THE U.S. PRESIDENT WHAT POLICIES AND BELIEFS ARE BEHIND JOHNSON FACADE

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30471, 19 June 1964, Page 10

THE U.S. PRESIDENT WHAT POLICIES AND BELIEFS ARE BEHIND JOHNSON FACADE

(By a Special Correspondent of “The Times”? Though President Johnson is rising fast in popular esteem, there are still many views about him.

Both those who admire and those who quail agree that lie epitomised himself in the press-conference cum garden-party which he recently gave in the White House gardens. Everything was there: the rapid-lire disposal of questions, the shrewdness, the folksiness as he gathered the children about him for the cameras, the glitter of the bands, the banter and chat as he shook hands all round, his own huge enjoyment; above all, the warm vitality which he has brought to the job after what now seems to have been the clinical intellectualism of the Kenned) regime. That is the front which he shows. What policy and belief are behind it?

In many ways the simplest view is expressed in his native Texas, the place that explains much of his vitality and directness of speech, the state that is more than a state, bursting with a wealth equal to that of a dozen independent countries. The banks of Houston and Dallas have on deposit more than twice the gold and currency reserves of the sterling area. Everything is on a staggeringly large scale, whether it is the size of the King Ranch or the oil resources (half the total United' States resources) or the profits of the oilmen, or the number of murders a year, or the examples of civic pride and generosity on the part of many millionaires. Ratios Count

A visitor there soon finds himself benumbed with the figures and begins to see dimly what a Texan real-estate broker meant when (quoted in John Bainbridge’s “The Super-Americans”) he said that in most business deals the basic idea was simple: “It’s the ratios that count. Just the ratios. Them noughts at the end don’t mean nothin’.” Many people seem to act in that belief.

Lately a private builder launched a plan for erecting 30,000 houses to sell at 30,000 dollars (about £10,700) each—a project which seems fairly modest until it is recognised as involving 900 m dollars (about £32lm). It is good to know that, with an active Consulate-General, British exports into this El Dorado are mounting in a heartening way.

With all the material wealth and all the abundant evidence of the virtues of private enterprise, Texan industrialists and businessmen tend to think that any government, and especially any government from Washington, inclines to be interfering and therefore bad. For years they have lamented the weakness of American foreign policy, truckling to Russia and giving good American money away to undeserving and ungrateful countries. But now they have a Texan in the White House—a man who inherits Kennedy’s policy, true enough, but a Texan, which means he will not be “viewy” and "pinko” and meddlesome; he may even be a bit sounder (or less busy) on foreign affairs. What is more, as Texas supported and helped him in his early career, the least that some of them expect is that he will bring Texas some more of the rich and splendid federal

schemes such as the Manned Space Project already established outside Houston. Back in Washington, such innocent expectations make little sense at all; there is no sign that Mr Johnson would let himself be swayed by such arguments. For all that, the view that Texas has helped to give him his down-to-earth approach to the business of government is certainly right. Direct Methods •

A second view, not entirely contradictory, comes from several officials of the White House Executive Office and the State Department. Mainly Kennedy men themselves, they say they like Mr Johnson's direct and decisive methods of work. And work he does. John Kennedy would telephone them for information. President Johnson is on the telephone much of the time, not only getting information but sharing opinions in a breezy kind of way. Then, with or without a meeting of the Cabinet or National Security Council, he makes up his mind. It may be to act at once, or to postpone a decision until the time is ripe. The one thing he does not do is to fret and fuss. Here a difference is drawn from John F. Kennedy. It worried Kennedy that he, an intelligent man, could not agree with General de Gaulle, another intelligent man; he kept returning to the problem. President Johnson, having heard the matter out, says that there is nothing to be done with General de Gaulle just now and puts it out of his mind until, as he believes, both men will find it in their interests to come to a deal. In the same way Mr Kennedy was never quite sure about the value Of the M.L.F., the mixed-manned nuclear force; something better might be devised. Mr Johnson, having examined it, says it is the best scheme available; so go to it. By and large, officials give the President good marks for efficiency and decisiveness. All find him quick to praise; some have seen a rough edge to him but the storm apparently is soon over. Intellectuals’ View A totally different view is given by some of the Washington intellectuals. While gladly agreeing that he gets things done, especially in Congress where his experience counts, they say his art is that of the politician and not of the statesman. True, he is pushing forward excellent policies

now—the Civil Rights Bill, the anti-poverty and the Appalachian measures—but they are part of the heritage of the Kennedy regime. They doubt whether he has any deep and broad policies of his own; his approach to problems is pragmatic, like the Texan's “wheeling and dealing”; certainly he has not Kennedy's intellectual curiosity. From all this they conclude that his testing time will come after the November elections. He will then have to start again without the benefit of Kennedy’s policies and. in all probability, without the help of several of Kennedy's advisers who stayed on until now out of a sense of loyalty to the country. On foreign affairs, which have not been his special concern at all, he may lose the experienced and imaginative Mr Dean Rusk Others say that in home affairs he is likely to run into difficulties; they see his spac ious reassurances to big business (which had been badlv ruffled by Kennedy) coming into conflict with his desire to remove the areas of poverty and unemployment. Where is the truth? Undoubtedly he is a first-class politician and has a great sense of public relations. At the moment he is pouring out good cheer after the months of intellectual austerity. Yet those who stop at that point miss out a large part of the man’s make-up and career. He has known poverty himself—“l have shined shoes and worked on a highway crew for a dollar a day.” He entered politics as a disciple of the old populist school; he was an early supporter of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. Contradictions All this is bound to colour his thinking now. He sincerely wishes to help the poor and unemployed. His liberalism may seem to Europeans to be of a nineteenth - century kind, basing itself on relieving direct needs as they crop up rather than reforming society to remove the causes of the needs; but that is to say that he founded himself on an unshakable belief in the rightness and vitality of American private enterprise as the grand solvent. He may indeed land himself in a contradiction here between business and philanthropy, especially if automation produces more unemployment.

Generally the United States must be counted fortunate, if it had to suffer its great loss in Kennedy’s death, in having a man who is not a pale reflection of Kennedy but a very different man, a President in his own right and with his own highly distinctive methods. He is fast gaining in confidence, authority, and prestige. The unsolved question, particularly for United States foreign policy, is whether President Johnson will be able to keep many of the highly intelligent, sincere and conscientious advisers about him. He certainly needs them. Many people are cheerful on this matter, saying that when it comes to it fewer than expected will want to leave the precincts of great power. If they are right it should be a good Presidency.