AMERICA
39
Jack Ludwig
The President of the United States, a political partisan, whose
partisan policies must be passed by a partisan and divided congress,
should be, on the level of policy, disinterested (or appear disinterested)
and nonpartisan (or appear nonpartisan). He is like a judge pressured
by any number of unambiguously partisan advocates-the men in his
cabinet, the Senate, the House, governors, industry, unions, Europeans,
Asians, South Americans. Ideally he listens to all. And identifies totally
with none. Ideally, again, he seeks unanimity but skirts uniformity.
Tries to keep unity without muffling dissent. Argues his cause but
doesn't claim infallibility. Rewards his supporters but doesn't wipe
out his opposition, punish it or starve it. His great asset is a certain
mystery: nobody should be able to tell exactly which advocated position
the President ultimately will take. Looking for clues one should find the
Secretary of State saying something slightly different from the Secretary
of Defense, or the Army Chiefs of Staff, or the CIA, or the CIO or,
to be ideal again, the Vice-President. Those who do disagree with the
President must not be classed as children (who need paternal education),
or fools (who need wising up) or knaves (who need public chastisement).
Nor must dissent be taken as proof of brainlessness, gutlessness or Nervous
Nelly eunuchoidia. A student on any campus must be able to act foolishly
or speak outrageously without inviting the President's scorn, the Vice–
President's responsibility speech or a local fink's mimeographed-in-Wash–
ington bore job.
There is nothing ideal about Lyndon J ohoson as President. He is at
once partisan, cranky, brutal and castrating. His "Nervous Nellies" speech
belongs to an old American archetype, the clean good unswayed un–
muddled decisive man-of-action rounding up a posse of real men for an
unquestioned right cause. That the Chicago speech carried overtones of
a lynch mob was certainly not Johnson's intention, yet the signs were un–
mistakably there. Nor, when he says he will not force the American
boys in Vietnam to fight with one or two hands behind their backs is he
trying to sound like MacArthur trying to cross the Yalu; but that's
where we are with Johnson now; that's where we've been ever since the
decision to escalate was made. Once, let me recall, Rusk was buried to the
nostrils
in
a no-waves posture-I mean before Johnson became President;
now Rusk makes that speech about the rape of Czechoslovakia, and
