AMERICA
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to size, some convinced that the Vietnam War is the outgrowth of his
personal egomania, others, anarchistically oriented, sharing Wallace's
view that power and society have to be broken into smaller, more manage–
able pieces. Having badly misunderstood what the election and the coun–
try are about in the first place, the "New Politicians" have merely demon–
strated anew the ineffectuality and disorientation of much of what passes
for a Left in America.
What will be the net results of this blind revolt against Johnsonism?
A real clamping down on the Negro is unlikely. A slight slowdown
in administration and enforcement of civil rights legislation is possible,
but the legislation will not be repealed. Congress can get away with
withholding further legislation but not with cutting back.
The Negro will feel the squeeze less as a Negro than as an "Other
American." That is, he has been hit along with the general progressive
movement, with the various groups that benefit from pushing the
Great Society programs. With a Republican gain of forty-seven House
seats (a vote switch of ninety-four), what happens to the Great Society
voting balance in the Ninetieth Congress?
In this election, there was one fundamental issue, one basic difference
between the Johnsonitcs and the anti-Johnsonites: Will we have social
programs despite the Vietnam War or must these programs be cut back
in the interest of the war? The Johnsonites said we can have guns and
butter. The anti-Johnsonites said that while the war is on, we have no
money for a Great Society. For some time now, New Leftists and sections
of the peace movement have essentially sided with the anti-Johnsonites on
this issue: both insist that the War on Poverty must be dependent on the
war in Vietnam, that we must choose one or the other. To subject the
black and white poor to such a referendum is a cruel and dangerous
course, especially when no very clear program for peace is put before the
voters. Not surprisingly, this course played straight into the hands of the
Republican-Dixiecrat coalition.
Your editors ask, "How serious is the problem of inflation?" It is
profit inflation, not any shortage of goods in great demand. It eats at
the wages of blue-collar workers and the working poor; it redistributes
income upward. What will the bright new faces of the Republican Party
do about it? Who--Rockefeller, Romney, Reagan
or
Brooke?
You ask, "How serious is the problem of poverty?" Very serious. And
if
we can ever, after this election, get a debate going, not on
whether
we
can abolish poverty but
how)
we will discover that we have installed in
office a new breed of conservative Keynesians (liberal only in compari–
son to their grandfathers) to whom massive tax cuts rather than massive
