BOOKS
281
PART OF THE WAY WITH LBJ
OLD MYTHS AND NEW REALITIES.
By
J.
W. Fulbright. Random House.
$3.95.
The Senator has written a sad book. In an ironic reference
to the title of a work by Hennan Kahn (whom he must loathe), Ful–
bright says that his aim is to lead us to a "dispassionate consideration
of some 'unthinkable thoughts.''' But where Kahn would have us in all
seriousness think of thennonuclear weapons as instruments of national
policy, Fulbright would lead us away from our preoccupation with power
of all kinds so that we could try to inject some greater rationality into the
affairs of nations. Fulbright is convinced that the true radicalism is
commonsense, but that an intolerable rigidity now marks popular
American attitudes toward the general international situation. His book
is
sad partly because he does not really convey the sense that what he
desires can be achieved. More important than that, his book is saddening
because he does not acknowledge that the Administration to which he is
loyal is deeply guilty of the excesses he deplores. The wonder is that a
man capable ,of saying some of the things Fulbright says can go along
with a foreign policy as activist as that of President Johnson. The burden
of public dissent is left to poor Senator Morse.
There are three levels to Fulbright'S aspirations. The highest is really
utopian. It is extremely touching to hear a man who has devoted his
life to politics say:
One of the paradoxes of politics is that so great a part of our
organized efforts as societies is directed toward abstract and
mystic goals ... as if the wishes of individual men, for life and
happiness and prosperity, were selfish and dishonorable and
unworthy of our best creative efforts.
This is not fancy writing stuck into a text to soothe high-minded
constituents. One feels that the real man is speaking here: that at
bottom Fulbright is the best kind of liberal, the softest and the least
willing to adore power and sigh about the difficulties of statesmen.
It is as if Fulbright will allow himself, just once or twice, to express
his
true feeling, Fulbright longs for the end of international politics;
he insists that the sovereign state
is
obsolete; his outrage at the absurdity
of competitive politics in the nuclear age is unfeigned.
But still the Senator goes on being a senator. The death of states
is
impossibly out of reach:
is
there not some lesser
good
which decent
