Rowland Evans/Robert Novak, Part 2

And what do we do if we can't. This is a question I think President

Johnson should start addressing himself to publicly and quickly.

Mr. Novak will now discuss some of the political ramifications.

Good

Lord.

Thank you Dean.

President Shriver gentleman and I

I think that by way of introduction I might de explain why

Mr. Evans is talking about the substantive aspects of being at Nam

and I'm talking about was going pang while he was making Rosa

three trips to be at 9am and enjoying such frivolous activities as getting

shot at by the Be calm and dodging bombs and Sajjan I was

doing the difficult work going to all the conferences and

such hardship poses Palm Beach Florida and

St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands in Palm Springs.

And so I even told Mr. Evans that if the war is still going on after

this election and I fear it will be that maybe he'll give me one of those

easiest time of calm be it now. And I can see the war firsthand. But for now

I'm going to talk about the politics of it. And I think the politics of Viet Nam

will be shown clearly as never before in a very important

election being held tomorrow.

But a thousand miles away premier in New Hampshire a New Hampshire Democratic

primary election now just a few weeks ago

nobody in the right mind would have said that the New Hampshire Democratic primary.

It was an all important all the press including a couple people named Evans

Novak wrote it off as a.

Landslide.

Johnson Johnson with Senator McCarthy

almost certain to suffer humiliation with Senator McCarthy's campaign in

as a candidate uninspiring. And the whole thing a deadly bore.

In fact the early polls were absolutely phenomenal.

One poll taken by the Democratic organization of New Hampshire at the start of the year

showed eight percent for Senator McCarthy.

Whose name appeared on the ballot a 12 percent write in vote for Senator Robert F.

Kennedy and an 80 percent vote for President Johnson

which might have been termed a go to conference.

Now I'm going to make a prediction that ain't the way it's going to come out tomorrow. I

think Senator McCarthy is sure to get 25 percent.

He probably will get 30 percent and conceivably

conceivably might go as high as 40 percent which would be a ringing

defeat for President Johnson. The question is why as

Senator McCarthy suddenly developed into AG

charismatic figure who has swept the good citizens of New Hampshire off their feet.

Not that I noticed and I was there quite recently is President Johnson more

disliked more disbelieved than he was a month ago. I don't believe so.

I think it is wholly the fact that the war has gone against

the United States forces in Viet Nam that we have not been

winning that the end is nowhere in sight and that the casualties are

high and that I think is the key to the politics of Vietnam.

There has been in this country's history no real parallel

to the impact of the Vietnamese war has had on internal politics.

President Johnson has had the researchers on his staff dig up all the

dissent in the Mexican War in the Civil War and one war one on what have you but there's been

nothing like this. The Korean War just 15

years ago. Had some dissent but nothing like this and the dissent was of a

different nature. It is mainly of people who approved of the war but didn't approve of the way it was

being fought. There was universal applause

from the British people in the British press and from both parties liberals and

conservatives in the British parliament. As the war began there was

rapt attention through the newspapers to the British victories scored

over the boards and there were predictions in the Parliament that the war was

going to end in a few months. But somehow on a much

despised army fighting on its own ground without any of the military

competence without any of the power backing of Britain managed to keep the

war going and going and going and the opposition

in parliament suddenly became restive. It began to say when is

this war going to end. I do we get into it in the first place. There were

huge cries from the government benches that this was treason that this was disloyalty

and the public became very very dissatisfied.

Many years after Joseph Schumpeter in his essays on imperialism

describe what happened to the Boer War in this in the to the Boer to the British public

during the Boer War in this fashion. He said that imperialism as I catch

word as a phrase this embodied for meaning was a very popular

political doctrine in Britain when Disraeli sounded.

But when Gladstone practiced it in South Africa and British blood began

flowing in pot imperialism was discredited. That is it

was popular only so long as it was not put into practice. And I

think that much can be said for what has

happened today on a similar vein in the guide to add I communism and I communism

is always a very popular political catch phrase in this country as long as it's

not put into practice with guns and bullets and laws. As

soon as this is the blood starts flowing. Anti-communism loses

appeal and the public begins to turn against the war. This I think

is a the nature of a western modern

bourgeois civilization.

I do think however that there are some complicating factors

that differentiate the America of the 1960s from the

Britain of the turn of the century at the time of the Boer War.

I think simultaneously with the Viet Nam war and cause not

entirely by it but by other factors there is an alienation

of various groups in American society and a splitting apart of them.

On issues that are quite different from the war quite separate from the war but tend

to converge on the war.

That is the intellectual community students the

academic community perhaps some members of the professional classes

and felt more alienated because of the war partly but

because of other factors from the bureaucracy.

From the the professional elite who are running the government

who are running a computerized government in their view is a de Umanai government.

On the other hand there is a mutual and perhaps more serious alienation of

the working people of the country the lower middle class the blue collar

workers the white blue collar worker who feels

that.

When he looks at as the intellectuals and the bureaucrats numbering

them into one basket have ruined his country have

have given the negro too much and got us into a war we can't win

and put on all the professors phony doctrines and done nothing and done

nothing for the common people and have trod upon good American virtue.

So you have three differences. Groups all alienated from each other to government. You know

electoral community and the workers and this is a phenomenon that is not. It is not

singular to the United States with his Viet Nam war and its racial problems. What I think is

found all over Europe indeed in Eastern Europe perhaps even more than it is

in Western Europe.

Now what this means is that the attitude of

these various alienated groups toward the war is

shaped and heightened by that sense of alienation.

I think the intellectual community the academic community looks at

opposes the war more on a moral basis than anything else. It feels that the

dehumanizing bureaucrats have brought us into a war which has no

moral basis which is immoral in fact in many of its aspects. The other

hand the blue collar worker feels that the bureaucrats and the professors

have sent their sons and their dad to to fight into a

foreign war with no hope of winning it but putting some of their crazy doctrines into

effect hold back American power and did not win the war.

I think perhaps this this sense of alienation is heightened by the

by the drafting laws of the country which in a sense have said that those who are

not who are neither intelligent nor wealthy enough to go to college are going to be the ones who

fight the war. All those who go to college can sit by and up until recently go on

endlessly. Sitting by while the middle and lower and middle and lower classes of

the country fight the war. That's why I think you are finding two

separate kinds of opposition to the war in Viet Nam.

The older kind the kind that began when we first got in on a big scale

in 1965 and his continuing is of a moral variety.

The other kind and this is the more important kind and the reason the Gene McCarthy is going to get a

lot of votes in New Hampshire tomorrow is a more pragmatic kind that

is there is generally support for the war for its

purposes. But there's a feeling that we are winning and so if we're not

going to win it would better get out.

I think that Senator McCarthy's early problems in his

campaign for the presidency were based in part

on his early speeches which call this an immoral war.

By making that stand he limited his support to the most narrow

opposition to the Vietnam War. He completely cut off all those who do

not feel it is immoral and that the vast vast majority of the American people but

feel it is not being won and should be liquidated in one way or

another. He has since corrected that mistake and now say a little bit of luck that

night. I think the difficulty in understanding the type

of opposition that has developed in the war particularly since the Tet

Offensive look a few weeks ago can be found in the very grave problems

the pollsters are having in analyzing what's going on in

regard to public attitudes toward Vietnam.

I was appalled I saw the other day by a nationally Apolo poster of

national reputation in which he decided or

determine that over 70 percent of the voters in New Hampshire the Democratic voters in New

Hampshire were hawks.

Now how could you have over 70 percent hawks and

and but by the way let me let me add that in only 5 percent were dogs and the others were in

between someplace but Huckabee have over 70 percent and the possibility

that President Johnson is not going to get much more than 65 percent or perhaps even

less on the vote and only 5 percent Dobson the possibility that Senator

McCarthy is going to get 25 or 30 percent or more.

I think the reason is that is the pollster asked the person in New Hampshire to

win the war. Would you you extra

military pressure.

Short of nuclear weapons or including nuclear weapons against the Communists

and the responses yet and he's put down as a hawk. Let's

ask him the second question that the pollster sometimes doesn't ask. If that isn't

going to be used would you want to get out. And you say yes

I figured out is that a hawk or a duck. I did classify that and I think

the answer is that he wants the war ended and he is not too

fussy as long as the ending of the war has some kind of

filigree some kind of facade that keeps American honor and

is not regarded as a sellout.

I think what is being shown from a political standpoint that in

particular really since the Tet Offensive in Viet Nam there are two kinds of political

doctrines of the American people won't will not by I'm Viet-Nam one is

a straight anti Vietnam position that the war is

immoral and that we should get out because it is immoral. The

father or the uncle or the grandfather with boys in Viet Nam.

Some of them buried were not. Absolutely not except that.

More interesting. The second thing he will not accept is the candidate

who wraps the flag around him and says

Please have faith in me believe me I am the patriotic

candidate and we're going to end the war. He's not going to buy that either.

I think that what is happening is that President

Johnson's strategy of wrapping the flag around him and calling

all those lists implying that all those who dissent on Beate

now are somehow less patriotic than he is is

not going to work not because of the basic fairness of the American people which is

never been shown up particularly in past elections but merely because we are not

winning the war. We are winning the war. It would be something else other words

you cannot be a patriot a president. A painter a janitor and a war that is

not being won and therefore given the tastes and

the shows the attitudes of the voters of a Western

democracy therefore is an unpopular war. I think this was shown very

clearly in in in New Hampshire when after the Tet

off fans of McCarthy started to move up in the polls obviously his campaign

was taking hold and Governor John King the chief white house

agent in New Hampshire said that if in effect that a victory for

McCarthy was a victory for HO Chih min. And if McCarthy does get

40 percent of the vote and I don't like it he can thank Governor John King statement for it. You simply

won't wash to do that sort of thing. If the war is not in its

essence a popular war on the other hand I think that Senator

McCarthy has seen that his early statements about the war being an immoral war

is certainly not the answer to any political victory. And he has become more

and more ambiguous about what he would do and what his

nature of his opposition is to the war in Vietnam. He says it is a bad

war. It is it is not it you say does not say it is a bad war he says it is

unfortunate that so many American boys are dying in this war and he

promises that the war will be ended if he is if he is elected

president.

Now I think that we should go back at this point to the

some of the reasons for the McCarthy candidacy.

Apart from the senator's own which are somewhat difficult to ascertain.

Those who pushed him into this are those who recommended that he run. Abby

what I thought was a very hair brained idea that if McCarthy showed

a lot of a lot of support a lot of steam

in these primary elections he certainly would be nominated.

He certainly wouldn't stop President Johnson from getting the nomination. He certainly wouldn't

give the nomination to Bobby Kennedy but he would push the Republican

candidate to the left. And you may now realize this but this is precisely

what is happening. If you compare the town of

Richard M. Nixon his first statement on Vietnam on February 3rd

in Concord New Hampshire and his most recent statements there is a

perceptible shift at that time in his early statement

Mr. Nixon was talking about the necessity for victory in this war.

His accent was on the military aspects. If nothing else Mr

Nixon can spot a trend and he is seeing the McCarthy

tide beginning to rise. And suddenly I think it was

February 28 or 20 Feb. 28 and no is Leap

Year night love February 29 and woman in New Hampshire. He suddenly said

lamely I'll end the war. Which sounded very much like what Senator

McCarthy was saying on you know nobody tends to believe Mr. Nixon they sometimes believe second.

Carter that's another story. But he says I am the war on

and I'll keep and I'll win the peace in the Pacific. Now I don't know what winning the

peace exactly means but he did say I'll end the war. And a lot of newspaper

reporters said he is moving to the hawkish

side of President Johnson because he said he's going to end the war and that means

more military at sekret setting and that is the way the people regarded when they heard it.

And if there was any mistake just the other night last Thursday night in a

national radio address Mr. Nixon said that there

cannot be a wholly military situation in Vietnam

and in fact he said President Johnson.

Had err in putting so much reliance on the military and

not worrying about the diplomatic political and psychological aspects of the war.

Again saying he would end the war now for us Misc. Nixon

ologists the handwriting is on the wall. He is moving to the

back of the president gingerly cautiously

ambiguously moving to the left of the president to get this

anti Vietnam sentiment and perhaps get there before his friend

Nelson Rockefeller gets there.

You know all of this. There is the expectation by many

particularly the stalwarts of the Republican party who'd been beaten so many

times in so many ways that they really have no

confidence whatever in the other side to make mistakes too.

There's been an expectation by many that to use the cliche

President Johnson would pull a rabbit from the hat. That

President Johnson with Sun hollow at the last minute

or perhaps at the last minute just before the campaign starts

bring up negotiations perhaps

make some kind of sweeping gesture to the Vietcong

that brings them to negotiations table and have a whole war wrapped up.

By Election Day.

I think that's paranoia in reverse because I think that if Lyndon B

Johnson could have brought this war knew

how to bring this war to an end if he had seen his way

clear to doing the things necessary to bring it would have been done a long time

ago.

You may have heard this talk just before the 66 election again by the Republicans there was going

to be some tremendous tour de force by the president just before the election to

prevent the Republican victory in that year's congressional elections.

There was a lot I don't think there's going to be this time although you can never quite

predict Lyndon Johnson I will say though that from

all indications all the good the the outward indications that we

have. Run quite the contrary may indicate

that President Johnson does feel that that sentiment from the

country is solidly in favor of the war no matter what.

No matter what the reverses that have been so suffered in Viet Nam

are. He has said constantly that he feels his pressure is from the hawks and those

who want to escalate the war and those who want to to

bomb an oil and tar greater extensive bomb Hi pong to

mind the harbor do we use tactical nuclear weapons and who knows all

else they might go into. But President President Johnson feels that this is

his threat and he feels the dissenters are just a bunch of people hang around universities

and places like that he doesn't have to worry about it. I think he feels that by

wrapping the flag around by campaigning and military installations that is

the way to gain support. I don't think I think he reads the polls and he

sees that through the inexact formulations and inexact questioning

techniques. Oh the. Of the of the of the

questionnaires that there is an 80 percent or 95 percent

job rating and sums I mean Hauke rating and some stating he assumes well

that there are for me or they might even be beyond me. I don't think he

grasps the extent of the anti Vietnam sentiment which is

not based on any test of Asako or any

illogical opposition to the war but is based wholly on war

weariness on a war that is not going to end. Now

after tomorrow. Assuming Senator McCarthy makes the kind of showing I think you

will anywhere from 25 to 40 percent I would

guess around 30 percent as is likely an entirely respectable showing.

I think that in much more trouble I had for President Johnson. I think that in

Wisconsin which is a more dovish state the New Hampshire

Senator McCarthy boy would be showing in New Hampshire

will in April. Have a good shot at getting in excess of

40 percent of the vote in Massachusetts. Where

by some incredible bungling by the White House he is given a free shot

at the delegation. He has been president as Senator McCarthy has been given a

leg up in that race. And all this leads to the big showdown in

California in the June primary there where some 200

delegates at stake. I think it is entirely possible if this

McCarthy momentum increases at the anti-war sentiment increases.

I think it is entirely possible that McCarthy will beat the delegation there that

is headed by Attorney General Thomas Lynch as a stand in for President Johnson.

Incidentally they they've been calling that delegation the Lynch

and Johnson delegation but that some people are leaving out the hyphens.

What does this all mean. As I said before it doesn't mean that Gene McCarthy is going to be

nominated for president. It doesn't even mean I don't think that Bobby Kennedy is going

to put on his armor and jump into McCarthy's place at the last minute

after McCarthy has done the dirty work. I don't think that Johnson is going to drop out

from faint hearted at this stage of the game and try to give the

nomination to Vice President Humphrey what it does mean.

What it does mean is that there is indeed an anti-war

sentiment in the country which goes beyond the universities it goes beyond the

intellectual community that he's cut into the the great

alienated middle class and lower middle class in the country who are sick of

sunning their boys to die in some war that the the educated

classes the better educated classes are not fighting and who are resentful of a war that they

did that never ends. And I think this feeling is

going to be the great danger for President Johnson in the fall because if the

Republicans with either Mr. Nixon or

Governor Rockefeller took to Governor Rockefeller. Use this

anti-war feeling and exploit it. Not with the intellectuals who

will never vote for Nixon Anyway I guess but with the common people who

want to end the war like it or not is entirely possible that Viet

Nam may lead to the inauguration of a Republican president next January.

Thank you.

Thanks.

You've been listening to a discussion on the war in Vietnam with a noted columnist Rowland

Evans and Robert Novak Evans and Novak spoke in the series as we see

it Vietnam 68 this form of opinion featuring noted spokesmen on the

war in Vietnam was sponsored by the Miami University student senate and organized by Dave

speller Berk Miami student recording an editing was done by the staff of Miami

University radio station WMUB in Oxford Ohio. This is

national educational radio.