The First Amendment; Haynes Johnson - In the Absence of Power

The First Amendment and a free people a weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The program has produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University the host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Bernard Reuben. Is our government working or is it in a stall. I'm delighted to have with me today to discuss that pertinent question. Haynes Johnson the award winning journalist who has been around Washington for 22 years for the last 10 with The Washington Post. Those of you who follow Haynes Johnson's career know that he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for the coverage of Selma Alabama. Events in the civil rights movement. He's been a Princeton University as a teacher of journalism and has been the author of three books including dusk of the mountain the Bay of Pigs in the working white house. He's a well-known to this audience because they also watch television and see the Public Broadcasting Systems radio and television versions of the

Washington Week in Review as well as his work on the NBC Today show. Haynes Johnson welcome. May I ask the first question about your new book which is in the absence of power published by Viking and it's in early spring 1980 publication. You explain. I think your first references that absolutely fascinating out of the Social Security system that one of the reasons that where you seem to be in trouble is that government has taken on so much to itself that there's just no end the efficiency of government no longer can be relied upon. Is that a fair assess Yes that is a fair assessment and there's a there's a terrible dilemma in this because that started out for all of the best reasons in the Social Security system was created to help people to provide for them when they're sick and poor and indigent in need in retirement to stave off that day of

economic disaster was born in the Depression period. It was the shining mark of the New Deal and no president no political party nobody logical pairings in the country left or right has gone to the promise that it was a bad idea. The question is how well it works and it grew and grew and grew. They used to have I'm told the British said you could never operate a system as large as this because it required keeping all these careful records and in those days before their computers they they actually kept paper records on bamboo strips This is back with 30s. Peter came along the computerized it but the truth is as it grew and grew and grew it almost broke of its own weight. And now we're having terrible internal struggles of morale people being asked to do too much. It has to do with attitudes in the country that somehow the government is wrong it's bad it's evil it's corrupt and therefore all of the people associated with it are wrong evil and corrupt. And that means the bureaucrats we all in Vegas the bureaucrats what they are people trying desperately to Flo deal with

this flow of paper and information and programs to get money out to people that still is a good idea. You know I remember reading in your book that about three million was the British estimate of how many files you can handle the threat to still be efficient. And now they deal in hundreds of millions of files and every one of the social security files is trundled every night through the system that all of us not only and it's something that all well may have envisioned but not quite in the same way because it really isn't potentially sanest it may be potentially but it's not every record of every person who has had a SO security number it's the one universal card now we are all numbered somewhere. We are all tagged and even though we have long died our records flow through that salary night every night all about us where we were born where we died how much money we made when we married it's all there flowing in the stay on those computer disks.

Now that brings up the second question I have. We have this very complicated government doing some noble things like the social security work. It's getting more and more and more complex and along comes President Carter Jimmy Carter who says that he is against Washington and he wants to represent the people. The rhetoric the rhetoric of it is so simplistic that it worked. Yes it worked in enabling him to be victorious. He got to the White House by running against Washington by running against the bureaucracy by all those people who created all the mess creating all the problems. But the truth is that the other side of that is that just running against it isn't good enough. You've got to be able to do something once you're in there. And that requires experience expertise. An understanding of the way things actually work and really understand what the problems are. You have to be able to find them before you can begin to deal with them. And the idea of reorganizing the government which was his answer and another little boxes on charts as though somehow

that was going to change the system and make it better didn't work. Well the iron rule of administration is that every incompetent likes to move boxes around on charts to have his own boxes instead of somebody else's boxes so long as you control the biggest box that you are the man or the person the draws the chart. You're OK but beware if you would have read the charts right. But the public issue is whether we can communicate with the government whether we can make our feelings known and whether represent the representative system works. Now when the White House as you point out has relationships for its first year with the Hill Capitol Hill that are so bad that people surrounding Jimmy Carter had no liaison with the speaker of the house and he didn't know who they were. Yes. It's a disaster for the Public Interest yes you know and it's interesting what it really says not only was it a disaster for the public as it goes to more deer is a serious question and that's about government itself again is that you really there's a naive Taya about that all

government is wrong and bad and we outsiders can come in purely and clean it up and make it better. We sort of deprecate the word politician we equate with it corruption. Well it may not be competent It may be venal sometimes but the fact is that we need. It's exactly the skills of the politician and the best sense of the word that we need and by continually running against it by speaking down on it it makes the internal situation even worse. Who's going to work better when they are whipped all the time when they believe the public despises them when they are put on all the time more and more burdens they can bear. That's internal and outside they know people don't like them. You've got to be able to regenerate the sense that working in public life is a good thing. You've got to have rewards I mean tangible money there's plenty of money and. In government service in terms of surgery compared to what it used to be the benefits are far better and so forth that isn't the problem it's a problem of attitudes both inside and outside and I think that's where we have problems. Now as a working reporter and one of the best of the breed

you have to cover the White House and the hill in the courts. Let's take Jimmy Carter again for a moment. He has what I would refer to as speech number one and speech number two speech number one is that we're about to face a great moral crisis he's bringing us to the very edge of it he wants us to be brave speech Number two is let's forget about speech number one. And this happens time after time after time. Is this you've got to you know you can't love Jimmy Carter. Yes I think it is and you can see a pattern throughout his presidency which is now just reaching into its fourth year that continuation of the same thing every. There will be periods when he comes forward with sort of a moral pronouncement as you suggested on the energy problem is the moral equivalent of war. Well that was a good phrase it was William James's phrase PIRA Harvard's matter of fact and it's a fine phrase and it makes lots of sense I suppose except we never heard the phrase again until maybe the next crisis occurred and the mean time it wasn't quite where had the crisis gone.

I think it was Russell Baker The New York Times when he Mr. Carter's moral equivalent of war speech turned out to be hardly a ringing pronouncement for action that it seemed in its rhetoric and he called it. Mr. BAKER. Meow. Jimmy Carter hated that. But I think that accurate description. And then we didn't hear about it again. That's right now they're in civil rights we're used to thinking of freedom of the press freedom of religion right to petition the government all these First Amendment rights. But in reality there is another vital interest of the public has and that is that it must have its politicians able to communicate with publics it must have their liaison work of the political process. Effective yes and I think that the one most signal to me at least as an observer Mr. Carter someone who's tried to follow him closely these last four years really for this book as a matter of fact. The one greatest failure has been his inability to reach out beyond those very narrow confines of the White House and be felt

in the country to be felt as a cohesive presence that someone who communicates a sense of direction someone who can inspire someone who consistently takes you in a one direction and fights for it. You know what he's for. You can oppose it but you know what he's for and you continue to feel the presence. I was surprised quite frankly I started out with great hopes for Mr. Carter. I was very sympathetic for him I thought it was encouraging that we were indeed going in daring to go so differently to start fresh. Someone who had not the experience in Washington. I thought well we had had a rather bad experience in Washington in the last 10 15 years. We had suffered a great deal in the country. And I hope that out of that something fine might come with a a person who seemed willing to work hard who is moral who had integrity and so forth and so on. That really isn't enough you've got to be able to reach out not in the bully pulpit sense. Theodore Roosevelt using the presidency as the bully pulpit. I think what's more important it's

the public educators role. That's the forum in the White House and that's the forum. I don't think he uses the fact that I'm beginning to get a feeling that if we look back to say 1939 when the White House was no longer considered the president's office but Congress recognized that it was an administrative unit and they created the executive office of the president which has numerous subdivisions almost a department of government in the fullest sense to run the executive branch. That your book leads me to believe this is another moment in time when we have to do something else to resurrect the presidency in our common interest. I believe it is true. I think that my concerns and really the reason I thought I tried to do this study was that we are facing something different today. The presidency no longer functions as it did. Maybe for good reasons and certainly for some bad ones. The Congress no longer operates in the way in which it did. Also for good reasons and bad reasons we've had reforms that have changed the structure the seniority system is gone.

The Great day of the old power brokers like Sam Rayburn who could these marvelous stories they tell about closing the door and sitting down with branch water and bourbon whiskey and deciding what the Congress would pass and not making deals making deals in the old sense that's where Harry Truman was when he learned that he was president he was sitting back with all sand with a bottle of Jack Daniels or whatever they drank in those days I don't know. But it was bourbon whiskey in any event and he received the news coming to the White House Harry and go in the front door. But it was in those confines of the Congress when you could sit down with Lyndon Johnson and close the door and you could see. That was Sam Rayburn. What if you had problems with the Southern senators you called an old Dick Russell of the South. And if Dick Russell said I'm with you all the Southern senators were with you. That's no longer the way these were whales powerbrokers in the old sense. That's not going to be that way again and so that's changed you do not have the authority within the Congress. And the issue is a more complex complex no question about that. The country's changed too. I think that our recognition that the government as we said earlier has grown so big and so impersonal and we don't know what to do about it.

And we each of us know. And it isn't a question of idiology we know that something's wrong. We know it's not working properly correctly and everybody says that and yet no one seems to have the answer so that I think we're heading into a period where there are great strains ahead I'm sure the 1980s and beyond are going to be a very difficult time for government in this country for the kinds of issues that we have to be a with. Inflation is worldwide. The energy crisis is worldwide and it is a crisis and more profoundly like than that is our decision ourselves of what we want to do with it. We've got to decide and that means a form of government. Well now to get back to the allusions to the Social Security system which you said has been the most perfect system devised by the government. Even today might be it's still getting most of the checks out to the right people it's very it's been given overload of aid to dependent children and everything else that has been added onto it has nothing to do with the original premise but let me let me raise this question. Has this overload function.

Which hit Social Security and that's the illustration also hit the political party system. And are we in effect now operating mechanically rather than from the spirit in heart. I know we don't have Lyndon Johnson's and people don't want Lyndon Johnson but nevertheless something has to replace there has to be flesh and blood. Political infusion rather than the administrative process dominating you know what's happened to us I think I agree with all those things and I thought a lot about it and I think what's happened to us we were so hurt as a country as a people the last 15 years it's true from the period of John Kennedy's murder until Jimmy Carter's election every person who are for himself or national leadership in this country was destroyed. Everyone in one way or another. John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy's murder has changed the outlook of the Democratic Party certainly for a generation. Lyndon Johnson whatever he was he was a consummate politician on the Hill very able. He

was driven out of office really probably the first person ever truly to be driven out of office since certainly in the century. We know Richard Nixon forced to resign self-destruct self-destruction. George Wallace bullet cut his spine into removed as a force. If you were black in those years and you look to the sort of old fashioned voice of redemption and belief and faith and Christianity or whatever it was it was a king it struck down. Exactly. Or in the north. Different kind of voice Malcolm X murdered assassin and so that everywhere you looked matter where you stood in the country you found that the people in whom you believe whatever your point of view what you were left right center Democrat Republican liberal conservative black and white they were gone destroyed and created a vacuum and we withdrew. We withdrew from it. And I think that affected obviously the conditions that you add on to that the war in Vietnam you add on to that the Watergate experience and there's no wonder that we chose someone so totally different in Jimmy Carter and we came to the condition of governing this country which we had not quite faced and explain like the lights

going out in New York City there. The electrical grid system is wonderful an overload hits it it reaches peak capacity and beyond and the lights go out exactly. And I think that the point that we're reaching I don't want to do we do about an apocalyptic portrait now the other side of this question is I think that there is in the country if I am right in traveling around I've done an awful lot of traveling in the last many years of trying to talk to citizens. I think that there is a maturity out there. A recognition out there that we we got to do better that we understand things the complexity of things that we're willing to work at things if we believe that there is a direction that we can together fashion some new future for ourselves and that means in public life too. And I think what you saw this year the beginnings of people turning out to vote in greater numbers was a very heartening thing. I don't know if it will hold or not and I don't know if the choices in the fall between Mr. Carter and Mr. Reagan that's what it is. We'll see. But certainly there is a feeling that the issues before us and an awareness that they're

complex and that we've got to do better and so that ought to be the groundswell the climate at least for public leadership to do better and maybe it requires some reforms I think so now. Good deal of democracy depends upon a reasonable amount of fervor. Yes the youngsters were turned off by a lot of this now of course. Whether Mr Anderson had a chance at all in the 1900 campaign is really beside the point the fact is that a lot of youngsters went out as if it was Eugene McCarthy again. The strangeness of the of the of the Kennedy campaign for the presidency I guess is not so much his own defects as the fact that he cannot light up any body in any particular group. Yes yes I think that's been that. The absence of passion we might say absence of passion and I do thank you. I'm told this year again because I think if I may suggest that we all went through so much we were hurt. It's hard to keep giving yourself and believe in someone we were about to reset this year because of the conditions that we face because

enough time had gone by from Vietnam Watergate assassinations terror riots all those things. Life was beginning to come back into the system. I put that in the past tense. I hope it will remain in the past tense. Well let us assume that. That we're beyond the election itself. We have I presume either Mr. Reagan or Mr. Carter as president United say looks that way as we're speaking and looks a ways we speaking we could be wrong American policies being viable and speaking as a reporter we're wrong. Speaking as a professor we're wrong as much is as you are in our prognostications. Will either of these gentlemen do anything more then hold the line actors in Eisenhower to keep things calm until now the generation of Americans comes along. My view is that's where we are I think I think I have now come to the conclusion that Mr. Carter's presidency is a transitional one bridging this period of despair and sentences and defeatism that we have in the country. Pain anguish whatever you want to call it

to his own presidency leading on to some structural changes I think in the nature and an infusion of talent and vitality back into the political system. I can't see how that would change under Mr. Reagan certainly. He would be the oldest president nor history. And let's just put aside the age issue here he will be 70 years old when he takes office if his one term he would last agree to be 74. You don't expect out of that any great sense of something new. Maybe there will be. Let's hope so if that's the case if he's the president. But that so far we have seen no inklings of it no call for something new. No sense that out of that would come. So I think we're looking ahead we're in a transition. No one is making the don't ask what your country should do for you kind of speech. On the other hand to get back to President Carter when he's like the little girl with a crow in the middle of a foreign when he's good he's very very good. And he did help us over the shoulder some of the myopia about the Panama Canal Treaty. Yes he did flopped on the energy issue but on the Iranian thing in

general. Aside from this horrendous locking himself in the White House seems to have taken the right moves most of the issue. I think that the thing about Mr. Carter that is most intriguing to me. He has shown patience. Yes he has shown restraint. Yes he has shown a kind of maturity himself. And that willingness to to use cheap rhetoric although he has played politics very skillfully in this campaign period Heaven knows something he didn't do in these previous two and a half years as president had he done that he would not mend the problems he faces. But put that aside. Yes he has been good on certain things and I think he hasn't tried to rattle the saber in a very dangerous period. I think he came close to that over Afghanistan not Iran and now we don't hear much about Afghanistan for the time being. And let's hope that that's the way he's not insightful about picking his major issues deciding that the answer to Afghanistan was withdrawal of American athletes from the Olympics seems to

be have been daring for a 48 hour period and then one wonders about it ever saying yes what or you don't hear anything more about this and that doesn't change the equation doesn't change the structure of the administration. Again that would be another example of the great speech followed by speech number two. That's right and then silence and in silence. That's right. Has his withdrawal into the White House during the campaign saying he is long as the 50 unfortunates are held hostage in the American embassy. He won't come out actively on the campaign. Has that been. Something that we will look back upon as horrendous for the political process or instruction on how to win despite all that is not very constructive. I think what it will be the latter My own view is that what we have seen is extraordinarily adept and brilliant use of an incident a situation that occurred capitalizing it seizing it playing it for all it was worth. I don't say they created it obviously they didn't create the seizing of the story

even in this cynical society. I don't know anybody who believes that but he certainly has used it brilliantly and effectively. I think that we are going to come to regret the process I think will look back on it and say the president should have been out dealing with other things. He should have been addressing the economy he should've been trying to find out about where the country was what was here at home. But in the period at the lowest fall of any president we have to remember as measured by the opinion polls the lowest ever by far worse than Nixon. He made the most stunning turnabout in fortunes also since a George Gallup has been taking surveys that goes back 45 years. Now he's resurrected let on that resurrection theme. May we cross the river Jordan. Yeah. We used to call it well or near Well but any road would deal key that eminent prognosticator would now no longer with us on Southern politics wrote a book on Southern past yes would we find if we look behind Jimmy Carter that although he was the first Southerner to since the Civil War to really resurrect the national unity

candidacy other elements of traditional Southern politics that would help explain his approaches to national politics. I think yes and no. I don't see Jimmy Carter to this day I have to say being in any sense a conventional Southern politician. He is not gregarious. He is not he doesn't like enjoy telling of stories. I mean Dalton I must say shamelessly in regional stereotypes here but I think there is a there is a there is something to the letter the gift of expression. The loving of speech the flowery the bombast the the Russell long as the kind of politician I'm speaking of who still personify so much as his father he did and he's very effective at it he's very skillful. Jimmy Carter is not the kind of person he's lonely he's up there in the White House. He works alone. He doesn't call him people he's not convivial. He would not be comfortable back in those rooms with say let me give you another type of Southern politician

that he might be akin to. That seems to drum up in my mind and that is the Southerner who went to New Jersey Woodrow Wilson. Yes. Very much more so serious almost a grim visit you would think of all o anti anti politician absolutely against the normal structure. Yes there is a lot. And the moralist. The moralistic really strong the belief in certain values that are unyielding really. You don't give up on things Woodrow Wilson was broken because he couldn't compromise he couldn't give. I think there is some of that. In fact Jimmy Carter Yes quite a bit this is a Puritan strain it's a Calvinist or whatever it may be in his case it's Baptist Mr. Carter's and Mr. Wilson's was a was a Presbyterian I believe. But yes that's that is a fair analogy I think with the exception that Mr. Wilson was a superb student of government. The book he wrote on Congressional Government is still regarded as a classic. And he

understood the if he had been a very effective governor New Jersey and he got things done in it he had his record for success was far better. And if we believe the historians he was also a superb and moving and eloquent public speaker I don't think anybody would think of as Mr. Carter's strongest point. I've got two men sitting around a table with Jimmy Carter. One is Lyndon Baines Johnson and the other is Franklin D Roosevelt and they're both allowed in the last couple minutes of the program to to give their opinions what would you say they would say to him. I can am absolutely sure the message would have been the same. Use the forum of the office. Forget the blueprints Mr. Carter. This is not a technocracy. There is an art to politics and it means human beings it means touching them and moving them. It means understanding who they are and let your spirit flow. I could just hear that Yankee that Boston acts in a

Roosevelt that bell like tones. And I can also see physically because I've seen him do it Lyndon Johnson grabbing a hold and telling some very stories maybe and shouty but but go out there stand up and use the power of the office the way it should be used. Do what's in it to make it better. In a way both of them enjoyed the job a little bit more didn't they loved politics. And my own feeling about Jimmy Carter this purely impression is that maybe his greatest failure and perhaps the tragedy is that he doesn't seem really to enjoy it. He seems to find it somehow distasteful. Mrs. Carter certainly enjoys it and she's very good. She's very good at it which raises some hackles amongst many women in the country I wonder which person we elected as president of the United States although she has every right to represent her husband she does indeed and she is a superb advocate and she has used her role and he has used her role whatever they together let us say they are they are in this

and they are they are truly a team even more than Franklin and Eleanor because they're closer. Well Joseph glass used to say that to go into the White House Office of the president he would say oh don't tell me any more about that you know I can't do anything about that Eleanor you can your wild ideas matter where she comes back with the hard intelligence that goes out and makes makes the point the president would have made for himself. So when he says Come in. My dear let's hear what you've got to say that sounds good. Let's go out and do it. Well it's an interesting time in American politics but it was that Irish hope or the Chinese hope that he would not be born and interesting to me you have a happy life. At any rate let's hope that all works out well. I recommend Haynes Johnson's book in the absence of power just published by Viking. And I thank you sir for joining us for this edition printed ribbon. Thank you. You were. The First Amendment and a free people a weekly examination of civil liberties and the media

in the United States and around the world. The engineer for this broadcast was Margo Garrison. The program is produced by Greg Fitzgerald. This broadcast as produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University which are solely responsible for its content. This is the public radio cooperative.