MR. JOHNSON'S SECRET WEAPON
Wechsler, James A.
MR. JOHNSON S SECRET WEAPON by JAMES A. WECHSLER iv 7"hat seemed the unthinkable '' thought during the early glow of Lyndon Johnson's Administration is now widely recognized as a serious...
...Dirksen to assume the role of Mr...
...but the day might yet come when...
...the consecutive nominations of Nixon and Gold-water confirmed the futility of the scattered liberal dissenters...
...Liberal Republicans, an eternally hopeful band, began to portray him as the prospective captain of their ship...
...Dirksen's address could have been written by Barry Goldwater's ghosts...
...His victorious campaign against Paul H. Douglas had given him a certain standing with the Republican Right...
...E" stood for effectiveness, cried Percy, "V" for valor...
...The audience manifested deepening pain as he pursued this adolescent exercise to the final "N...
...nothing has hapJAMES A. WECHSLER is editor of the editorial page of The New York Post and one of its featured columnists...
...Once again the GOP emerged faithful to the portrait it has ostensibly tried to live down—that of the party preoccupied with the state of welfare of entrenched corporate power...
...I pondered this report for quite a while, and it left me convinced that I do not understand automobiles or missed the whole hidden genius of the era of John Foster Dulles...
...The matter of the Birch Society would have to be handled with delicacy...
...it is once again reunited with its old Dixiecrat allies...
...but in his first Senate test he voted with the Dirksen cabal and its Democratic allies to crush the latest effort to end the tyranny of the filibuster...
...His 1962 farewell to politics in California, perhaps emotionally authentic at the time, was a forgotten foible...
...but in both the liberal and right-wing GOP camps he was obviously regarded with a wary aloofness...
...Other men would have their fling...
...No one seriously believed that he would resist the call if it came even faintly and unclearly, but his disclaimer of desire seemed evidence that he had remained in contact with reality...
...Having defeated Pat Brown for the governorship of California, he was swiftly the subject of intensive speculation as the man who could rekindle the housewife's interest in politics and address himself directly to millions who regard Peyton Place as America's modern passion-play...
...this took the form of his wide-eyed claim that any Birch-ite who embraced him was a converted Reaganite, but not vice versa...
...But Mr...
...The next day the same paper, under a headline, Romney Seen Adopting Dulles' Views, contained this remarkable glimpse of his world perspective: "Those who have heard Romney expound on the subject say his emphasis on a conceptual unity for foreign policy rests on his experience in the automobile industry...
...There is no General Eisenhower on the horizon now...
...One liberal Republican who doubted that Percy had any profound commitments said wryly in private that "he's our new Richard Nixon," but another called him "the best hope we've got...
...each time the candidate was a military folk-hero of genial personality and ideological non-com-bativeness and a teller of political bedtime stories...
...pened to suggest that General Westmoreland could be abruptly transformed into such a figure despite the wishful thinking of some right-wing Republican journalists...
...Pretty much of the same thing happened to American foreign policy after Dulles' time, as Romney sees it, and he is prepared to set it right...
...no one has maintained closer ties with the party machinery...
...It is hard to visualize a circumstance under which he could capture a GOP convention without changing his name...
...It is hard to define the exact moment at which the suspicion began to spread that he was a direct political descendant of Calvin Coolidge, but it is clear that a trip he made to Washington in mid-January crystallized the uneasiness...
...Johnson has suffered, he retains his secret weapon—the bankrupt banality of an opposition that still permits Mr...
...Under the rules of such sessions opinions may be reported without directly attributing them to the man interviewed...
...In the present circumstance the GOP establishment offers little hospitality to change or creativity...
...he has plainly managed to create suspense as to the quality of his real beliefs...
...Wicker never told us what it is...
...In fundamental terms the Republican dilemma seemed remarkably unchanged from the time when Wendell Willkie's dreams were extinguished in a Wisconsin primary more than two decades ago...
...The Republican Party could recapture control of the White House in 1968...
...In the aftermath of President Johnson's State-of-the-Union message, it was Dirksen and Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan who delivered the GOP response...
...Then, in one of those political absurdities that compel us to marvel at the irrationality of political novices and the incompetence of their aides, Reagan's first major move as governor was to recommend imposition of tuition fees at Berkeley and other California universities and to participate in the Persecution and Assassination of Clark Kerr as Performed under the Direction of the Right-Wing Fanatics of California in Collaboration With the Firing Squad of the New Left...
...Westmoreland, whatever his virtues as a commander, can hardly be depicted as the statesman-mediator...
...Republican...
...That is why, amid all the reversals Mr...
...Romney is asked whether he favors the legalization of the spit-ball in baseball, he replies that he is opposed to extra-inning games...
...Certainly this observation must rank with Mr...
...with his departure, the Old Guard (and the young men of property who rose in the interim) reasserted its dominance...
...This cursory glance at the Republican hopefuls—and hopeless—in the winter of 1967 suggests that the large struggle lies ahead...
...It said he was fluctuating between "hawkish" and "dovish" moments...
...Meanwhile New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller, probably the ablest of the lot, continued to reiterate that he had said farewell to national ambition and greeted a new child...
...at times the stable seems absurdly overcrowded...
...It was also the voice of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, a subliminated Secretary of State to whom the proposed consular treaty with the Soviet Union—a modest but symbolic step toward detente in Europe —is proof that the Johnson Administration has yielded (if only subconsciously) to the masters of deceit...
...The sales success of the Rambler car, in Romney's view, rested on his development of the concept of the compact car...
...it offers small inspiration to Americans who are troubled by both the infirmities of the Johnson Administration and the large agonies of this age of uncertainty...
...In the wings stood the indestructible, if sometimes insufferable, Richard M. Nixon...
...Obviously Mr...
...This Romney frailty may be of no large consequence at a Washington news conference, but what might happen on a hot line to Moscow in a fateful moment...
...The discovery of the sound barrier between Mr...
...As of now, the only question seems to be whether the right wing will dare to engineer another convention coup in alliance with the Southern racist delegations (this time for someone like Ronald Reagan) or whether it will be satisfied to exercise veto power over the choice—and voice—of the next nominee...
...he was credited with a measure of charisma...
...The first to falter has been Governor George Romney of Michigan, whose showings in some opinion polls created so much premature prophecy of easy glory...
...Never before, eyewitnesses agreed, had the Touchdown Club witnessed so excruciating a series of fumbles by a heralded young broken-field runner in his first big game...
...The nature of the man, who outwardly resembles a bright freshman Congressman rather than a Presidential aspirant, will be subject to early revelation...
...Subsequent to the Dirksen-Ford proclamation there were whispers of unrest among Republican Congressional "moderates," their ranks augmented to some degree by such new arrivals as Senators Mark Hatfield of Oregon and Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts in the upper chamber and some maverick freshmen in the House...
...That they may win in spite of themselves is always conceivable, but they have already exhibited familiar suicidal symptoms...
...Seemingly some of Mr...
...There Percy, in the fashion of high school cheerleader, paid tribute to Dirksen by holding up cards with each letter of the venerable leader's name...
...Another clearly observable aspect of this problem," Wicker noted without removing his tongue from his cheek, "is Mr...
...It was agreed among the press agents to whom the political care and feeding of Reagan has been entrusted that his most serious problem was to blur his identification with extremist right-wing Republicanism...
...Yet there are already signs that the Republicans are preparing to become the architects of their own defeat...
...no one has more steadfastly kept open the lines of communication to the Goldwater faction and the Southern icontingent...
...It is also why American politics, in the winter of 1967, seemed so spiritless and stultifying on so many levels...
...JOHNSON S SECRET WEAPON by JAMES A. WECHSLER iv 7"hat seemed the unthinkable '' thought during the early glow of Lyndon Johnson's Administration is now widely recognized as a serious possibility...
...Yet it must also be said that several of the most highly-touted have already begun to display the quality of potential also-rans...
...House Minority Leader Ford's simultaneous remarks on domestic policy were somewhat more temperate, but the heart of his message was plain: Domestic social reform would have to be sacrificed to pay the rising price of Vietnam...
...Or, to put it another way, Romney's lightning brings no thunder...
...Then, after eight years, the country appeared to have had enough sleep and responded with sudden spirit to the advent of John F. Kennedy...
...Amid Romney's difficulties Ronald Reagan danced into the spotlight...
...This does not leave any shortage of Republican aspirants...
...It was Eisenhower's pledge to visit Korea on a mission of peace that proved the great coup of his first campaign...
...And his muteness on Vietnam has given no luster to his role...
...Johnson will be gravely vulnerable if the war in Vietnam is unresolved...
...It was the voice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their right-wing allies who have learned no new lessons from recent history, who still view all events in terms of the stereotypes of the Stalin cold war era and cling to the delusion of total military victory in Vietnam...
...As these lines are written Reagan is still lamely explaining that the latter episode was entirely non-political, and both William Buckley and Mario De Savio are awkwardly seeking to explain how this unholy alliance came to pass...
...He would be given ample chance to follow his star or fall on his face in full view of the Washington news corps (and fell in his first performance) . The occasion was the dinner of Washington's Touchdown Club...
...Translated into simpler language, it meant that the poor would have to bear a steadily larger share of the cost of the conflict while war business continued to flourish...
...There had been a moment when it appeared that the Goldwater debacle had finally demonstrated that the GOP was doomed to slow death unless it experienced a spectacular revolution that would risk a collision with both Northern reaction and the "new" Southern racist faction...
...It may well be that only a long-delayed and still seemingly remote political realignment of profound proportions can liberate the Republican progressives...
...Only twice since 1928 has the Republican Party been able to win a national election...
...In the capital he met with Henry Cabot Lodge, who increasingly sounds like General Ky's ambassador to the United States, and then held a "background" briefing for a selected group of journalists...
...I can only interpret this to mean that when Mr...
...Eisenhower conducted a holding operation for eight years, but he lacked the conviction and will to alter the power balance in the Republican Party...
...Romney's tendency to give non-responsive answers to questions, replies that deal with the same general subject matter but do not really answer the question...
...Romney's advisers realized that there were dolts like myself who would fail to grasp the sweep of this analogy and soon there were dispatches reporting that Mr...
...When he returned to Michigan, he called a news conference to disclaim reports of his "dov-ishness" and to observe: "When you discuss any problem, there's always the problem of effective communication...
...Romney and his listeners led Tom Wicker of The New York Times to remark some days later with unusual journalistic charity: "He (Mr...
...Romney) knows what he means—his conviction is usually unmistakable—but he has trouble telling his listeners what it is...
...Looming larger, perhaps, than any of these individuals is the brooding countenance of Everett Dirksen, and the powerful forces in the GOP for which he still speaks...
...No one campaigned harder than he did for GOP Congressional candidates last autumn...
...As a result of his elaboration and redefinition of his ambiguities, Romney found himself the subject of a sympathetic but melancholy essay by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak cruelly headlined in New York's World Journal Telegram, Romney's Boom Lacks Depth...
...With both Romney and Reagan the victims of premature self-exposure, talk began shifting in midwinter to Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, and the battle for his soul was on...
...The decline of American Motors since he left its management in 1961 is attributable, in his view, to his successors' failure to pursue the unified conceptual approach...
...On January 14 The Washington Post reported that it had learned from "authoritative sources" that "Romney has not yet decided whether he will recommend escalation or negotiation as the better course to end the war...
...But there is little sign that this brief revelation produced any lasting wisdom...
...But the old cabal held its seniority grip in crucial committee posts, and it seemed improbable that the insurgents could create anything more meaningful than discordant off-stage sounds...
...Romney feared he had failed to make himself clear...
...Coolidge's unforgettable reminder that, when a great many people are out of work, unemployment results...
...It has become a popular cliche of political journalism to say that the GOP has rarely been endowed with such a rich array of available talent...
...But any gambling investment in that prospect should be cautiously hedged...
Vol. 31 • March 1967 • No. 3
