Lucky Lyndon

LYNDON JOHNSON'S curious remark that, "the New Hampshire primary is one that anyone can enter and everyone can win," may yet prove one of the most astute comments on that event. Like the Tet offensive in Vietnam, the magical 42 per cent of the vote Senator McCarthy commandeered turned the 1968 campaign into "an entirely new ball game" in a number of ways. The primary, regarded as a sharp rebuke to the President himself and/or his Vietnam policy, may actually be an ironic stroke of fortune in an otherwise steadily growing list of political nightmares for the man from Johnson City.

First, the much heralded McCarthy "win" in New Hampshire cost Johnson only twenty delegate votes. A recent New York Times survey showed Johnson still in control of, or likely to control almost two-thirds of the convention's delegates. The media, however, in focusing so closely on New Hampshire, make Johnson's fall appear imminent, if not inevitable, and the President, in recent speeches, has even tried to project an image of himself as the underdog. Particularly since the New Hampshire, primary immediately preceeds the Wisconsin race, in which McCarthy has always been expected to do well, Johnson himself is now in a position to score a "moral victory" should the Minnesota Senator fail to sweep the state convincingly.

Secondly, the New Hampshire victory supplies a convenient smoke screen under which the Johnson forces can pour heavy financial and organizational reserves into Wisconsin and the later primaries. The President was unwilling to appear overly concerned about the McCarthy challenge in New Hampshire. Now his campaign can be couched as a justifiable effort in self-defense rather than an exercise in overkill.

In Wisconsin, the Johnson campaign, featuring Hubert Humphrey, Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman, Postmaster General Lawrence O'Brien, and HUD Secretary Robert Weaver, has been pressed with a new vigor, and an ample fund of national Democratic Party money. Before New Hampshire, such tactics would have looked like unfair bludgeoning of an unarmed opponent.

INSTEAD of seeming to muffle dissent, Johnson now argues that he is defending his own right to articulate American policy in the face of forces which would deny him a hearing. "I'm not going to sit by and let [my programs of social justice] be torn down in a partisan political year," he told a Building and Construction Workers Union conference on Monday.

Thirdly, McCarthy no longer has the advantage of being able to speak almost exclusively to the issue of the war. With his "victory" in New Hampshire, and his insistence that he now has his eyes on the White House, the Senator must comment more extensively on domestic problems, and indeed, outline more specific proposals for getting the United States out of Vietnam. The recent departure of his two chief press aides, complaining that McCarthy was not addressing all the issues, along with the impending defection of advisor-speechwriter Richard Goodwin hint at the beginning of the breakdown of that rare but genial coalition of fairly radical anti-war students, ADA liberals, and Texophobes who had joined to support McCarthy in New Hampshire.

The New Hampshire primary drew Robert Kennedy into the race in what some observers have called an impulsive reaction to the remarkable McCarthy showing. Though Kennedy's candidacy will doubtless cut deeply into Johnson support in some of the larger states such as New York and California, McCarthy might well have gained significant support in these states anyway.

AS IT IS, the prospects of a disastrous Kennedy-McCarthy showdown in Oregon, Nebraska or Indiana now seem high. Even if Johnson does not win outright victories in these primary states, the anti-war financial support as well as staff will be badly split. The dream of the anti-war forces, a joint Kennedy-McCarthy attack on the President's policy, is melting in the heat of success. McCarthy seems more than a little annoyed at Kennedy's haste, and remarks half-whimsically that, "the track is getting a little crowded," while Kennedy supporters quietly insist that the Minnesota Senator will be forced to defer after the two clash in their first primary encounter.

The President's campaign rhetoric is already beginning to emerge. "I am not saying you never had it so good, but it is a fact, isn't it?" Johnson said Monday in a quote which will no doubt be echoed countless times throughout the campaign. Johnson clearly isn't going to get any votes from those who don't agree that they "never had it so good." He evidently plans to convince the majority who do that he is personally barring the door against terrific pressures from the murky outside. Following New Hampshire, Johnson's "lonely crusader" pose has become much more credible and may even work to counteract the image of image of willful petulance which has been at the base of much of the anti-Johnson sentiment in the country. As George Meany told the Building and Construction Workers, "I don't think we are going to turn a back on a friend just because he has a difficult task to perform at a time when he needs his friends more than ever."