Roman Catholic Archbishop Robert E. Lucey of San Antonio, Texas, for proclaiming that war is an instrument of peace...

...Teddy Roosevelt is his political idol...

...Reports circulating from the Defense Department suggested that the President had directed Secretary McNamara to spring the ABM decision three months in advance of schedule...

...Twiggy is the apotheosis of the age...

...We're not going to let 1964 happen to us again," he said as we parted...

...But the Administration's "anti-Chinese" ABM has not yet shown it can work, let alone work well...

...Bullet-proofed and rubber-tracked, it can carry fifteen fully equipped lawmen at thirty-five miles an hour while they fire through gunports in the plexiglass dome...

...But you have to do what is responsible and you have to do what is right, if you sit in this place...

...Therefore the dangers of nuclear attack from the East were still as great and indivisible as ever...

...It goes on to warn, "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land...

...Well, you don't actually have to, but it would be nice if you tried once in a while...

...Confrontations between the Executive and Legislative branches are always entertaining spectacles, and there have been altogether too few such diversions of late...

...Within eight months this battle will define the Party's personality through the contest for the Presidential nomination...

...The Secretary of Defense has a well-demonstrated talent for glib sophistry...

...Once again, budget-cutting has become the pretext for an assault on domestic welfare programs...

...If I were concerned only with my own popularity or my own poll, that wouldn't be the way I would go about it—to suggest higher taxes or more wars...

...the firm is headed by a contractor named Joe Hill...

...Paradox-fanciers may note that the most persuasive words against an American decision to embark on any form of ABM enterprise were those used by McNamara in San Francisco...

...The vehicle, which retails at $28,700, "offers air-conditioned comfort while it spews out a stream of bullets, tear gas or a mind-deranging noise," reports the Chicago Daily News Service...

...The Cleveland primary was the best antidote that man has yet devised to the riots of last summer...

...Some of the city's important businessmen, including Cyrus S. Eaton, millionaire industrialist, gave Stokes financial and political support...

...A number of politically wise Californians, for that matter, can easily envision the erstwhile Hollywood cowboy in the White House—carried there by his own slick public manner and rising national frustrations over the war in Vietnam and the civil war at home...

...The machine has its Congressmen and Senators, its multi-state payrolls, and its advocates in the big hardware bazaar along the Potomac that is called The Pentagon...

...Archbishop Lucey, a friend of President Johnson and one of the twenty-two election observers dispatched to South Vietnam in September, announced on his return that withdrawal of U.S...

...I know it is not a popular thing for a President to do—to ask anyone for a penny out of a dollar to pay for a war that is not popular either," Mr...

...One of the most enduring fetishes of Twentieth Century American society is the pursuit of slimness...

...McNamara had to face in Ankara at the NATO nuclear policy meeting in late September...

...In recent weeks he has used such terms as "sell-out" and "disloyalty" while discussing those who call for peace...

...Ungrudgingly the funds are allocated for all sorts of dubious causes, while the banner of economy is raised only when critical needs for housing, jobs, and education are at stake...

...And despite Governor Romney's helter-skelter tour of the country during September, the Republicans who stand strongest in the eyes of the local organization men are Reagan and Nixon, according to those who have been around the country on pulse-feeling missions...

...But even if he doesn't defeat Republican Seth Taft, at least the politics of the city were purged of a heavily racist undertone when Stokes defeated incumbent Democratic mayor Ralph S. Locher...

...He may be right, but we wonder...

...but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword...

...At the White House, the President warns solemnly of the "inflation tax" we will pay if the ten per cent income tax surcharge is not swiftly imposed...

...The war now underlies everything we do here on the Hill...

...Their backing helped produce a surprising number of white votes, which, added to Negro votes, won the nomination for Stokes...

...A corollary objective was said to be the damping down of pressures for a heavy system...

...McNamara had to mollify the Europeans with the acrobatic argument that the new ABM system rendered the United States no less vulnerable to a Soviet preemptive or retaliatory strike than it always had been...

...But neither a pacifist, an ideological dove, or bomb-thrower is he...

...The purpose, according to this version of the events, was to woo the support of the pro-ABM hawks on the Hill for the President's tax program...

...It was perhaps inevitable that this aesthetic of emaciation should flower finally in the form of a "thin" anti-ballistic missile system...

...Nixon and Reagan are the two prominent aspirants for the GOP nomination who have sustained a position to the right of the President's on the war in Vietnam...

...We have been listening hard, but nobody has told us why not...

...B&H Enterprises also wins the bonus Travesty Citation...

...Our friend represents a conservative rural district in which he plays a somewhat maverick political role...

...The New York Post ''Got a match...

...It is futile for each of us to spend $4 billion, $40 billion, or $400 billion—and at the end of all the spending, to be relatively at the same point of balance on the security scale that we are now...

...Disappointed contestants are reminded that the decision of the judges is final in all cases...

...Still, it wasn't altogether clear how he would prevent it...

...Whatever the motives, the decision couldn't have been timed more unfortunately from the standpoint of U.S...

...But this is a line of argument he could not have relished...

...We fear the private references are likelier to set the tone for the forthcoming Presidential campaign.^ It is useful to bear in mind that there is more than "Come now, and let us reason together" in the President's favorite chapter of the Book of Isaiah...

...Polls, understandably enough, are much on the President's mind these days...

...We lunched the other day with a Republican Congressman who is also an old friend...

...This young and articulate member of the House, who may very well sit in the august Senate chamber in 1969, speaks for a segment of the Republican Party that is now waging a death struggle with the antediluvians who have dominated Congressional Republicanism through the century...

...Some of the pundits called the reference to the critics "generous...

...There is a kind of mad momentum intrinsic to the development of all new huclear weaponry," said the Defense Secretary...

...He said private surveys showed him leading William E. Miller, Barry Goldwater's 1964 running-mate, by seventy-three points to twenty-seven, and beating Harold Stassen by seventy-one points to twenty-nine...

...The Archbishop's prize is a rendering of Caesar, in stained glass...

...The thin rationale used by the Administration in justifying the thin ABM decision was received with thick skepticism in Washington...

...It's horribly depressing," he said of the book...

...In the context of the debate that had been boiling within the Administration's inner councils here, the ABM missiles appeared to be pointed in the direction of Capitol Hill rather than toward China...

...for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken...

...Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara phrased the warning far more gently in his September 18 speech announcing the decision to go ahead with a "thin" system...