JOHNSON STARTS CAMPAIGNING

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31123, 28 July 1966, Page 17

JOHNSON STARTS CAMPAIGNING

fFrom FRANK OLIVER. N.Z P.A. Special correspondent) WASHINGTON. President Johnson has opened the 1966 election campaign and opened it in a rather tyical manner, with a “non-political” tour on which he made nine “non-political” speeches. The “non” fools nobody. An early start to the campaign was indicated and demanded for distinctly political reasons. This year presents something new in American politics. This is the first time, in this century at least, that with the country at war the President cannot unite his own party behind him and behind his policies—and it happens to be an

election year, an important election if not perhaps a vital one.

The President’s office is not involved this year but his policies, domestic and foreign, are very much involved. But if the office is not involved the President’s prestige and popularity are and he is a man who, as one writer has phrased it, retains the almost psychological need for public approval. One is tempted to add, what would it profit him if he won the party election but he failed to regain his popularity? It is just over three months to polling day and in that period he plans a number of tours of the states and heaven knows how many speeches. His travels will certainly take him as far as California. From his recent utterances three things are much on his mind —Vietnam, inflation and racial troubles.

It is clear he hopes to

quieten his critics and win friends for his policies as far as Vietnam is concerned, to hold inflation problems at bay until the election is won, and calm the Negro population and halt the rising white resentment over what the Negro mobs have been doing. Quite obviously he believes it can be done, and if it can he expects to retain in Congress a big enough majority to pass his domestic programmes in the second half of his term and back him in whatever new Vietnam policies he may have in mind. The polls tend to show that threatened inflation is becoming a bigger problem in the eyes of average Americans than is Vietnam.

The country is affluent, unemployment is low and economic expansion continues, but costs are rising and hitting every pocket book in the country. The Republicans are divided on tactics. They simply have

no consensus on what to concentrate upon in this campaign, which of course is an advantage to the Democrats. However, they do seem to be reaching agreement that the Government’s fiscal policies, Government spending and threatened inflation must be the basis of their political attack.

Vietnam they are not so sure about for a variety of reasons. Mr Johnson asserts that the tide has turned in Vietnam and that the initiative now lies with the American forces. Time will prove, between now and election day, whether that is true.

In the meantime the President can be relied on to do his oratorical best, which is considerable, to persuade the electorate that he is following the best line of policy available to him in Vietnam.

The northern bombings raised his popularity from its low 47 per cent to 54 per cent, better but not good enough

he probably thinks. He will do his best to get it back into the sixties both for his psychological needs and once more to get two-thirds of the country behind him. Republicans in many instances seem shy of making Vietnam the primary issue in the campaign. One Congressman is said to have been warning his fellow Republicans to be wary about Vietnam as a key issue.

His feeling is that Johnsou, who is a superb politician tactician, will make a “spectacular grandstand play” over Vietnam before the voters go to the polls. Among the possibilities he sees is a dramatic cease-fire appeal to cover the elections for a constitutional assembly in South Vietnam followed by a plea to the United Nations to supervise the voting. Vietnam itself might make the war an important issue without the Republicans making it the main issue.