The Word from Washington
The Word from Washington Back in the bad old days of the Great Depression, there was a story about two pushcart peddlers conversing on a street corner. Their dialogue went something like...
...Perhaps a White House Conference on Nutrition is a satisfactory substitute for food, and a White House commitment to "law and order" is the answer to what ails the cities...
...He is said to believe that this first year of his Presidency has been one of solid accomplishment...
...Mitchell's deputy, Richard D. Kleindienst, belatedly advised Congress that the provision ought to be repealed in order to "allay the fears and suspicions—unfounded as they may be—of many of our citizens...
...We hope so, but we wouldn't care to bet...
...I would be drawing immense royalties from Mr...
...The troops were charmed...
...The military have been issuing clarifications of their own...
...Mitchell clarified...
...Furthermore, it "casts improper reflection on the true status of events...
...I wish I had copyrighted or patented my speeches," Mr...
...General William C. Westmoreland, the former U.S...
...Just to prove it, he dropped in at a White House soiree for female journalists, played Sophisticated Lady on the piano, and said: "I like everybody...
...Mitchell said, was that he would like to swap those "violence-prone radicals" for "some of the academically inclined Marxist Communists...
...Perhaps it will suffice to try a few impudent snobs for conspiracy and gun down a few dozen Black Panthers in their lairs and intimidate the media when they stray from their accustomed role as cheerleaders...
...Mrs...
...military commander in Vietnam, explained to a House committee that he didn't win the war because bombing raids on North Vietnam were first constrained and then suspended...
...The Republican National Committee points with pride to its own poll, which finds that "sixty-four per cent of the American people approve of the way Vice President Agnew is handling his job [and] a dramatic seventy-one per cent of those surveyed agreed with the VP that the news media should reexamine its standards of objectivity...
...There were other clarifications: After only six months or so of in-house vacillation and debate, the Administration clarified its position on the infamous detention camp provision of the same McCarran-Walter Act...
...When you get away from Washington," says one of the President's men, "the country is quiet...
...The hang-up, apparently, was that no domestic radical volunteered to go into exile in exchange...
...It came out 'liberal Communists' instead of 'violence-prone radicals,'" Mr...
...What follows is a confession of failure...
...A In the spirit of the season, our hearts go out to George Corley Wallace of Montgomery, Alabama, who feels, understandably, that he wuz robbed...
...That's what the man said, and we have the text to prove it...
...Their dialogue went something like this: "How's business...
...He must have a better location...
...The Attorney General also cleared up his wife's comment that he would like to "take some of the liberals in this country" and "change them for Russian Communists...
...Agnew...
...Wallace recently observed...
...But I sometimes have to call the troops to attention...
...John N. Mitchell, to whom theengaging Vice President might well have dedicated his piano number, didn't issue her own clarification, but her husband, the Attorney General, did...
...Perhaps the nation's disaffected young people can be pacified by a draft lottery and a White House Conference—still another White House Conference—on Youth...
...One paragraph of the speech is marked in red...
...A skeptical reporter is advised to study the public opinion polls, which show the President's popularity to be high, and to sample the White House mail, which is heavy and overwhelmingly favorable...
...Vice President Agnew, for example, has made it clear that he is really quite fond of the news media...
...President Nixon, too, must have a better location than the rest of us, for in this confused, irritable, and apprehensive capital, the President's closest associates report him to be in a cheerful and confident mood...
...Potomacus...
...Perhaps the age of packaging has reached full flower and made the content utterly irrelevant...
...Government demonstrations...
...Here, then, without further comment or embellishment, is what the Governor said: "We are approaching the end of our second century...
...Perhaps it doesn't matter that the war goes on, exacting its toll of lives and resources, so long as the President talks of "Vietnamization" and lights the national Christmas tree in what is still called, anachronistically, the Pageant of Peace...
...He explained that "the dialogue got confused" in that famous television interview in which the little woman complained about "the very liberal Communists...
...But when he had a chance, later in the same week, to waive the McCarran-Walter Act and let an academically-inclined Belgian Marxist into the country for a lecture tour, the Attorney General declined...
...Well, maybe...
...Maybe he knows something we don't know...
...1 The term, he explained to his procurement officers, creates "confusion in the minds of many...
...Among the Administration's dubious achievements is the transformation of media into a singular noun...
...Nixon likes to say...
...We thought we would say something clever or incisive...
...Roosevelt says business is good...
...On the other hand, General Lewis W. Walt, the former Marine commander in Vietnam, explained that he didn't win the war because the press failed to accentuate the positive, "The amount of time this war is going to last from here on out is going to depend in lots of respects on how good treatment it gets from our news media," he said...
...At the same time, Kleindienst clarified a comment attributed to him in The Atlantic magazine: "If people demonstrated in a manner to interfere with others, they should be rounded up and put in a detention camp...
...The President has "bought time" to end the Vietnam war on his terms and to "work out realistic approaches" to domestic problems...
...Is everything perfectly clear now...
...And that takes care of that...
...The Nixon-Agnew strategy, we are told, has succeeded in "isolating" the Administration's critics and mobilizing the support of the great silent majority...
...What he really said, the Deputy Attorney General maintained, was that "if persons demonstrate illegally" they should be rounded up and put in jail...
...Before us is the text of a speech delivered recently by the Governor of California, the Honorable Ronald Reagan, at an Eisenhower Tribute Dinner here in Washington...
...Perhaps the country is really quiet, though we thought for a day or two in mid-November that something else was happening...
...The Secret Service clarified its new "Liaison Guidelines" to other law enforcement agencies, which request regular reports on persons who attempt to "embarrass" high officials, seek "redress of imaginary grievances, etc.," make "irrational or abusive statements" about office-holders, or take part in "anti-American or anti-U.S...
...We thought when we marked the paragraph that we would comment on it in these monthly jottings...
...We are beginning to feel a slight buzzing in the ears...
...Just a slip of the tongue...
...Under the euphemism, 'the greatest good for the greatest number,' we destroy a system which has accomplished just that and move toward the managed economy which strangles freedom and mortgages generations to come...
...We have been staring at Mr...
...Reagan's remarks for some time now, and we are at a loss for words...
...Then equal opportunity at the starting line becomes an extended guarantee of at least a tie at the finish of the race...
...When the less affluent feel the urge to break a commandment and begin to covet that which their more affluent neighbors possess, they are tempted to use their votes to obtain instant satisfaction...
...With more than the usual political braggadocio, Republicans predict significant and perhaps decisive gains in the 1970 Congressional elections...
...What he meant, Mr...
...Terrible...
...An anonymous Secret Service spokesman told The New York Times that the "choice of language" in the Guidelines was "certainly unfortunate and could mislead less sophisticated people into thinking that they should collect and send us information that certainly wasn't desired...
...Nixon, we are assured, is convinced everything will work out for the best...
...He is of good cheer...
...Henceforth, when such projects as the Air Force's C-5A cargo plane exceed their projected cost by $2 billion, the excess will be referred to by the more wholesome name of "cost growth...
...It is difficult to judge America from Washington...
...Down in Dixie, we hear, the old Wallace bumper stickers have been papered over with new ones that read "Spiro Is Our Hero...
...Taking their cue from the top man, Administration spokesmen have been issuing clarifications at an unprecedented rate...
...If you'll excuse us now, we'll go lie down until the buzzing stops...
...Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard, who made a sizable fortune peddling electronic hardware to the armed services, was brought to the number two job at the Pentagon early in 1969 because of his great skills in management...
...So Secretary Laird told us at the time, and Secretary Laird was right...
...Some of the Administration stalwarts are even beginning to talk about what they hope to accomplish "in our second term...
...Packard recently demonstrated his talent by solving—with a mere stroke of the pen—the problem of huge cost overruns in military procurement programs...
...The spokesman didn't say the unfortunate language would be revised...
...Perhaps it makes good sense to curtail domestic welfare programs for the sake of checking inflation, which continues, somehow, to remain unchecked...
...It has been pointed out that the days of democracy are numbered once the belly takes command of the head...
...Packard solved the problem by issuing a memo barring the use of the term "cost overrun...
...Nixon and especially Mr...
...This benefit outweighs any potential advantage which the act may provide in a time of internal security emergency...
...I want to make myself perfectly clear," Mr...
Vol. 34 • January 1970 • No. 1
