Huge Majority For Johnson "Certain"

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30587, 2 November 1964, Page 13

Huge Majority For Johnson "Certain"

[Specially written for the N.Z.P.A. by FRANK OLIVER] WASHINGTON, November 1. Next Wednesday President Johnson will be in a unique and influential position, not only in his own country but also in the world. He will be the only leader of an important country with a clear, even an astonishing, mandate.

This pre-supposes a tremendous victory next Tuesday, but it is becoming harder and harder to find anyone of any political persuasion who feels any other result is possible. Some correspondents who have freshly gone out to follow the Republican candidate express the view that he knows it too and in these last campaign days is “just going through the motions.”

No matter how important the domestic issues, matters outside the country seem to be deciding the undecided. James Reston, in the “New York Times,” says the world has done the American people a favour, having startled Americans out of their preoccupation with secondary issues and clarified the primary issue of the campaign. The lesson of events is that the United States must have a Government strong enough to maintain economic growth and prosperity, experienced and wise enough to create the largest degree of unity within the nation and the free world, and bold enough to review American policies with the Allies, with Russia and particularly with China, in the light of changing facts, Reston says.

It appears President Johnson will have, next Tuesday, a mandate to establish that kind of Government. The campaign has, says one noted commentator, left Senator Goldwater “punch-drunk and reeling and a humane handler would have taken him out of the ring a fortnight ago.”

What kind of a Johnson emerges from this campaign? One newspaper asks the question and adds that he comes out of it almost unknown because he has not had to define his positions. . It is a pity that, as has been said before, this was not a campaign that drew out the best from both men and there is regret everywhere that the TV debates started by Mr Kennedy and Mr Nixon were not continued in this campaign.

Mr Johnson is for peace, God and motherhood but also for a good many other things. He has been described as an intricate figure, a dozen men wrapped in one and also a man of formidable power, a power that an opponent ignores at his cost.

Mr Johnson’s integrity and honesty has been assailed many times in this campaign and not always by Goldwater Republicans. Many of the things said in the campaign have been unprintable, even in a land of the laxest libel laws in the world, but most of them can be put down to campaign heat and the temporary hates which elections beget. The future has been summed up for me by two elderly men well versed on politics and public affairs. They said, separately and unknown to each other, that there was every reason Mr Johnson should make a good and even great President He had unquestioned ability and courage, had “made his pile,” had had a spectacularly successful Congressional career and had been a good VicePresident.

There was but one greater ambition open to him—to be a great President. And he was in the position to “go after it.” Both men who expressed these views are ardent Republicans and both are going to vote for President Johnson.

Thoughtful columnists seem to agree that in view of what is happening in the world the Western Alliance needs a strong and prudent government in Washington as never before. No-one has successfully charged Lyndon Baines Johnson with imprudence in his handling of foreign affairs.