News in Perspective; 89; Johnson to Nixon

I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm The following program is from NET, the Public Television Network. In front of the Capitol, the stands are going up for the great event a month hence, the inauguration of the 37th president. Eight years ago, Richard M. Nixon, narrowly defeated for the presidency, stood as a spectator, while John F. Kennedy took the oath of office. Now Mr. Nixon, this time the winner in another very close election, prepares to move into the White House.

To take over from Lyndon Johnson, the awesome responsibilities of the most powerful office in the world. From Washington, D.C., National Educational Television and the New York Times present news in perspective. Transition, Johnson to Nixon. With Lester Marquell, Max Franco, William V. Shannon, and Robert B. Semple Jr. Today we talk of transition and the days beyond. Mr. Johnson goes home to the petanolies, and Mr. Nixon comes to the Potomac. How will the transfer be affected? What is the job of the presidency?

What are the huge problems that confront the new chief executive? Can he overcome? These questions and others we try, and modestly, to answer today. I am Lester Marquell, moderator, editor, and quisitor of these proceedings. With me are three Owlish observers attached to the time step. Three political pundits, prognosticators. Max Franco, long a White House bird watcher, and now the head of the Washington Bureau. William Shannon, Keane reporter, and also unbelievably editorial writer. Robert Semple Jr., senior, and political savvy, and our new White House correspondent, the new Franco, as it were. We begin with a picture of the transition. Mr. Franco, please pick over. Well, perhaps more than ever before, at least superficially the transition from old to new in Washington

seems to be friendly, cooperative, sometimes even a family affair. President-elect Nixon has met twice so far with President Johnson to discuss the problems that are involved in this transfer of power. And while their husbands conferred, Mrs. Nixon and Mrs. Johnson discussed the White House, the role of the first lady, and presumably other domestic concerns. The number two men, Vice President Humphrey and his successor to B. Spiro Agnew, and their wives, chatted amably enough, and even the presidential daughters got into the act when Patricia Nixon visited Lucy Johnson Nugent at the White House. And of course, the cabinet members and their designated successors, such as Secretary of State Dean Rusk and William Rogers, are getting together to exchange views, and all in all in a spirit of continuity, the country's leaders, old and new, are making what seems to be a rather brave effort to bury some of the old antagonisms and to minimize the difficulties of what's always a difficult way.

Thank you, Max. Bill, let me put this question to you. How is the transition going? Could we have some reporting on a minimum of editorializing? Well, I would say the transition is going very smoothly as the two presidents and their respective staffs have worked out a useful arrangement between themselves, and there have been no public controversies, except the one brief uproar over the two men and their relationship on foreign policy, but that was settled within 24 hours. And when you looked back at previous transitions, say from Woodrow Wilson to Warren Harding or from Franklin Roosevelt, when there was so much ill will on both sides, and no real effort to cooperate or even to disguise this antagonism.

I would say this one has even gone more smoothly than the one in 1960-61 between Dwight Eisner and John Kennedy, although those two presidents showed reasonable good will to one another. However, this time, unlike 60-61, we have a grave problem in the Vietnam War and the Paris Peace Talk, and I wonder whether two and a half months are really necessary from an early November election to a late January in order for this transition to take place. I think maybe we could speed it up some. Well, I think we would talk about the end of the Vietnam, but Bob, how do you agree that this was smooth? You attribute this to the civic mindedness of the two men to what do you attribute? The lack of real problems, it certainly isn't bad. I agree that it's been smooth. I attribute it to a certain unaccustomed modesty on both sides. I'm Mr. Johnson.

On a custom, but you wouldn't say becoming. No, it's becoming to them, I think. And it may be belated in both cases. Mr. Johnson, for one, I think has been exceptionally warm towards the Nixon's and their entourage. Mr. Nixon, for his part, has had the good sense to park himself in New York City rather than Washington. Had he been here in Washington, I think it would have made the President, and extremely uncomfortable. And having removed himself to New York, he's able to carry out the business of transition without hovering over the White House like a vulture. So I think there has been some self-abnegation that's gone on here, which has helped out all around. There was the brief flap that Bill mentioned, but that was, I think, due to misunderstanding. You wouldn't say that both disciples of Assaya and I believe that they should sit down and reason together.

Well, in fact, that's what I am. You think they've heard of them? I think we ought to mention that as a country, we're learning. This has happened a couple of times in history. It turns from one party to the other, but it's only been really in 1960 and this time that we've been able to apply any sense of history and study of the problems and how should a President-elect go about it, which people should... It's only in the second time that we're paying the President-elect. For the inordinate expenses involved, we're really beginning to set up the shop that rivals the White House in tempo. So we're learning from that, and the two men have learned from the experiences of others. Yes, that makes sense. Bill was raised another question, which is... I understand, Billy, and a Reagan is dangerous. Look at the Vietnam situation. I think it's very dangerous. You don't think it's dangerous. I think it's very dangerous.

Even though we're moving toward correcting it, there's a visit two and a half months interval. There are built-in conflicts on many levels. Obviously, in election year itself is a kind of interregnance. Certain things begin to happen. The sap of power begins to flow from those who are not running as in President Johnson's case or even those who are submitting themselves to the electorate and may not be reelected. And people all around this country and all around the world very quickly make their calculations on election day. And it doesn't matter how often a Nixon or a Johnson say, we're together, or I agree with him, if their calculation happens to be, as for instance, our friends in Saigon that things might go a little better for them. The next President, they're going to wait. And those are... But whether you can really shorten it too much, Bill, it takes a month to pick some elementary staff people and so on. It's unreasonable to expect to candidate to have the key appointments in his mind before he's elected. And once he gets them together, it takes him a month to figure out the ins and outs of the budget and to get their family settled in Washington.

There's certain minimal time, it seems, that's really essential. If I may raise a point, I think one thing that Bill is worried about is the effective conduct of foreign policy and transition period. I agree with Max that it may not be too short of time for the transition, because they're working 12, 14, 16 hour days up there in B.R. Hotel in New York to try to get ready by January 20th. I think they're, and I'm not sure they're going to feel ready on an auguration day. But you have 17 days, don't you, between the convening of Congress and the inauguration of the President. And you've got the President, you've got Johnson putting in a lame duck budget. Should that be permitted? Well, I'm willing to agree with you and with Bill that some mechanism ought to be defied so that the government can proceed effectively. That Johnson can make commitments, for example, that will stick in the interacting without having our allies and enemies treated like a lame duck.

But I for one can't... There's no way around. Even if you cut it to three weeks, you still have that situation. You still have a martial key trying to wait for a new administration. Well, I think that was the source incidentally, of the agreement that Bill mentioned the outset, under which Nixon agreed to support Johnson's foreign policy decisions up to January 20th. Probably the most he could do, I guess, in the in the irregnum to present a unified voice to the rest of the world. Well, Bill, you've been very silent. I assume you have no remedy for this. Well, no magic remedy. But I think that we could dispense with the outgoing France in having a state of union message that must be written to show how splendid things were under his regime country, what we were impressed with. And then his final budget could also be dispensed with, because that's just going to be probably changed up and down by the new president. I would think that it would be possible for a president to leave office by December 15th,

and that the new president would not be obliged, except to give an an order of message, to send any legislation or make a state of union message of its own until February. In fact, they don't do it now until all of them. Well, that would give him four or five weeks, right? Yes, before he actually did anything serious with Congress. At the same time, we're not really so concerned nowadays with what he does in the domestic field, because unless we have a crisis like we have in the winter of 32, when the whole economy was coming unraveled. But assuming we don't get that bad shape at home again, what we're really worried about are foreign affairs. And there, it's important that the president and the new secretary of state take the reins in the hands as quickly as possible, because whether we continue the 10 percent surtax, or what can be delayed, he can install on that for two or three months. But with a war going on, and another major foreign problem is pressing in,

it's not really a good thing to wait 10 weeks. There are no other big countries I can think of. Does wait them now. Well, Bob, let's talk concretely about the present situation. We've reached about that five week period now. What is there left that Nixon has to do that he might not have done in this five week period, rather than waiting until January 20th? Well, the two things are out of the bat. He's got his cabinet. But he's got to fill about 2,000 more jobs, including at least 300 crucial ones. Including at least 300 crucial ones. And of those 300, 10 or 15 are super crucial. Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Undersecretary of State. Second thing he has, and that is a major recruitment effort. And these recruitment efforts are not despite all the talk of computers and matching men with jobs nearly as efficient as the recruiters would have one believe. Second thing he has to do is figure out what kind of legislative program he is going to present to the nation.

And we've talked about this, but this too is a major undertaking. He's got some campaign commitments he has to at least try to fulfill. He's got 21 different task forces in operation. And all of this material has to be called and sifted and made some sense of. Were you assuming that Nixon Nixon now for the first time is thinking of what it might do as president? He hasn't been thinking of this for four or five years? No, no. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that, in fact, he's probably been thinking of it a great deal long ago. But what I am saying is that drafting specific legislation that will navigate this peculiarly balanced Congress that we have. And it will be acceptable to a wide constituency. He doesn't want to start out after all. Four or five quick defeats in Congress is an arduous task. I mean, all the task force reports in the world don't make a bill.

There's got to be some very meticulous drafting. And I think this is something he could not have accomplished in the five weeks that have been given to him so far. Are you persuaded? Oh, yes, I'm persuaded about the practical difficulty. So all I would suggest is putting him in a month or five weeks sooner and just a delaying submission of those programs. In other words, so it's a period from December 15th on, say, or December 10th. Until the end of January, he would be president, but he wouldn't be expected that he would submit a program. And for example, in Britain, he would, if he were the incoming Prime Minister, he might win the election in October, but he wouldn't summon the new parliament, say, until the tense of December. So we'd have several weeks in there. Of course, there are no one another much more than we do in our cabinet making system. In other words, who's going to be in the cabinet as much of a cut and drive on this side? Well, how soon after the election, does the new man move into 10 Downing Street? I think he moves in as soon as housekeeping arrangements are completed in something like a week or two weeks.

So he really takes over then, as you say, then delays his program until he's ready for it, until he has his staff organized in the rest of it. Yes. I think, for example, in organizing the staff, they impart, because they all need a rest after the horrors of the campaign, so they can get the equilibrium back. But in fact, that's a dragged out a bit of a public relations purposes. And this was going to be a startling event that a herf-cline would be a main press adviser, that Bryce Harlow would handle legislation and so forth. All of these people, they pretty well knew they'd go to the White House, and they pretty well knew what they'd do when they got there. And springing it out was suspenseful, only because the new president wanted to make a little news. Alright, so let's talk a bit about the two men now. Bob, you've been covering Nixon intensively. How would you describe his mood? Boy, confident?

Well, he's in a better mood than at any time during the campaign. Well, that's understandable. I always like to start with a truism, get my feet on the ground. I've committed on this program. He's in pretty good shape after all, as he gets nearer the seat of power, he is acquiring some of the tonic and tone of power. He's beginning to speak with a great deal of more authority. And just simply because he's the president-elect and will be the next president, people are listening to him. And this does wonders for a man who's been struggling to achieve this office for so many years. Also, he is particularly pleased with Johnson's helpful attitude. He is pleased as well with his cabinet selections and the men he has been able to bring into the White House to help him in the next four years.

So, by and large, he's in first class, mental and I think physical condition is right. Max, what about Johnson's mood? It's hard to say. It's a very active fellow. You're going to settle down? Well, that's a separate problem as to what does Lyndon Johnson do when he moves out. But I think he has tried to put a statesman-like cast on this transition period. At the same time, I think we mustn't overlook the fact that President Johnson feels certain frustrations arising out of this last year. And he certainly, from the morning after Election Day, looking ahead to this rather long and three month transition period, was still hoping to do certain things. And I think he feels now frustrated both by events and to a certain extent by some of the understandable, but still annoying Nixon attitudes toward the things he wants to do.

He had hoped to take the Vietnam negotiations father. He had hoped to get the arms control talks going with the Russians. He had hoped possibly to crown that for both the policy and the personal effects of it to have a summit meeting with Mr. Cosegan of the Soviet Union. He has not done spiteful little things that the President could do in terms of snatching away an ambassador ship or a judge ship here and let me fill it before the Republicans get in. He has not done, he has even instructed quite explicitly. In some cases, he's been obeyed, in other cases, not less so. His cabinet and his staff aid, not to go ahead and grab the last penny that's already appropriated and spend it on a favorite Johnson program. It's not been that kind of thing, but he had hoped to leave a few big global achievements behind that would kind of crown that last state of the Union message.

And he had hoped that through his attitude in other matters to get Mr. Nixon to join him, maybe even to send them in with him to the summit and to say out loud, yes, we ought to start the arms control talks now to help spank the side-gone government a little harder into action in Paris. And the Nixon people for perfectly good reasons, not having either full information or full responsibility, certainly don't want to get out ahead of themselves and anticipate themselves. They say, you're in charge, do what you like, but don't look to us for an endorsement. Well, let me ask you this, then. Is he, he doesn't look or act like an elder statesman? Is he likely, when he leaves office, to take on the role of elder statesman and make where he disagrees sharply or make this disagreement clear to the country? Well, what's an elder statesman? Harry Truman, the definition of that in his early years out of office was nobody except Mr. Hoover and I can possibly appreciate what that man's going through

and I'm not going to say anything that's getting his way. And this was even with a president like Eisenhower, with whom there were many disagreements and with whom there were full of personal tensions. I think Mr. Johnson will play rather more that role. You think he has a sniping away from the shots going on? No, I think it's sniping, but suppose, for example, the kind of new society that Johnson's been talking about and trying to bring into being, he sees that vanishing, isn't he likely to say something? Yeah, I don't have the university professor. I don't think it's going to vanish and I think we can tell from the few Johnson speeches we've had, both the late in the campaign and in the transition period, what his major concern is. His major concern about the Nixon administration is don't take two years or three years the way John Kennedy had to take to learn the problems that you have in this society with the Negro. This is a feature of the Nixon campaign. They chose for good political reasons, I suppose, to go a different route.

But the Negro American probably feels justified in feeling that Mr. Nixon neglected him and the same and some of the early appointments and Mr. Nixon is saying, and Mr. Johnson is saying to Mr. Nixon that every opportunity don't forget. It's not just a question of obligation and this is necessary for the whole country. But other than that little bit of lecturing on that subject, he has not tried to intrude. He has behind the scenes, as I say, tried to enlist him. But finally, let's conclude this with a talk about the White House atmosphere and the change it may take place there. And I have here a quote from Ted Lewis of the Daily News and I'll read it. He would agree or disagree with it. And he said, ever since we can remember the presidential mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has been elegant to look at from the outside. While inside, it has swarmed with flunkies, clerks, and self-important aids. Now at very long last, we're going to have real quiet efficiency, a sort of political garden of gets so many rather than the old style tower of Babel.

The president-elect's blueprint for a comparatively small White House staff would mount to a tiptoe through the tulips set up compared with the bull in the China shop operation of the Kennedy and Johnson years. Is there going to be a great change at the White House? No, I make two comments on that. First, it appears, at least on the surface at the moment, that Mr. Nixon has collected around him an exceedingly low-key and efficient and above all loyal group of operators, technicians they like to call themselves, who stayed with him through the campaign, who remained for the most part invisible and who might be expected to do so in the White House. But at the same time, I think that at least the history of recent administration suggested this magnificent facade of order begins to crack under the pressure of the bureaucracy

after a certain period of time. Nixon, I've talked about this, is not anxious to elevate one or two of his personal White House staff to the level achieved by one or two of the particularly powerful members, such as Mr. Califano, in the Johnson White House staff. He wants everybody equally bland and equally technically competent. The bland leading the bland. But the fact of the matter is that if he doesn't have a Califano now, he's going to have to invent one sooner or later to light some fires under the bureaucracy. Sooner or later, he's got to designate X, Y or Z to go out and push the Department of Health Education welfare or HUD or transportation or what have you. To do the kind of job he wants them to do. And at that point, the tranquility of the White House staff begins to break down.

All right, so much for the man and the White House itself. Let's talk now about the job, the almost impossible task we assigned to the man in the White House. The doubty-doty our swinging cartoonist has depicted the most urgent presidential chores in a really non-serious way. And Mr. Semple, let's have some captions, please. The man in the White House must wear a variety of hats. Our favorite artist has pictured him once over lightly in six guises. The president must be leader, sculptor of an image of a statesman for all seasons. A monumental work that the people will acclaim. The president must be chief executive, a puppeteer manipulating the many strings attached to many lieutenants and reaching into pentagons and more peaceful structures.

The president must be initiator of legislation, a kind of Moses carrying the law down the capital dome and being waylaid by non-pilgrims in his path. The president must be commander in chief, a sturdy figure mounted on a steed made of armaments of all varieties and ready to lead into battle as well as into negotiation. The president must be the number one diplomat, a player of the national and international slot machines, with keen eye always on the watch for hawks, doves and other phony. Finally, the president must be the leader of his party, the trainer who keeps the elephants or in other times the donkeys on their toes and off his and endeavor to teach them new tricks. In some, the president must be an inspired leader, expert juggler, peerless politician, almost all things to almost all men. Thank you Bob, excellent captions.

Max, I think you would feel a lot more jobs than I would agree. My question is, can one man do all this? How did Kennedy manage and how did Johnson, one man can't do all this? That's simply a question of if we're lucky. The man we've got at any given time as the predilection and the sense of priorities and the peculiar package of talents for those parts of his job, the superhuman job, which need most, mostly doing in any particular time. I'll take the lucky. He doesn't. Now, let me interrupt. I'll take the three men, which of the jobs they felt were the most important. I think Lyndon Johnson, very obviously, by training, by predilection and by ambition, was a man who wanted to do things with this society and inside this country, especially in the realms of education and health and welfare and race relations. Very early in his term, he was overtaken by the Vietnam War, which became more and more of a handicapped and quite a part of whether from the question of whether he was a good commander in chief or a good military leader or a good diplomat in handling the Vietnamese situation.

I'm sure he learned a great deal about all those things. It got in the way of what he had really wanted to do, what he had really dedicated his life to, and what he dreamed of doing. If there is a tragic flaw in the Johnson presidency, it is that the right man at the right time came and something else happened that deflected him. We can turn it around. Franklin Roosevelt came to power with a sense only of our domestic concerns and with a massive effort to resolve them. And yet, when events overtook him and made him a war leader, he had elements of qualities of greatness there and had built up a reservoir of goodwill and leadership and responsiveness among the people that made him probably the perfect man to lead us through the Second World War.

What would you guess about Nixon's priorities? I don't know. He seems to have spent the last few years, certainly, dedicating himself to the study of and pursuit of foreign policy. Whether he thought that that was a safer way of political reasons to run for president, or whether that is a true reflection of what he thinks is the major concern, the major need, and his own best talent, I don't know. If that's the case, we're going to be unlucky again because I do think that the major concerns of this country now are going to turn inward. Well, don't you think that he modeling himself. He was elected in 52 as Eisenhower's vice president. And at that time, Mr. Nixon was only 39. So for 20 years, they've been Democratic presidents. Obviously, they've been modeling himself on Roosevelt and Truman. They couldn't remember Hoover and Clewidge, because he was just a teenager when they were in. And therefore, for 16 years, he's either been in Eisenhower's shadow or running for Eisenhower's job in 60 and 68. Now, you can sketch the thing of two men who are more different than those two. And yet, I think the calmer and dignified, less partisan man that Bob has been describing.

Particularly since he won the election in November, and is a man who's trying to be in his own way Eisenhower rests, if that's a remarkable word. I have a question on that, though. We were talking about priorities here, and I'm wondering what his attempt to make himself over in the Eisenhower image means as far as his priorities are concerned. Is his chief priority then to be a man who consolidates existing legislation, for example, the gains of the kind of these things? You're asking what were the Eisenhower priorities? Well, I am. And I'm asking whether, if the image is to be duplicated, then two are the approaches to be of the Eisenhower administration to be brought back as well. So the image of the priorities are two different things? Well, no, I think if you're seeking to create an image, the priorities follow.

If General Eisenhower was deeply exercised about any domestic problem, I never discovered it during his eight years in office. I mean, I think he took over thing in the country as a pretty good shape, and when he left eight years later, he thought it was a pretty good shape. If anything, maybe he saved a little money. Well, Nixon can't think that. Well, I think that Nixon feels that he could concentrate on foreign affairs and dealing with the Russians and perhaps settling the Middle East in crisis that won't blow up into another Vietnam. And if he has any strong feelings on domestic problems about social justice and so forth, or what we should do for the Negroes, that's never surfaced. And it was never apparent when he was the congressman, Senator, Vice President, when he ran in 60, he had no domestic program to speak up. And this fall, when we talk about the crisis of the city, we say, we usually think, spend money, but he said, you know, Humphrey's martial plan with billions was demagogic nonsense. So there are no billions to be spent.

Then, aren't we, as Max thought, or thinks, and indicated, and for a tough time, because our problems are going to be domestic problems? Isn't that what you were saying, Max? I wasn't making a judge-final judgment on Mr. Nixon, because I didn't think so. No, no, I'm saying that since election day, he has made some indications. I mean, for all his best friend and closest confidant has been moved into the Department of Health education. And he has made some appointments which indicate, I think you better take that. But I do think that if the general indication of Mr. Nixon's primary and priority interested foreign affairs continues, then I think, yeah, then I think we're going to have a tension between events and the presidential predilection. Unless he's left. Well, unless he does something in a way of a domestic program, that's the alternative. Well, it's the race riots, which could subside. It's unexpectedly as they arose in 1964. Last summer, because we had the riots in April, rather than July and August, because of Dr. King's murder. But last summer, there was a sharp decline in these racial confrontations in the big cities.

And it might be that, like a epidemic, this wave of urban violence is going to subside. And if it subsides, there's no reason from the point of view of the 30 million people who elected President Nixon. Why, you know, the Negro problems in urban violence can be allowed to similar for four years. Why aren't you being very optimistic, really, about not only the fundamental things have been resolved about the racial struggle. It's taking a different form as a period of quiet, but certainly there's no indication that the storm is over. No, but there could be that the eye of the hurricane might even last three or four years. That's what I mean by he's being lucky. Now that there might be a law. Well, then it'll hit him in a second time. Well, we'll start on a future show. I would raise a question about what I think is undue pessimism on your part. You're in a great position. I accuse you of undue optimism.

I think he's being unnecessarily pessimistic to assume that Nixon will in his anxiety to get things straightened out of broad, short-change the domestic programs. This fellow is a politician who does not, I don't think, relish the thought of being a one-term president. And I think he senses that he can best broaden his base in that of his party, not in the direction of the ex-million people who voted for Mr. Wallace, but in the direction of those who voted for Mr. Humphrey. And if what I'm saying is correct, I think you will see efforts to come to grips with some of these problems of education and housing and air and water pollution and all the rest. It is true that during the campaign, he suggested that mere money wasn't enough and gave by that the impression that he wasn't going to spend any money at all.

But I think his political wisdom is going to force him to spend a good deal. Now, it's difficult to predict in dollars and cents terms what he's going to be up to. To want to spend because we are talking here about presidential volition, but even if you get that volition, you still got the problem of just the shape of the economy, the pressure of the war, and finally the will of the Congress. That's true. And the last was really important. When a conservative Congress, they're going to go, of course, they are. In many ways, a conservative president, conserving what has gone before, I think his instincts will lead him to use his word to try to build on what has gone before. Probably not in the magnitude that Johnson has gone at it with, but I can't see him sitting still.

Then, of course, the problem, they're the obstacles is Vietnam, the avail, the whole question, the availability of money, a 4% inflation rate. And a Congress, Mr. Markel suggests, is conservatively, probably conservatively inclined at this time. Well, we're plunged deep into the problems, and let's talk about some of those prime problems, Mr. Shannon, will you let us have some background? Well, for light on the multitude of problems, at home and abroad, inherited by Mr. Nixon, we turn to the cartoonists. The presidency these days, as cartoonist Canfield indicates, is one crisis after another. Johnson here is telling Nixon, one thing you'll discover, it's constant. Many of the crises arise from Uncle Sam's efforts to keep the world stable. In this Hesse cartoon, the plea to Nixon is, if he could just find me a little help, Uncle Sam, that's saying. The president-elect must deal with the Congress controlled by the Democratic donkey, he are looming large over Mr. Nixon and saying, in this Wetzel cartoon, let us reason together.

And for the new president, there's still the old personal problem portrayed by British cartoonist wake of the tricky, dicky image. So 20th of January approaches, and with it, a whole slew of gigantic question marks. Let's continue the points you were making about his general approach. I have a feeling that he will be middle-world, but much more liberal and conservative because of the nature of politics, and his eye is on a second turn. You think he is likely to be? Yes. And don't the cabinet appointments indicate that? Yes, Max. Max mentioned the fact that Bob Finch, his closest aide and confidant, has been put in charge of HEW, which is in turn the custodian of much of Johnson's great society legislation. He's brought Romney, who was no shrinking violet, into run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, attracted Pat Moynihan, a man of distinctly liberal, if occasionally unorthodox views, into the White House.

And generally speaking, brought more industrial state governors familiar with the problem of urban problems into the cabinet, and I would have expected on a basis of his campaign rhetoric a couple of months ago. So I think those are encouraging signs to anyone who feels that the problems of the city, and the attendant problems of race, pollution, education, housing, and so on, are the major domestic problems facing us. Oh, I'm sorry. No, that's about all I had. I would throw in this caveat, though, that there are a lot of things that are going to prevent Nixon, whatever his best instincts may be. I'm giving him credit for some very aggressive instincts at the moment, as reflected in some of his cabinet appointments, not all of them.

But he has some terrible financial and monetary problems. So in a couple of years, if he hasn't done anything, hasn't taken the aggressive approach that I've suggested that he might take, I think there are two places we've got to look. He has his own attitude, but two, at the constraints that I think events are about to compile. And if crisis means anything in the constant sense that Bill suggested, then again, 32 is an interesting lesson. We had a domestic crisis of a different order, and even magnitude then, but it took Franklin Roosevelt seven years, nine years coming into World War II, and we weren't out of the crisis. Anymore than Mr. Nixon is going to be out of the urban or racial crisis that we're in in the space of four years, but Franklin Roosevelt was able to give the country a sense of revitalization and a sense of hope. And quite apart from the money that he likes, and quite apart from the constituency that Mr. Nixon likes, and quite apart from the Congress that he could easily manage that he likes.

What he likes most of all, I think, is a sense of excitement and communication with the very electorate that is living in the midst of the crisis in the big urban city. And he must find a way to communicate and to give hope even before he gives achievement. I agree. To the Negroes, yes. To the people who didn't vote for. That's right. That's a hard assignment. It's hard for any man, and especially hard given the circumstances. So Max, isn't it true though that he cannot solve, and this is true of any major nation these days, and true also of the underdeveloped nations, that you cannot solve your internal problems without solving the external. In other words, he's never going to solve the fiscal problem here unless we settle the Vietnam and cut down on the military budget so that somebody can be devoted to social reconstruction. It's very hard to talk about giving priority to domestic policy, foreign policy because they come so closely together.

You don't win elections just in the north or south. That's why Vietnam is so absolutely critical to Nixon's success. I think his chances of establishing the kind of rapport that Max was talking about with those who were in the midst of the chaos and the deprivation are going to be almost nil. Unless he can get us somehow to scale down the level of the fighting, or at least reach some kind of settlement. And if he can, on the other hand, I think it would be despite his lack of personal magnetism, which he doesn't have the way Kennedy had it for a way Roosevelt had it at the time of crisis, for example. Despite all that, if he can do something about the war, I think that will make up for a lot of those personal qualities and getting back on the right track with the major groups in the country who are now suspicious of it. It seems to me that I assume he will have in the war, having seen how it wrecked Johnson's administration, he wouldn't have that, and night may have continued for four years of his administration.

So I assume that by next summer he will have rounded up one way or the other, and that then, while the whole 30 billion from Vietnam won't be immediately available, some of it will. And then his choice will be whether you'll give it Mr. Leard at the Pentagon to spend on new weapons systems, or whether he will funnel it into the cities. But, and I assume he will try and do both, that it's divided some to Pentagon and some to the cities. But I don't see him establishing any rapport with these radical youth who were campaigned from McCarthy in Kennedy, or for the blacks who voted against him in the recent election by 10 and 12 to 1. Because from his viewpoint, the problem with the cities is not social deprivation primarily. It's a violence disorder, lawlessness. And you'd have to be a convinced liberal to think that the way to control or to not control, but to get rid of this endemic violence in the cities was by progressive social reform. Because a convinced liberal, because it's going to take you, even if you were a liberal, it's been a lot of money. But on that premise, it would still take you easily 20 years.

And for a conservative who doesn't share that liberal philosophy, and it's only got it four years or at most eight, to him the problem is violence and the problem lawlessness is crime. So the problem is to restore order and make the Negroes realize that the heaven isn't going to be created in the day, and they'll just have to be patient and violence will get them nowhere. And see, I may absolutely no impact on you. I believe that he's going to have a somewhat more progressive style than President Eisenhower. And I'm not suggesting he's a black reactionary, like, say, Senator Goldwater, but I think that it's going to be a matter of style. It's going to be a matter of marginal nuances than an additional half a billion, say, that more than I'd now would have asked for. But in the sense of really establishing communication with the dissident elements in our society, and people who hate the status quo and want radical change, they're just not going to get it from this press. I think I can sum up this debate between you two by saying Bill sees thinking in terms of the old Nixon, and you are thinking Bob in terms of the almost new Nixon.

Isn't this correct? He's reading his campaign speeches, but not entirely, because I think Bill is willing to grant much of what Bob says. We're saying it's still a problem. Well, that's what he said, and I agree with it. How do you think he can... So how can anybody solve, for example, the toughest problem? I don't think Bill is going to pass the way you indicate. There are a couple of other assumptions here that I think ought to be pointed out. I think Bill assumes that the programs that we've got are headed in the right direction, and what they need is funding. A massive fund, and which Nixon is not likely to provide for a variety of reasons, either his own instincts or the constraints that we talked about earlier. Well, I'm not sure...

Well, I don't... I don't want to argue Nixon's case, but what I do want to raise is a question that they have been raising. Don't you think we ought to get some of the programs straight and around before we vastly increase their size? In other words, you're assuming that they're all working now. And I think one of the reasons that Nixon was voted into office was that people had had a tremendous fate of social legislation, and they wanted to sit back, iron out the kings, a job that they have traditionally given to Republicans periodically in our history. I'm not exactly sure whether I'm challenging your point here or not. Well, I would say I think they were voted in office because of the Vietnam War, but I think that the programs could be improved. That's true, but I agree with everything you say. My point is simply that even if a fairly left-wing Democrat like you, but Humphrey or Robert Kennedy, had he lived,

had either of them been elected and continued the great society programs, and gotten the more fun, you know, more highly funded, or whatever the word there is, nevertheless, on the best assumptions, those severe, less to say, how do we go solve this racial crisis? Well, the answer is, I don't think we ought to solve it, in any dramatic sense, like you win a war. But the money isn't easy, that's very clear. Yes, I think money and time are the two things. And a change in viewpoints. On whose part? On the part on both sides. Why was Andy Groves? Yes, well, I think that this president is not likely to fight for the money. I won't have any more times than any president would have had, which in other words, four years is too short, I think he has the style or really the inclination to articulate, to create a dialogue, shall we say, with the slums and the radical Negroes. I assume Bill, you didn't vote for Nixon.

No, I voted as the New York Times editorial page told me to vote. I don't leave a false impression of people listening to believe that. We never want to say, all our reporters vote contrary to the editorial page. That's a requirement. I'd like to talk, Max has brought it up, and it interests me a great deal, and it seems to me that the problem is confronting Nixon, among the foremost, and it covers all the other problems, there's a problem of communication, of reaching the people, overcoming the credibility gap. I think it might be useful, Max, you've watched Johnson and Action so long. How did this credibility gap arise, and how serious is it? Well, I don't agree with you that that's Nixon's only problem in communication. Oh, no, in communication. I think the inspiration gap. No, I don't. Well, I think that's part of the problem of communication through inspiration or otherwise. Well, one is positive, you can be credible and still not inspiring, and I think that's probably where Mr. Nixon is going to end up.

It's a little late but it's a matter of course. Mr. Johnson's troubles, I think despite the common assumptions, do not arise from the fact that he bellows at his assistance, or that he tells small fibs us to when he's going to announce something, or that he fools around with the press and gets annoyed when they anticipate him. I think the so-called credibility gap fed on by the fact that his personality aroused suspicion, but was caused in the first instance by the major problem of this man who looked secretive and who had the reputation first positive of a Wheeler dealer, seemed to have secretively, secretly, and in a Wheeling and Dealing fashion led this nation into a war before it realized what was happening, and gave the Congress a sense of feeling cheated in terms of its prerogative to decide whether we should be in that war, gave the young people of this country a sense of feeling cheated that they were suddenly called upon to bleed on behalf of a cause that they weren't convinced justified that war,

and finally gave the country a sense of being cheated in terms of what kind of a war it really was, and the size of it, how long it was likely to last, whether we were doing well, and whether we even knew what we wanted to achieve with it. I think without that, all the other personality quirks and problems would have been colorful, Texan, exciting, and Jacksonian. I think given that policy problem, many of Mr. Johnson's worst reputations then tended to feed on it and defeat him in the process. You can look back at President Truman, and no one ever said he had a credibility gap, he was so candid, he was startling. He was President at a time when we were fighting another of these dreary, unprofitable, unpopular little wars in Asia, Korea, and by 52 he couldn't have been reelected, and of course he wanted to retire anyway, having served two terms, but his party was driven from office in 52.

I think the facts as Max just done, the actual situation, that is that it was a difficult war, an unpopular war, and that was what really brought Johnson down, but he compounded it by the way in which he went about it, but that it was the disaster itself. I think we ought to devote a few minutes remaining in this program to a discussion of Nixon's capacity as a communicator, including his capacity as an inspireer. Do you want to take that on, Bob? Well, I started off anyway, I agree with much of what Max has said, what Bill has said, that one of Nixon's most difficult problems is that he does not immediately convey a sense of inspiration to his listeners, and that's not only the Negro community or the poor or the disenfranchised, it's everybody. Now, I will give him credit for working on that problem. He tried very hard in the course of the campaign to overcome his lousy television image and his tricky dick image.

Did he succeed? Well, it all depends on your point of view. I think he made considerable progress, and he made it through television by large, and I think what we're going to see, whether this will answer the question you raised, can he avoid credibility gaps? Can he communicate to people? I'm not certain, but you're going to see a much greater use of television as we go along, and in those formats he's going to try to come across as directly as he can, because I think he has sensed already that he cannot put on a show. As soon as he tries to put on a show, he gets the same kind of problem that Johnson did when he tried to put it on. Put on a show? What do you mean? Well, to try to be the flamboyant master of ceremonies, for example, a little bit of that occurred not long ago when he announced his cabin. But I think he feels that a lot of planes speaking, if he can muster it on television, and a lot of frequent television appearances to explain problems and so on, will do a lot to prevent the kind of thing happening that happens.

And of course, it might actually suggest if he can get this war tone down, that will help him a great deal. Well, let's move on to the television image. This is a program in itself, and there are these two jobs of communication and of inspiration. First, it seems to me with the public, and second, with the press, and I think they're both difficult jobs, and I possibly would say that the job that the press is more difficult, and so we come to the end. The quotations of the month, obviously, deal with the presidency, for example, there are these. Calvin Coolidge, you have to stand every day three or four hours of visitors. Nine cancel them. I want something they ought not to have. If you keep dead still, they will run down in three or four minutes.

If you even cough a smile, they will start off all over again. Unless from Harry Truman, a president cannot always be popular. He has to be able to say yes or no, and more often no to most of the propositions put up to him. If the president is easily influenced and interested in keeping in line with the press and the polls, he is a complete washout. Finally, Franklin Roosevelt, quote, the first 12 years are the hardest. In three weeks news and perspective will present a survey of the month's news, with Mrs. Wicker and Franklin as the ponderers and the prophets. There will be a new moderator, Clifton Daniel, managing editor of the Times, and I wish him well. I shall be engaged with other pursuits and other programs.

I thank you profoundly for your patience and your fortitude and listening all these years, and I thank you also for your applause. Let me add a word here that we, on the Times, wish to applaud you. You've spent one lifetime teaching us all the meaning of honest analysis and interpretation of the news, and then in six wonderfully short years, you've taught us on this program how to give that analysis still another dimension on television. We've all encountered the tributes that you're talking about around this country to this program and to you, and those are tributes to you, and we are sure that they will be followed by others in yet another lifetime. We honor you on all counts. Thank you. Thank you, thank you from bottom of my heart, and I've filmed a new job on January 20th.

News in perspective. Transition, Johnson to Nixon, has been presented by National Educational Television and the New York Times. With Leicester Marquell, Max Franco, William V. Shannon, and Robert B. Semple, Jr. Three weeks from tonight, news in perspective returns with a new moderator, Clifton Daniel, managing editor of the New York Times. Joining him for a look into 1969 will be Tom Wicker and Max Franco. This is NET, the public television network. This is NET, the public television network.

The public television network.