News In Perspective; #16; 1965-01-13

The National Educational Television Network and the New York Times present News in Perspective with Lester Markell, Tom Wicker and Harrison Salvesbury. Again today we present the News of the Month in Perspective, the background and the foreground of events. I am Lester Markell, Associate Editor of the Times and almost incredibly moderate moderator of this show. My two colleagues, commentators, combatants today are Tom Wicker, head of the Times Washington Bureau, who is of prime vintage and who travels well and now is happily returned to this table. And Mr. Harrison Salvesbury, Assistant Managing Editor of the Times, who writes the travelogues for the Wickers the Frankl's et al. and who has been pinch -hitting so Babe Ruthlessly for Mr. Frankl, who is on his way back to this panel. Now for the month. It was a month of preparation and

preoccupation. Preparation on the domestic front, preoccupation with foreign problems. The president unveiled the first models for his great society sculpture, a new deal combined with a fair deal on a new frontier. Congress seemed likely to go along. The Democrats were under the Johnsonian high -fi hypnotism. The Republicans were split, debating whether to spare the birch or spoil the party. The economy was still a chief concern. On the one hand, how to support it sufficiently to keep it up, and on the other, how to guard against inflation, lest it go too far up. All this was in comparatively good spirit, but the foreign picture was different. Vietnam continued to be our main trouble spot, with the dilemma of evacuation or escalation still unresolved. American losses mounting. The dark continent seemed darker than ever. In the Congo, there was revolt against Shumdy. Once our foe, now our friend. And there was

bloody massacre. In the United Nations, the Congo's struggle led to ferocious debate. The Africans attacked us fiercely for our mercy mission. There were other troubles for youth that in the UN, deadlocked over Russia's refusal to pay for peacekeeping operations. There was a non -session of 25 days. And of course, there was De Gaulle, the man of almost every month, who won a victory over Germany's airheart and again asserted his independence of us. Only one leader seemed to be at peace, Pope Pius Paul VI, the traveling pope who was cheered to the Hindu rafters on an unprecedented visit to India. Now it's the chief events of the month. As Lyndon Baines Johnson enters upon the presidency in his own right, here is a brief profile of this man up a most in the news.

Mr. Wicker. Well, the political instincts of Lyndon Johnson are rooted in the old populist ferment of the West and his native hill country in Texas. But his greatest teacher was the old master himself, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mr. Johnson, then a young congressman, was a favorite of FDRs. But when World War II put an end to the new deal, Mr. Johnson went into service as a naval observer in the South Pacific and won a declaration. But when Roosevelt ordered congressmen back home, Mr. Johnson ran for the Senate from Texas and didn't make it. In 1948, he tried again, and won but only by a disputed 87 -vote margin that earned him the nickname of Landslide Lyndon. Mr. Johnson took to his new job like an old veteran, however, and became floor leader in 1954. He worked closely with President Eisenhower and generally was considered a wizard in the job. This wizardry was not enough to win him the 1960 presidential nomination against the glamorous John F.

Kennedy. But Mr. Kennedy turned to the Texan to balance his ticket and the two won one of the narrowest election victories in history. Mr. Johnson worked closely with Mr. Kennedy. He conferred often with foreign leaders like Chancellor Adnar and thus, when the president was assassinated on November 22, 1963, and Mr. Johnson took the presidential oath on the plane in Dallas, he was one of the best prepared men ever to take over the office. In November, Mr. Johnson and his running mate, Hubert H. Humphrey, won the biggest election victory in the nation's history. As president, Mr. Johnson has been a whirlwind of energy, both in the sedate White House and the very informal LBJ Ranch. Well, gentlemen, let's talk, if we may for a bit, about what sort of man is this basically and what does this career indicate about him? Mr. Wick, it's been said that this is an enormously egotistical man and raw even to the mildest criticism. Will you give us your

estimate of his strong points and his weak points? Well, it's certainly true that Mr. Johnson is a man of great pride and a man of great sensitivity. I wouldn't put this foremost among the characteristics that people should be aware of. I think the first thing to be understood about Lyndon Johnson is that he is in the best sense, he is almost totally political. This is a man whose every thought is devoted to politics. His every thought is devoted to the achievement of some project that he has set for himself. I don't think that Mr. Johnson's approach to politics is so much conceptual in that he has large aims far away that he's working towards, so much as it is factual and actual. A problem exists, the problem is definable, how do we reach either a solution or at least an alleviation of that problem? I think this is his approach. Yes, but he has been called a master of the immediate

and the question is in this kind of world, whether you don't have to be more than a master of more than the immediate, how do you find? I think that criticism of Johnson is fair. I think he's a man who looks at the surface of things and tries to rearrange the landscape somewhat. On the other hand, when he does come up with concepts insofar as they can be verbalized, seems to me they're somewhat startling in their radical nature. You take the idea that underlies the great society, the elimination of poverty. This is something which in the whole history of mankind has never been attempted. If he really means it, I don't think he does mean it. He's quite certain, isn't it, Tom, that he does mean it? career shows this is a pretty dedicated fellow, despite all that has been said about him. Yes, I think that's quite right. In many ways, of course, being political, as I said, Mr. Johnson will sometimes

move this way, move around the end rather than through the middle, and perhaps a goal that he may specify is not really precisely the one he has in mind. I think he would be the first to admit that poverty is a relative matter. Someone will always be poorer than another man. I don't think that he has in mind sort of a universal wealth from the part of everyone, but he does have in mind, I think, the alleviation of factors that make for the abject poverty, still to be found in our society, the elimination of basic illiteracy and the elimination of, that is, the provision of basic job skills to people who know no more than how to dig a hole or to lift a timber of some kind. This reminds me a little bit of another character from that same part of the world, one who's just a memory now, and that's Huey Long. He's sprang out of the same kind of poverty -stricken background as Lyndon Johnson. He was a manipulator, too, and I wouldn't compare the two men, because I think

Johnson is much more of a man than Long, and yet this ideal, Huey Long wanted to share the wealth. He wanted to eliminate ignorance. He put a lot of money into schools and simple things that came right out of his own experiences as a very hard -pressed young man, and Johnson had that kind of a background, But Huey Long's aim wasn't so straight. That was a difficulty. I think now you have to remember, President Johnson had a grandfather who was a professing populist, so to speak. in his boyhood, as he mentioned in his State of the Union message, it was a very hard country that he lived in, and his first political achievements of any size were to bring in water projects and what was at that time the largest REA project in the world, right to his home folks. And I think there's still a great streak of this in Johnson. I try to isolate, to the extent one can, three rather intertwined streaks that you find in a man's makeup, and I think one is this streak of western populism, this idea of providing something for the folks who don't have anything. Another streak is, as he went along in Texas politics, he became involved in

the big power politics of Texas. There's enormous forces that work down there, economic forces, and he's very well acquainted with that sort of thing. And then in Washington, he has had an experience of more than 30 years now in the ins and outs of government and of politics in the Washington level. And I think all three of these things are intertwined into a very complex man, far more complex than most people realize, and not simply a manipulator or a wheeler -dealer, although he protects of all those things. Well, now the question is really what we're asking, but he can rise above the political level on which he's been operating into the larger, what I might call global level. That's the issue that now confronts us, isn't it? Well, I suppose it is, in a sense. I always find it a little bit difficult to separate the idea of, as I suppose you're meaning, statesmanship and politics, because it seems to me the two are intertwined so closely, and... Depends which is the predominant factor in the man's makeup. Yes, I suppose it does, but I think Mr. Johnson would... I don't know whether he would say it or not, but I think the basic idea behind him is that good politics is good

statesmanship. Good statesmanship requires good politics. He's a conservator, I think. think for all his radical strains, he is a man who would achieve those ends by conservative goals. I don't think it's an accident that he's known for, let's reason together this approach of his. This is a very important part of the man. Well, isn't it, wouldn't you say that you sum it up from what I've read? I haven't had much steering, since you've been away on the Washington scene, but from what I've read in your absence, I would say that his great desire is to serve as a consensus president, isn't it? And he keeps referring to this, and there's this article he wrote, which I quote again from the Texas Quarterly in 58, and if you will indulge me, I'll read it, very brief. I'm a free man, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat in that order. I do not believe that we have arrived at an answer until we have found the national answer. The answer all reasonable men can agree upon,

and our work is not done until that answer is found. Now this is 58, and this is still his creed, isn't it? Well, of course, consensus has become all of a sudden the operating catch word in Washington. This is more than every more every 10 years. think it has to examined a little bit. But it is true, I think, that it's basically Mr. Johnson's approach that let us say in a matter of labor versus management or one religious group against another. He is very much aware of and cautious about the kind of solution or the kind of answer that gives one side a bare victory over the other and leaves an embittered loser, so to speak, so that he wants to seek a broader solution into which both sides can enter perhaps reluctantly and perhaps they don't quite achieve as much as one side would hope. But a more or less peaceful consensus rather than a 51 to 49 vote, let us say. But on the other hand, I think when Mr. Johnson arrives at his conception or his idea of what it is that will affect that solution, the kind of solution people can gather on, then the idea of consensus becomes a matter of simply getting out and finding

enough people to see his point of view. Oh, of course, and that's correct. And that brings us, I should say, immediately to the question of the Johnson method. And the President has his unique methods of operation. He's been accused, as you've indicated, of being a wheeler -dealer, manipulator, but he does achieve his ends and he achieves them by button -holding, by arm -twisting, by all kinds of human ingenuities. Well, this method has really worked in domestic affairs. Has it not? It's been proved by his legislative career. So far, certainly. It's very hard to quarrel with success. Well, Mr. Salisbury, what about foreign affairs? The matter is that really confront them. What kind of President is needed to operate properly in foreign affairs? This is a huge question. How close does Lyndon Johnson come to fulfilling that requirement? I think the plain fact of the matter is that we don't know, and I don't think Mr. Johnson knows

yet, how successful this sort of an approach is going to be in foreign affairs. It's impossible to get a consensus, let's say, on the Berlin question. It's impossible to get a consensus on Liebner. Reason is not always a solution in foreign affairs. Solution may not even be obtainable in some situations. We've yet to see whether Mr. Johnson, sitting down, let's say, with the Soviet leadership, will be able to reason together over our joint problems. I personally am very doubtful that he can put his arm around them, as he does with some of his colleagues in Washington. worked with Khrushchev, not too well. Well, it's a question. We don't know how he's going to work with Brezhnev and Kosigin. And does he take his telephone with him? Wasn't Humphrey once complained the only way he could resist the President was by not answering the telephone? What's he going to do? He can't take the hotline with him. Humphrey managed to keep Khrushchev in constant conversation

for eight hours. Now, I don't think that either of them succeeded in convincing each other anything. What score? How many hours, Humphrey, and how many Khrushchev? Well, I think his real score was zero -zero. I think they left the situation exactly where it was. And I think that Mr. Johnson and Mr. Khrushchev might well have talked to Khrushchev constantly for 18 hours without really settling anything. But maybe I'm wrong about that. I'd like to see. I don't think Johnson himself knows. I think he's a little cautious. I think he has a certain feeling that maybe these techniques will not work so well across the water's edge. I think that's quite right. And I think this has to be clearly understood, too, that the Johnson method, so to speak, if you want to call it that, depends on a great deal on the fact that Johnson himself is a very adept political animal, a man steeped in our politics and the problems of our country. It depends a great deal upon his knowledge. I think the secret of his domestic political success, if there is a secret, and that's too strong a word for it, of course, is Johnson's enormous ability that demonstrated particularly in the Senate, and I think last year in legislative leadership, to

find that common ground upon which he can get adversaries together. Perhaps not where they're happy with each other, but they can stand there. Now, this depends a great deal upon his very knowledge of events and the men that he's dealing with. Even if you were to concede that that kind of method could work in foreign affairs, it depends, again, on his knowledge of the men and events that he's dealing with. And I don't think he has that in a broad sense on foreign affairs, and it would take him years. This is the problem. It would take him years. There's another thing there, Lester, too, which he has to have, that he doesn't, in foreign affairs, he has it in domestic, he doesn't have it abroad. He can manipulate things at home because he knows what he can give somebody in return for something. Well, now, supposing he sits down with a NATO conference, what is he going to give De Gaulle that will bring De Gaulle over on his side, and will not, at the same time, make the Germans put their backs up or the English put their backs up. This is a much trickier game that he's involved in, and I think his own native caution. think he's a, because, as Tom says, he's a political animal, his instinct tells him, go slow on this business because these techniques are not going to work so well. Also, he doesn't know

these chaps, and he's known these others for years upon years and handling the domestic problems. You recall that President Kennedy, about two years after he had been in office, complained rather sadly that one of the things that he had, he didn't complain, but he said rather sadly that one of the things he had learned was that there wasn't an American solution for everything, and that we did not have the power to achieve a solution or even a lessening of tensions in some place. I was struck by Johnson's business, the old here, was a couple of weeks ago, and sort of pulling back and trying to let everyone know that he wasn't trying to force something on NATO. And it seemed to me to be a recognition on his part of the fact that you have to sit down with these people, you have to let them reason with you as well as the other way around. That's correct. Well, in any case, the President, and his own right, has set a huge assignment for himself. We've had two cartoons which indicate this. The first is by Conrad in the Los Angeles Times, and it's captioned, Lyndon Bird. Lyndon

Bird is the caption. The second by Malden in the Chicago Sun -Times indicates that on the Johnstonian calendar, Christmas means almost every day, and it shows Santa exclaiming, Lyndon in astonishment. Well, I'd like to ask you, Mr. Wicker, in connection with this great program he set out and will come to that presently, how large really was this mandate that he has? Was this a great mandate to proceed with a tremendous program or was it? And I think to go back to November and consider the dire events of that month, was it a vote against Goldwater? Was it a real mandate for the President? Can he proceed on the assumption that it was a large mandate? Well, I think he proceeds, and I think he made it rather plain in one of two passages in his State of the Union speech that he does regard himself as having a mandate, but I do not think that the President regards. In fact, I think he's made this plain in other ways, too. He does not regard himself as having been

elected on a certain program. In other words, he didn't lay out his domestic program and say, now, if the country elects me, I'm going to do these things. So that he doesn't, he's spoken largely in generalities during the campaign. He's well aware, I think, that a great many people were voting against Senator Goldwater or against what they considered were dangerous policies and not necessarily for a program of his own. He himself has said that he thought that the single greatest reason that he was re -elected and re -elected by a large majority was because the people had come to believe in the past year that he was a man capable of operating the office who had done well in harsh circumstances and deserved a chance of his own. And I think there's a great deal in that. I don't think the American people were enamored of the idea of having a third president within 15 months. And I do not think that the president feels himself, and I don't think he could sustain if he did the idea that there's a massive mandate for the program he's now presented to Congress. I think he would say that there's a massive mandate for a president who will handle our domestic and foreign affairs capability, who will lead the country

towards economic and social progress, who will maintain prosperity. I think he would say that is for the specific points of the program. I doubt it very seriously. I don't think, Tom, that the president feels that there's one thing he does have a mandate for, and that is to take up some of the slack on the domestic scene to move into some of the problems that have accumulated in the, say, the 15 years that we've been so preoccupied with foreign affairs. I think he has a genuine feeling that the country wants to get on with a lot of these, some of the things he suggested about it. I'm that foreign affairs can now be put aside. No, I'm not last I is really going to spring on him in the next couple of months. I think this is true. I think this is true, certainly in the field. But I'm thinking of his approach to domestic affairs, that he genuinely feels that because the press of foreign events has been so continuous, ever since the end of World War II, that there's been an enormous accumulation of domestic problems that action is needed on, that country sorely does need, and he's right about that. Well, we're

talking now about the Great Society, aren't we? Well, yes, think that all without that phrase, without even the poverty element in it, there's an awful lot of programs. For example, program for doing something about transportation, rail transportation, things like that, these are problems. all part of the thing he himself calls the Great Society. Well, he calls it whatever. But the fact is, I think that Harrison is quite right. Over a considerable period of time, the United States cannot continue to play a great power role in the world, the one we've cut out for ourselves, unless we indeed are a great power, and this requires a good many adjustments from the domestic scene, not the least of which is the maintenance of a stable economy. Well, of course, if our economy goes down, I think Harrison's point is well taken, that the President feels quite rightly that you must pay attention to these problems. We must lead from strength. And he is now in better position, I believe, than any President, with the

possible exception of President Eisenhower in about 1956. He's in the best position of any President ever to do it, and even President Eisenhower didn't have a Congress of his own party. Well, in any case, the President did, in his State of the Union message, put foremost the blueprint for the Great Society, and the two important elements in that blueprint are the conquest of poverty and illiteracy. As for the war on poverty, now the government designates as poor any family with an income under $3 ,000. Now, there are four divisions of family income in the country, over 10 ,020 percent of the population, from 6 ,000 to 10 ,032 percent, from 3 ,000 to 6 ,029 percent, and under 3 ,000, the poor, 19 percent. As for the distribution of these poor families, they're 25 percent in the north -central states, 11 percent in the west, 17 percent

in the northeast, and poorest of all, 47 percent in the south. Now, as for the second, the education problem, 39 millions of the population have had only an eighth grade education or less, 44 million, an eighth, up to 12th grade education. 16 million have had an education beyond the 12th grade, in other words, a college education or better. Well, now, Tom, how does this, let's talk first and rather general, how does this great society, pardon me for using the term, but I picked it up from the of the United States. does it differ from the New Deal and the Fair Deal and the New Frontier? Is there any vital difference, or is it just an updating of all these things? Well, I think the great society concept, let us say, is defined to this extent by the President and by the President's program. Certainly, it springs, its roots are in the New Deal, its roots are in the Fair Deal, and its roots are in the New Frontier. These are evolving things that come from,

that all grow out of the so -called Roosevelt Revolution of the 30s. The approach is the same in many cases. The emphasis is heavily on welfare problems. But I do think that there is some difference in the President's so -called great society. For one thing, the very fact that we have had the New and Fair Deals and the New Frontier has changed the problem somewhat. Johnson himself is fond of saying that where President Roosevelt talked about one -third of our people ill -housed and ill -clad, now it's one -fifth. But that fifth is the hard fifth, because this is bedrock poverty and illiteracy. The people who will not automatically get a job if the economy picks up speed, from whom something has to be done. So that you come now to quite a different problem, in a sense, from simply creating more jobs at higher pay. You come to people who, even if there are more jobs at higher pay, who won't benefit a bit, people in Appalachia and the people in the deserted coal mining towns and in bypassed industries. So the problem has changed that way somewhat, I think. The problem has also changed in that even people who do have what in the 1930s would have been considered quite a good education

are not adequately equipped for the kind of problems that face our industry and our society and our military in particular today. So that you have to, there is now a responsibility on our society to provide a much higher level of training, a much more technical degree of training. There are those differences. But I think that the great society concept ought to be considered not as something like a five -year plan in the Soviet Union that's all going to be achieved in five years if only Congress cooperates with something. It isn't that at all. It's a continuing approach to problems that are continuously changing. Just as I've said how the educational problem has changed to a degree and the problem of poverty has changed to a degree, it will change again to a degree within five years, within ten years. And I think what Mr. Johnson has been trying to say all along is that we have to keep in step with these things if possible a step ahead and keep moving towards them. It isn't what was his phrase in the State of Union message, it's not fulfilled, but it's challenged. Yeah, and in other words, well, if I

interpret this correctly, the great society is at the present time more of a goal than a project. I think there's another thing about How to attain it is really a $64 billion question. Lester, there's this very important thing. When the new deal came along, what Roosevelt was trying to guarantee was that people didn't starve, that they had a place that was warm enough so they wouldn't freeze to death. When you get the fair deal coming along, it was for a fair division of whatever was going, whether it was poverty or something of that nature. Now, what Johnson has done is to step the goal up a long ways so that he, in effect, is promising an affluent society to everyone. This bottom business is going to be cut off entirely if he's able to attain it. It can't be done overnight. But this is really extending the goal of our society beyond anything that you might conceive of. Because the needs have been so much extended and the complexities of the problem have so greatly

increased. yet our society today is so much better off generally than it was in Roosevelt's day or in Truman's day or even at the beginning of the Kennedy administration. At any rate, the President has laid out a large program and the question is how much of this program can he achieve? And this all depends really on the Congress. And so let's look at this Congress compared with others and some of the men who will promote, modify or resist the great society. Mr. Wicker, you have the floor again. Well, it must give President Johnson an ironic lift to consider the first Congress of his first full term in the White House. Because when he was majority leader in the Senate, he operated with a two -vote majority that caused some of his notable victories to be labeled miracles. The composition of the 85th Congress in the Senate was 49 Democrats, 47 Republicans. In the House, 233 Democrats, 200

Republicans. Very close. In the 88th Congress, the last Kennedy Congress, there were in the Senate 67 Democrats to 33 Republicans. And in the House, 258 Democrats to 177 Republicans. Now the 89th Congress, the first Johnson Congress, shows overwhelming Democratic strength. In the Senate, there are 68 Democrats and 32 Republicans. In the House, there are 295 Democrats and only 140 Republicans. In both Houses also, the conservative Southern Democratic strength has been reduced by one seat in the Senate, by many more in the House. And among Republicans, there is more disunity than usual engendered by the liberal conservative struggle in the party. Thus, Mr. Johnson has a stronger grip on Congress than any president has had since 1937. Moreover, he has a generally tested leadership team, Mike Mansfield of

Montana, the Senate majority leader, John McCormick of Massachusetts, the Speaker of the House, Carl Albert of Oklahoma, the House majority leader, and Russell Long, the new assistant leader in the Senate. But there's always opposition to a president in Congress, and a Democratic president gets it from within and without his own party. Mr. Johnson will receive little help from such powerful Democrats as Senator Harry Byrd and Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia. He probably will get even less from Gerald Ford, the new House Republican leader. Everett McKinley -Dirkson of Illinois, the Senate Republican leader, may be more cooperative, but that is not the case with some other influential Republicans. It's not an easy task, but not the least of the president's assets is Lyndon B. himself, the master of the legislative process and the complete political animal. Well, Mr. Wicca, how far along do you think the Congress will go with the president on this rather grandiose program?

Is there a political period for a political honeymoon, and will it last longer than usual? Well, I suppose it's a political honeymoon. I take issue just a little bit with the term grandiose for this program. I think it's more grandiose an appearance than it is in fact when you get into it. In the first place, there are a number of programs, specific items in the president's program, which is a holdover legislation. Medical care for the aged has been discussed and debated in the Senate since 1958 or thereabouts. This year they have the votes. It isn't really such a monumental undertaking. Education bills are always coming along. Immigration bills have been for two years. Congress is going to ask a good deal more than the president in education. He's asked for a billion and a half and a good many congressmen seem to want more. Well, Congress has always diversified in that way. Many congressmen put in individual bills and go nowhere. But my point is that this program really is not as quite as sweeping as it may seem. In many cases, some of the things that he mentioned in themselves are not

very controversial. They may sound that way. Federal assistance in crime prevention, for instance. That sounds rather great, but what it really boils down to, as the president explained it, was some federal assistance in training local law enforcement officers and some sociological research. There are many things of this kind and my general prediction is, and it isn't just my idea, but I mean from the reaction we get in Washington, that there would be great difficulty in making any substantial changes in the right to work sections of the Taft -Hartley Act. There probably would be great difficulty in providing federal minimum standards in the unemployment compensation program. There might be some difficulty with the heart cancer stroke medical program because it goes farther than any medical program ever has in bringing federally supported physicians directly into the care of the patient. And I think there may be some resistance along from anti -socialized medicine forces on that. But other than for those three programs, I think the president's program has

outlined in the State of the Union address will go a long way towards being passed this year. And I think it ought to be emphasized too that this is not the great society, this program. I mean even in Mr. Johnson's own limited concept, this is the first year approach. And I think that probably is particularly true in the education program. This is sort of a first step. After all, the president has four years now with good prospects of having control of Congress in all those years. And I think you will find a rather stair step approach in some of these things. Well, I had the feeling in reading that message that it was sort of a kitchen sink message in which everything was in, including such things, such phrases as a war on poverty and this kind of thing. Well, the war on poverty is established as a fact, as a base there. And what it amounts to this year is doubling the appropriation. You don't have the basic fight to go through that you had to last year to convince people of the approach and the program and who the administrator would be and what department. All that's more or less so. Yes, but what is the appropriation? The appropriation will be just about double the 750

-odd million we had last year. That's billion and half. And how far will that go in a war on poverty? It can delay the foundation in lots of different areas. Actually, if you take this war on poverty program and break it down, poverty exists in general, but it really exists in specific places. go into Appalachia and you put a comparatively small amount of money in a little community of a thousand population and you will have lifted them up a considerable margin so that you can make quite an impact with it. It doesn't mean that you're not going to have another problem next year in another community where something has happened to put their economy on the blink. There's no doubt about that. But Harrison, how about this 19 % of the people who have incomes, families with incomes under $3 ,000 a year? This a pretty large segment of the population. This large segment of the population, but I think what Mr. Johnson feels about that, and I think he's right about it, is that in order to bring an overall increase for all of these people up, you've got to get the whole economy up on a higher and higher level.

Overall, his measures are designed to stimulate the general economy to move the gross national product up maybe another $100 billion. Now, when you get that on top of what we've got going already, you're going to lift. You're going to suck a lot of these 19 % of these families out, like it or not, because they're going to be needed for the labor force in many areas. And to use your expression as you suck them out, the program on quite at the other end will have provided those people with new skills so that they can fit into this. That's right. I think we'll have taught them to read. You just can't go out and say, well, now we'll spend $3 billion training people and then the problem will disappear. That's nonsense. It won't disappear. You've got them trained. Where are they going to work? Right. Well, I have a team here, both members of which should be named John Maynard Keynes, obviously. But we can't go into this question of economy because no one do it. I'd like to conclude this discussion of domestic affairs, Tom, with one question about the Liberals.

And the Liberals increased their strength, didn't they, at the last election? Well, are they going to be able to crack through such things as the filibuster rule and some of the other things which we think have hampered liberal programs in the past? Well, that the Liberals think have hampered the liberal program in the past. What hampered their programs? I would question very strongly whether or not there would be any significant lessening of the prospects for filibuster in the Senate. The Liberals have already affected considerable reform in the House rules. I think they have taken the House very far back towards 1910, revolting against Speaker Cannon and providing the Speaker with considerable powers to get a legislative program on the floor. And Speaker McCormick happens to be a supporter of the administration, which happens to be a fairly liberal administration. But the problem with these kinds of reforms are that what they've done is to restore the powers that were taken away from Speaker Cannon in 1910. And that was because he was too conservative. Now, what happens when we get a conservative speaker

in 10 years perhaps or a conservative president while perhaps the Liberals then will want to take the powers away again? These things are cyclical, but I think as far as the instant situation is concerned, this year's program, this year's Congress, it is considerably more liberal both in its makeup and in the rules of procedure already. And it's fairly clear is it not that the president is not going to press too hard to have these things changed? other words, it's going to go fairly easy on Congress. I think so, although his silence, refusal to get into it, certainly permitted the Liberals in the House to go ahead with their programs. He could have stopped it with a word. In a rather subtly different sense, I think his silence in the Senate dampens the prospects there that the Liberals may be able to change the filibuster rule because, again, with a word from him, the thing probably could go through. And I doubt quite seriously that word will come. Yeah, well, at any rate, the president, let's say, wheeling along in the middle of the road is likely to find the going

fairly easy in Congress at the beginning at any rate. But foreign affairs are different and I think a rather ugly aspect. So let us take a look at the extent and the nature of our involvement in the world. Mr. Salisbury, would you take over, please? On every continent of the world, America has commitments, diplomatic, military, moral. We have obligations fixed by treaty, NATO, CETO, CENTO. We have military forces that are essential to our national security. Our involvement covers the world. Each star represents a place where an important American defense force is stationed. The strength of our military forces is 2 .6 million. And of these, nearly 700 ,000 are overseas and another 316 ,000 are afloat or engaged in mobile activities. The tasks being carried out are as varied as the threats to

our security. As advisors in jungle warfare, for airlifts in Africa, for a naval watch in the far oceans, at checkpoints in Germany, and landing exercises with our Western allies. The map shows the six trouble spots where at the moment there is the greatest danger of explosion. The Vietnam, where we're advising the Vietnamese in the deepening struggle. The Congo, where the threat of rebellion is unreleased. Cuba, where Castro's course is still uncertain. Taiwan, still a focus of Chinese communist aggression. Berlin, where an uncertain truce is maintained with the Russians. At NATO, where there are deep differences among the Western alliance. As for our relationship with the world, the President put it this way. We shall follow the example of Andrew Jackson, who said, intend to ask for nothing that is not clearly right and to submit to nothing that is wrong. Well, looking at this map

and the stars on it and the trouble spots, do you gentlemen feel we are overextended and doing more than we should? Well, I think, Lester, if you ask me that we are overextended, in the sense that we have commitments that are really beyond our ability to fulfill. If we take, for example, the Vietnamese situation, we are unable to resolve that situation in a manner satisfactory to ourselves, satisfactory to what we think the world ought to be. Could we hold off on that because I think we ought to have some special discussion on the Vietnamese situation. Well, let's take the situation globally. have, at the present time, forces stationed in 250 different points in the world. Now, this means, naturally, some of these are tiny forces, maybe 15 or 20 men, but it also means that we have military obligations that literally cover the globe. The question is, really, a realistic one, can we

actually assume obligations all over the world? Or would we do better if we concentrated, let's say, in NATO, where our difficulties are considerable? Would we do better if we concentrated perhaps on certain specified situations, building up strength rather than frittering away our force? I think this is a problem which Mr. Johnson must confront. I don't think he's taken it really up as he should thus far. Tom, do you have a feeling in Washington that there is some of this sentiment that we are spread out too thin? No. Well, I think there are a good many people in Washington would sympathize with what Harrison has said. However, I think as a matter of government policy, the President in his State of the Union message seemed to me to express quite an activist policy in these matters. I

agree with Harrison too, but I do think that it becomes difficult to see at what point you must draw the line, at what point can you afford not to become involved when you're in a position. Things become so interlocked, a commitment is made in the Congo, let us say, and this affects your position in the UN, it affects your position because it affects your position in the UN, it perhaps affects your position with a very close alive. You take Tom, the whole sequence of alliances that are involved in CENTO and CETO, alliances that are really in pretty bad shape, yet they are still on the books and our military and our diplomats must consider these as active commitments. Well, are they realistic at the present time? Can we live up to them? Can we, and will our allies live up to these obligations too? I think this is a pretty good question. When you look at again, just to allow me to use Vietnam for a moment, when you look at the difficulty of the present alternatives, either to expand the war or to withdraw or to continue as at present, the question is almost bound to arise in

a logical man's mind, should we have gone into this situation in the first place and created for ourselves this kind Let's take a look at that situation. was the original decision? Let's take a look at that situation where our dilemma is unresolved. There is both an external and an internal situation. The map shows how supplies and troops flow to the Viet Cong, fighting in Vietnam, and the lines indicate approximately the supply lines, and internally there's the problem, the power grab, and the question is whether, media question, whether Ambassador Taylor can work things out with General Cong. Well, now, Harrison, you indicate quite properly we have this dilemma. Do we escalate or evacuate? There was a fascinating poll by the AP this morning, as I recall it. It was this morning. Recently. It was this morning. That showed, I think, out of what? 86 senators, only three

unreservedly favored pulling out. At the same time, is a dis -ease that is reflected in the comment of almost every single man. That's correct. And every person, I think, who's looked at that situation has felt uneasy because the alternatives, nobody wants to pull out, nobody wants to escalate into nuclear war with the Chinese or the Russians, and yet there doesn't seem to be any middle ground that you can stand on. The middle ground, apparently, is the middle ground of building up strength somehow, and the way to build it up is not at all clear, then negotiate from strength. That's right. The middle ground is more or less what we're doing, and the problem with that is that it seems to be losing. Now, whether it is or not is another matter. I think everyone who's become heavily involved in the Vietnam situation has been willing to concede that it's a long, long process. there isn't any, this is the problem with getting into a thing like this. You immediately begin to look for a solution, and there isn't any solution. Pulling out would not be a solution, as a matter of fact, because it would just lead to other developments, which would re -envolve. probably true. And yet, Tom, for the last year and a half, in fact, you can

go back two years and go month by month, and look at the headlines, and you see that we haven't really been holding our own in Vietnam. There has been a deterioration of the situation, regardless of what we have done over there. Now, if we're going to ever negotiate ourselves out of the situation, we've got somehow rather to stop this deteriorating process. Otherwise, willy -nilly, we won't have anything to negotiate. We'll be out of there. Yes, and this goes back to the point we were talking about. I think the question ought to be asked, and asked very seriously, if at the time, and I don't mean just in hindsight, but as a guide to the future, if at the time when the decision really to commit an American presence in South Vietnam was made, and although that was originally made back in the 50s, the decision really to go at it with great strength was made in 1961. And I think the question now is whether or not that decision was made on the basis of proper information or proper strategic sense, or what not, because it doesn't seem to me that a successful foreign policy involves a country in the kind of position that we are in now, where any

alternative is unpleasant. Well, at any rate, whether we should have got into it at all is an academic question. Well, it isn't academic if it's a guide to the very question you asked while ago. Are we overextended in the That's right. Is it possible for us to enter everything that comes up? We may come to this question in another area very quickly. You mean either Asia, another area of Asia, or in Africa. That's exactly what I mean. would draw that. I think that's correct as a lesson for the future. But as for Vietnam itself, you get Senator Church arguing we ought to change our course in Vietnam. And I think he said he's for neutrality for all of Southeast Asia, providing it is not, I think he said, a camouflage for communist takeover. But how are you going to guarantee this? This is the real problem. Well, there are certain possibilities diplomatically if we were willing to come to this terrible decision and say this is what we want. And I think they are

contained in the curious situation that the Russians and the Chinese find themselves in. The plain truth of the matter is that the unrest in Southeast Asia plays directly into China's hands, and it is contrary to Russia's interests. The Russians, however, are unable to pull out of this thing because if they pull out, the Chinese brand them as not being interested in communist revolution. If there were some way in which we could involve the Russians, who really have much the same sort of interest that we have out in Southeast Asia, because of their conflict with the Chinese, then we might have a three -cornered proposition that would work. But this would require diplomacy, which I frankly think we're not really up to. Yes, but to Harrison, there are other parts of the world in which the Russians and the Chinese are lined up and very strongly lined up on the same side. Take the Congo, and let's talk about that a minute. And there were two important developments in the Congo. The map shows that there was outside aid coming to the rebels

fighting the Shambai government, coming from Ghana, Algeria, the United Arab Republic, coming by land and by sea. And also, there was the flare -up at the UN, which was an amazing thing. Over this mission, manned by the Belgians and flown by the Americans to rescue missionaries and others for massacre. This African attack on us and Adelaide Stevenson's answer to the attack was a very bitter, bitter dispute. Now, this flare -up has great significance. Here, we engage in a humanitarian effort, and yet it was denounced as imperialism by the Africans at the UN, and the Russians and the Chinese took up the cry. Now, how do we convince people such as the Africans that we are ever going to act as I would put it, black man? I think, Lester, we have here in the Congo a situation to which we should apply the lessons that we have

learned, or should be learning, indeed not. And I think the primary lesson there is, if at all possible, put the responsibility for action in that area, not on a power which represents imperialism or represents a mighty force in the West, but put it on the powers directly involved, the nations directly involved in that particular area. It so happens that you have in Africa a whole group of emerging, very nationalist states. They're very eager to show their independence of everyone else, and they're very, very likely to throw bricks at the United States if they possibly can. I think that it was wrong, tactically and psychologically, for us to take the primary responsibility. I think we should have encouraged the organization of African states to move into the Congo and take the responsibility for settling this fracas themselves and coming to us for aid. Then I think we would have escaped this situation, which is made to order for meddling by the Russians, the Chinese, everybody else. We get nothing but a black eye out of it. Well,

there's always the problem of tribalism in Africa, and Hurricane Africa is taking place, and it's a very difficult thing for us to control. And I think the question is, maybe we are overextended there also, and maybe we should not have embarked on some of these expeditions. But we do have problems also much closer at hand with which the President has to grapple, and I assume his first trip is going to be to Europe. Now take this whole issue of MLF, the multilateral force, as the French call it, the multilateral force. The differences between us and De Gaulle are much deeper than this MLF, and not a month goes by without reference to him and this program and among the cartoonists. And here's Papus of the Guardian of Manchester showing De Gaulle trying to put a knee in a NATO. And Pierre and Osecout showing the general asserting his independence, and the caption is, I don't want to be in a shell any longer. Well, there is a basic

issue, it seems to me, between the United States and France, and that issue is not MLF really, but the whole question of how Europe is going to be organized. Whether it's going to be organized according to the De Gaulle concept of a Europe as a third force, or according to the American concept, which is a Europe more or less dependent on us, especially for nuclear arms. What do you hear in Washington about how we're going to tackle this problem with the French in particular and with NATO in general? Well, of course, the MLF, so far from being the real issue, as you pointed out, was simply an approach to that problem as that problem was expressed in terms of the defense of Europe. Now, I don't think that anyone would pretend in Washington now that the MLF as a concrete proposal to the extent that it ever was is really a live proposition at this moment. But the MLF was an attempt to provide an answer

to questions that the Europeans themselves had been asking about the nuclear armament of Germany, any, about the nuclear defense of Europe, if any, and about the American presence in Europe. As De Gaulle would say, I'm sure if any. The MLF itself, I think, is probably a dead proposition, at least for the time being. But those particular questions are not, and some way in the interaction between the United States, Britain, Gaulle, Germany, the other allies, these questions are going to have to be answered. And I think that some multilateral form will grow out of it in terms of nuclear weapons. Wouldn't this be a good point for us to apply somewhat of the same psychological approach that we're talking about for Africa? Wouldn't this be a point at which we might go to Europe and say, all right, you don't like MLF, you don't like what we're proposing, but we do have a community of interest here. Why don't you countries come to us with something? Why don't we put the responsibility over there instead of constantly going to them and saying

this is it? has come back to us with a theory we put out called the Dumbbell Theory, and we once put this out two or three years ago. Here is the United States, here is Europe, the two weights, and in between an Atlantic bar, but this theory has been discarded. Well, he's come back to us fundamentally with nationalist nuclear forces, which seems to me to raise in its most direct question, the question of German nuclear weapons, which is the most divisive question in the Western allies, I think. Warren, didn't you find, as I found recently in France, that there's much less fear of Germany there than there is here? This amazed me. And we at MLF, I thought, the origin of MLF was to make certain that Germany would not arm in a nuclear way. And the French say, well, there's no concern about that, and all you're doing is wetting their appetite for nuclear weapons. problem is not so much with the French and the Germans, it is with the Eastern Europeans and the Germans. Well, Russians and the Germans are scared. Here

is where a nuclear armed Germany, all of a sudden, in a national sense, the British and the Germans, would create great havoc, I think. Well, when you add this all up, I'd like to finish this part of the foreign discussion with this question, and it bothers me some. I wonder whether the country isn't getting a little fed up with foreign aid, attacks by Africans, rescue missions, Egyptian opposition to us. Whether this might not result in a kind of new isolationism. Do you see any danger of that? There are signs, certainly, in the area of foreign aid. were signs of it. There have been signs of it for two or three years, lest there were signs of it in the campaign, but I don't know that they are so serious. I think that when you come, if you're going to be a number one world power, and we're going to be that for a long time, you have to learn to live with this sort of disillusioning experience. If we go back to England in the late 19th

century, when she was in the flower of her power, and she had commitments all over the world, the British were getting rocked through their window almost everywhere they went. They learned to live with it, because they knew that this was part of the price they paid for being a world power. I think that we're that mature in this country. Well, I hope we are. I see signs of it, as I say, in foreign aid. I think the UN, people are losing faith in the UN. This was really a fairly sorry spectacle. Perhaps they're only doing what we've been doing tonight, which is re -examining what precisely our position in the world should be, which is not at all the same as developing a new isolationism. Well, but it may result in a cutting down of aid, and it may result in a certain amount of resentment, and a certain amount of feeling will let these people have it and find it out for themselves. Now, this would not be a good development. At any rate, there we are, such as the State of the World and of the Union. And it seems fitting

to close this program with two presidential quotations. The first is from President Kennedy's first State of the Union message in January 1961. The hopes of all mankind, he said, rest upon us, not simply upon those of us in the chamber, but upon the peasant in Laos, the fishermen in Nigeria, the exile from Cuba, the spirit that moves every man and nation who shares our hopes for freedom and the future. The second quotation is from President Johnson's recent message to the 89th Congress. A president, he said, does not shape a new and personal vision of America. He collects it from the scattered hopes of the American past. It has guided us every step of the way. It sustains every president. This, then, is the State of the Union, free and restless, growing and full of hope. We shall be with you again, we trust, as February

opens. News in perspective has been presented by the National Educational Television Network and the New York Times, with Lester Markell, Tom Wicker, and Harrison Salisbury. The National This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.