The Effect of Vietnam at the Polls in '66

It is impossible to predict what will happen between now and November in Vietnam, but whatever does happen will affect the results of the 1966 congressional elections. The Vietnamese--Catholics, Buddhists, or Viet Cong, General Ky or Ho Chi Minh--are hardly likely to stand still for the next few months and wait for the election returns. It seems safe only to say that the U.S. will not have gained either victory or peace by the time the electorate speaks in November.

But whatever happens in Vietnam, the American elections are unlikely to produce a consensus, either for or against the current Administration policy. Public opinion is too muddled and too contradictory, and in only a few cases will the electorate have the opportunity to choose between clear cut alternatives. Even then the choice will be something less than a referendum on Vietnam policy; the results will also depend on normal partisan alignments, differences on domestic policy, and personal popularity, that the general public can be separated into neat groups of hawks, doves, Administration backers and "peacenicks." Actually, the most through public opinion poll, conducted late last winter by political scientists at Stanford and Chicago, shows the majority of Americans to be profoundly ambivalent about the war. Fifty-six per cent opposed even a gradual withdrawal, 61 per cent approved President Johnson's actions, but 54 per cent opposed a continuation of the war at its presnt intensity. Fifty four per cent favor free elections, even if the Viet Cong win, but almost exactly the same percentage opposed even a gradual withdrawal. Seventy per cent favor a United Nations-supervised truce, preserving current de facto political divisions. But 77 per cent oppose any kind of withdrawal which would risk the loss of Laos or Thailand, the possible result of such a truce.

'Public Ambivalence'

In short, Americans favor almost any course of action which might end the war, but they will not accept the likely consequences of such actions. They have not yet learned the chief lesson of twentieth century history: that there is no particular reason why things have to turn out right.

The fact catches even an agile politician like Lyndon Johnson in a dilemma. He can act within a relatively wide range of alternatives, and be sure that the public will approve of what he does; but the same public will almost inevitably dislike the out come. Since the Stanford-Chicago poll was taken the conflicts between the Ky government and the Buddhists, plus the steadily rising number of casualties, have discredited the President's policies. In the latest nationwide poll, only 47 per cent supported Johnson's actions in Vietnam.

The President's loss in popularity has cost him considerable political capital. Democratic Congressmen, eager to avoid the label of Administration rubber stamps, are increasingly unwilling to support the President's proposals. All Johnson's talents of persuasion have not been able to give the Administration anything more than the narrowest victories for its two most original recent programs, the Teacher Corps and the Rent Supplements Bill. Moreover, these bills had to be so watered as to cripple them both. House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills, a weathervane of Congressional opinion, felt free to kill Johnson's bid to lower tariff's to Eastern European nations even before it could obtain a sponsor.

The unpopularity of the President's position, and dissatisfaction with the war in general, will appear in two forms in this year's elections: as a general reduction in the Democratic Party's share of the vote, and in individual contests where the war is the main issue. Even without the war, Democrats would have been hard pressed to maintain their 1964 level of popularity. Numerous Congressmen, and state and local officials were swept into office on the LBJ landslide. Without Barry Goldwater, many of these Democrats would automatically have been in trouble. Now they must face the fact that war, like depression, has always been a vote-loser for the party in power.

The U.S. House of Representatives provides a convenient scoreboard for party strength, since all its members will come up for re-election. A year ago, when it was not clear that Vietnam would overshadow all other issues, many observers thought that the Democrats could escape with minimal losses. Many of the 70-odd freshman Democrats were extraordinarily attractive candidates who seemed able to run ahead of their party in their marginal districts.

Now, though many freshmen still show surprising strength, most political analysts expect Democrats to lose from 20 to 50 seats, Thus, there is a possibility that the Republicans will wipe out the 40-seat gain of 1964, although they are extremely unlikely to win the 77 seats they need to control the House.

My own guess is that Democrats will lose either 28 or 54 seats: 28 if their general level of popularity drops about 5 per cent (with most of the freshmen holding up somewhat better); 54 if the general level drops much more than 5 per cent, and thus drags under almost all the marginal freshmen. Incidentally, the loss in Democratic votes will understate the drop in "liberal votes; conservative Democrats are likely to regain a few of the seats they lost to segregationist Goldwater Republicans in the South.

Such Democratic losses cannot be considered as an unequivocal repudiation of Administration Vietnam policy. The new 90th Congress will on the American voting public. The President's most outspoken critics -- Senators Wayne Morse, Ernest Gruening, J. William Fulbright -- are not probably continue to support the present Vietnam policy. But it will be less likely to back negotiations with the Viet Cong, bombing pauses, or other dove policies. It will also be hostile to the Great Society domestic programs.

Senate Contests

Individual contests, especially for the United States Senate, will indicate more clearly the effects of Vietnam up for re-election until 1968. The most interesting, and probably the most significant, contest this year is in Morse's home state of Oregon. There the Democratic candidate, Robert Duncan, is a strong Administration supporter, while the Republican, Governor Mark Hatfield, is trying to take a position somewhere between Duncan's and Morse's.

In the Democratic primary May 24, Duncan decisively defeated Morse's candidate, Howard Morgan, with the help of the state AFL-CIO. Morse, always a maverick (he used to be a Republican himself) is quietly supporting Hatfield and predicts that he will win in November. The outcome is far from clear. Both candidates are effective campaigners and proven vote-getters, and there will probably be considerable crossing of party lines.

But the Oregon race is hardly typical. In most Senate contests this year, a Democrat who supports Administration policy, perhaps with a few reservations, will be opposed by a Republican who takes either a similar or a harder line. In most cases, therefore, only those who favor escalation of the war will have an opportunity to make their views Tok. A few Senate seats may change hands, but Democrats are likely to retain the 68 seats they have held for the past two years.

So far there has been no mention of the avowed "peace candidates." The omission is deliberate. Third party candidates running on peace platforms will be no more successful than they have been in the recent part; in other words, they will poll so few votes that they will only underscore the weakness of their cause. Nor are the people who are running in Democratic (or occasionally Republican) primaries against pro-Administration Congressmen likely to achieve many victories. Howard Morgan's decisive loss in Oregon suggests that opposition to an admittedly unpopular war is not enough to overcome the advantages held by incumbent candidates.

The only peace candidates who can expect to win are those Democratic incumbents who have always opposed the Administration--William F. Ryan of New York and George Brown of California, for example. And their success will be due not so much to their ideology, as to the fact that they are exceedingly well entrenched in their districts.

It appears that those who look to the people for a clarion call to end the war are going to be seriously disappointed by the results of this November's elections. Contests for House and Senate seats are unlikely to produce any stunning victories for "peace candidates," and have already provided some conclusive defeats. The impending fall in Democratic percentages cannot be seen as the result of a referendum on the war, but as a political inevitability.

The President realizes already that his actions are widely unpopular, and he will soon realize, if he doesn't already, that the results of these actions are likely to be even more unpopular. However, he also knows that the more harmful unpopularity comes from those who prefer escalation so withdrawal. If the present policy were ruled out as an alternative, the public would prefer expansion of the war to withdrawal by a 2-1 margin, according to the Stanford-Chicago poll.

That figure may change as Ky continues to assault the pagodas, or if an anti-American government emerges from the promised Vietnamese elections (which seems improbable considering who will conduct them). But the elections in this country will produce only an ambiguous verdict on the war, and a stalemate on domestic issues. If some kind of a satisfactory conclusion is to be found to the war, it will depend on the initiative of the White House, and not on the 1966 elections