THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON
The word from Washington After an initial period of grumbling, reporters assigned to cover President Johnson seem to have grown accustomed to their chains. The chains—some call them beads—are worn...
...Authorities would conduct "search and seizure operations...
...Now if we can only get someone—Miami Beach, say—to send towels...
...When he and other Republican governors held a Washington news conference in January and called for reductions in Federal expenditures, reporters asked what items should be cut...
...Even the embarrassing consequences of the President's pledge to "go anywhere, any time" to talk peace with North Vietnam have failed to curb his passion for hyperbole...
...Though no one has explained just how the practice enhances Mr...
...The most vocal economizers on Capitol Hill are often the most ardent advocates of pet pork-barrel spending projects...
...After lunching on tournedos of beef, pomme Parisienne, and puree of broccoli at Le Pavilion, the eighty guests contributed more than $750,000 to Mr...
...The Navy shipped the load to Vietnam, where, again according to Congressman Baring, "it will be given to Marines for distribution among the citizenry...
...The President and members of his family remain unchained...
...He remains suspicious and hostile toward the "Eastern" press, a generous category that encompasses correspondents for newspapers from New York* to Los Angeles as well as network broadcasters and—especially-—syndicated columnists...
...Nobody asked him...
...The largest donation—$100,000—came from Robert W. Dowling, board chairman of the City Investing Company...
...Since 1966," he said at a televised news conference early in May, "I have felt that it was very important for many reasons . . . that we have a tax increase...
...Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana, the Democratic Whip, would purge the Senate of those members who do not share his views on "lawnorder...
...His first proposal for a tax increase was submitted in January, 1967, and he waited until the summer before asking Congress to act on it...
...In order to maintain lawnorder, they are eager to revise the law and, if necessary, suspend the Constitution...
...Baring calls Operation Soapbar "another first —not only for the city or the state of Nevada, but a first for the whole nation...
...But Senator John Stennis, Mississippi Democrat, would simply lock the gates of Washington "to prevent a massive march and demonstration, and instead allow a small number of the petitioners to enter the city...
...After the luncheon," The New York Times reported, "the Vice President went to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to see his boyhood friend Dwayne O. Andreas, financier...
...Johnson said, for members of Congress to "bite the bullet...
...Governor John Chafee of Rhode Island is a quick study...
...He's available," cried Representative Roman Pucinski, Illinois Democrat...
...When he flew to Chicago late in April to address a Democratic fund-raising dinner, the President concluded his speech with these off-the-cuff remarks: "I talked to your mayor late this afternoon, and he asked me to again reconsider my position...
...Representative Edwin E. Willis, Louisiana Democrat, is convinced that "mixed Communist and black nationalist elements" are planning and organizing "guerrilla-type operations against the United States...
...But Mr...
...Yet the President is prepared to go along, "reluctantly," as he explained, with a $4 billion reduction in spending in order to obtain approval of his request for a tax increase...
...If any Senator comes before the Senate and asks us to bend the knee to protect law violators," he declares, "then we should consider censure, or consider expelling him from the Senate, rather than let the Government of the United States be run by law violators...
...Cramer would now withdraw...
...Representative Paul G. Rogers, Florida Democrat, wants officials of the District of Columbia to "move affirmatively"—whatever that may mean— or resign...
...The governors had a hard time answering...
...Johnson's safety, it seems to be here to stay...
...Johnson himself has playfully encouraged such speculation on occasion...
...In the Congressman's own words, "Operation Soapbar was a Las Vegas community project coordinated by local citizens through the Marine Corps civic action program in which each citizen of Las Vegas was asked to donate a bar of soap...
...With pardonable pride, Mr...
...The Voice of Huron spoke at a little Park Avenue luncheon in New York a few weeks ago...
...Johnson said he had answered the question "in some detail" in his March 31 television speech to the nation...
...There is no lack of specific proposals for urgently needed increases...
...Huron was never like this...
...When a reporter asked why the President had ordered members of his Cabinet to stay out of politics, Mr...
...Representative William C. Cramer, Florida Republican, believes the time has come to institute preventive detention of those who pose "a danger to the community...
...The President was merely stating the obvious when he said, "If I were making up the budget for the next fiscal year in May, as I made it up last fall, I would perhaps add some to it instead of taking from it...
...But "lawnorder" is the order of the day...
...Willis heads, has the measures all worked out...
...President Johnson had ample reason last month for attacking the "phony" quality of conservative demands for multi-billion-dollar reductions in Government spending...
...Among several $50,000 contributors was O. Roy Chalk, who holds the transit franchise in the District of Columbia...
...I have been engaged for several days in a complete reassessment of my situation...
...He notes that "it is not the Constitution which prohibits preventive detention, but it is an act of Congress"—specifically, the Judiciary Act of 1789, which provided the right to bail that Mr...
...Humphrey's Presidential campaign...
...The good citizens of Las Vegas, an enterprising community in the American West, have done their part to clean up the mess in Vietnam—not by protesting or picketing, not by petitioning for peace or urging escalation, but by sending soap...
...Each day produces a flurry of speeches on the House and Senate floors, most of them by Southern members whose deep dedication to lawnorder is well known...
...Marine Corps Major General Lowell E. English calls it "amazing," and we think we know what he means...
...Johnson's listeners read momentous meaning into these words...
...Members of the White House staff are also wearing their identification tags, which are blue and contrast nicely with the reporters' pink cards...
...Potomacus...
...But he didn't mean biting the part of the budget that buys bullets for Vietnam...
...So when Mr...
...The time has come, Mr...
...Each box of soapbars contains a letter from Las Vegas Mayor Oran K. Gragson, who states: "We sincerely hope that our contribution will make your job easier and will aid the Vietnamese people in their fight against the malignant growth of Communism which threatens to engulf them...
...And I told him I had come to the conclusion that I stood today just where I stood a year ago when he first invited me—and that I would be there...
...The Voice, of course, belongs to Vice President Humphrey, and it is a remarkably versatile one...
...We recall when it whispered sweet nothings into Governor Lester Maddox's ear in Atlanta...
...The chains—some call them beads—are worn around the neck, and from them are suspended the White House press cards issued by the Secret Service...
...We are indebted to Representative Walter S. Baring, Nevada Democrat, for disclosing the inspiring details of Operation Soapbar to his colleagues in the House (and to us...
...Reporters were barred from listening, but apparently the Voice was in fine form...
...How else could you interpret it...
...No one has yet put forth a specific program for substantial savings that would not entail intolerable reductions in domestic programs that are already pitifully under-financed...
...A What the country needs, says former Senator William Benton of Connecticut, is "the Voice of Huron, South Dakota...
...The purpose of Operation Soapbar was humanitarian —"that the people of South Vietnam may raise their health standards, and ultimately be able to educate and protect themselves from Communist aggression...
...In fact, three Cabinet members violated the President's rule in April—because they didn't know it existed...
...Responding with typical generosity, Las Vegans collected thirty tons of soap...
...The President and his aides scoff at published speculation that he remains available for a draft...
...A bit drastic, perhaps even a shade totalitarian...
...He shaved and had a fitting for some new suits during this visit and then was off again to Washington...
...The President believes that they, not he, created the celebrated Credibility Gap...
...he adds, "the Congress should, by emergency resolution, suspend the police powers of the city and resume its own constitutional authority over the Federal city, and place it under Army control until the situation stabilizes...
...Speaker," he says, "no marches and no demonstrations should be allowed to take place in the nation's Capital at any time during the foreseeable future...
...Chafee returned to Washington in May, held another news conference and again urged Federal economies, he quickly added, "But don't ask me where...
...It is the one item that is hardly mentioned in the economy debates...
...Senator Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, is at a loss to understand why the Administration has not sought "an injunction to prevent the march and the demonstration" of the Poor People's Campaign...
...During any "guerrilla uprising," the Committee report stated, "most civil liberties would have to be suspended...
...He hadn't, of course...
...But wherever the axe does fall on domestic programs it is a safe assumption that the savings will not affect the one cost item that has precipitated the budget crisis...
...No one seems to know, at this writing, just where the savings will be made, but there were ominous reports that under consideration were deep cuts in fourteen social and urban programs, including aid to education, model cities, hospital construction, and the poverty program...
...Martin Luther King, Jr...
...Johnson's feelings toward the Fourth Estate have not mellowed appreciably since his announcement that he would not seek or accept his party's nomination for another term...
...If the President felt that way in 1966, he kept the feeling secret...
...The McCarran Act," the Committee noted in a report last month, "provides for various detention centers to be operated throughout the country and these might well be utilized for the temporary imprisonment of warring guerrillas...
...The preservation of Law and Order —it is pronounced as one word, lawnorder—has become Topic A on Capitol Hill...
...Last month in Philadelphia, it sang We Shall Overcome at the thirty-eighth quadrennial session of the African Methodist Episcopal Church...
...The wearing of chains on the White House grounds and inside the Executive Mansion was instituted as a "security precaution" during the civil disorders that followed the assassination of the Reverend Dr...
...Representative O. Clark Fisher, Texas Democrat, is apprehensive about "invading hordes" headed for Washington...
...If they fail to do one or the other...
...Some of Mr...
...An office for "the control and organization of the inhabitants" would issue identification cards to slum-dwellers...
...Such a grave threat to "lawnorder" calls for extreme measures, of course, and the House Un-American Activities Committee, which Mr...
Vol. 32 • June 1968 • No. 6
