The Outlook for November

Buoyed by the flood tide of Great Society legislation last fall, Democratic strategists six months ago ventured that November 1966 might prove an exception to the seldom-broken rule that the party in power loses strength in midterm elections. Now, with all 435 House seats, 35 Senate seats and 35 governorships at stake, they are talking gloomily of losing at least 30 seats in the House, a couple in the Senate and at least two statehouses. Even so, Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen figures that the Democrats are being too optimistic. To make his point, he has offered to wager $100, even money, that the G.O.P. will pick up 50 or more seats in the House.

The weather vanes shifted largely as a result of Viet Nam. The war is already uppermost in the minds of an impressive number of voters. A poll conducted for the Republican National Committee by New Jersey's Opinion Research Corp. indicates that fully 33% of U.S. voters consider it the nation's No. 1 problem, while an additional 20% regard such closely related issues as the threat of world war or the menace of Communism as dominant. By comparison, only 19% of the voters consider the most important domestic issue, civil rights, to be the nation's chief concern.

Suspended Strategy. The G.O.P. has not yet decided what its strategy should be on the Viet Nam issue. "What we say today," said one party official, "may not be worth five cents tomorrow."

Nonetheless, its basic strategy is suggested by a Lou Harris poll showing that only 49% of the voters currently approve Lyndon Johnson's handling of the war, v. 66% in December. This does not by any means suggest that the argument will resemble the familiar dove-hawk controversy. Many Republican campaigners will undoubtedly urge intensified bombing of North Viet Nam, particularly "source" targets in the Hanoi-Haiphong industrial complex, which have been spared on the President's orders. The Administration may also be criticized for not calling up the reserves--or, if they have been mobilized by November, for having done so unnecessarily.

In any event, G.O.P. tacticians point out, Republicans, in time, will aim some sharp shafts at the majority party's "appeasement wing." Last week Chairman John J. Rhodes of the House G.O.P. Policy Committee and House Republican Leader Gerald Ford issued a statement deploring the fact that "the deep division" among Democrats over Viet Nam "is prolonging the war, undermining the morale of our fighting men and encouraging the Communist aggressor" (see The Congress).

Subsidiary Benefits. The G.O.P. is also preparing to zero in on a number of domestic dividends arising out of the war. Biggest of these is the growing threat of inflation, largely generated by heavy defense spending for the war, though the attendant dangers of tax increases and price and wage controls may also be issues. "We're going to have to answer the Republicans on inflation," concludes South Dakota Democratic Official Herb Teske. "They're comparing the dollar to a wooden nickel, blaming the President and saying we can't support our boys in Viet Nam and Great Society programs at the same time."

The Democrats also face a degree of disaffection among unionists for the Administration's failure to win repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act's right-to-work clause--14(b)--and achieve labor's goal of a $1.75 minimum wage. The problem-plagued war on poverty will be an irresistible target, particularly in areas where it has erupted in scandal or bogged down in administrative squabbles. Last week G.O.P. congressional leaders proposed a joint congressional inquiry into the program to keep it from turning into what Dirksen has called "the most fantastic and costly boondoggle in history." Medicare, a feather in Democratic caps, may begin to molt a little around July 1, when millions of aged Americans become eligible for its benefits but learn that there may not be enough hospitals, doctors and nurses to accommodate them. Even the draft looms as an issue; 30 Republican Congressmen are demanding an "immediate" inquiry into "mounting evidence of gross inefficiency" in the selective service system.

Lost Dorm. Between the bread-and-butter and bullets issues, the Administration may wind up in a damaging crossfire. The Republicans, insisting that domestic spending must be cut back to avoid inflation, have drawn up a list of some 75 federal programs they consider expendable--with Lady Bird Johnson's beautification project very near the top of the list. The Democrats, on the other hand, protest that any radical surgery on welfare appropriations will cut them up at the polls. William Fulbright, for example, has complained that the cost of the Viet Nam war "deprived the University of Arkansas of funds to build a needed dormitory." When Johnson halved the funds for a school-aid program, New York's Democratic Congressman Adam Clayton Powell protested: "The President is not running for re-election this year. We are."

In fact, Johnson's image will inevitably have some influence on the voter. "If I had to single out one focal issue," says former California Republican Chairman Casper Weinberger, "it would be the personality and the approach of the President. He doesn't wear very well. This may not be the major issue in the coming elections, but I think that if we put up any kind of reasonable candidates, the Republicans will pick up a lot of seats because of this growing concern over Johnson."

As the situation stands now, the G.O.P. has substantial top-of-the-ticket strength in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio and Michigan with attractive gubernatorial or senatorial candidates, may pick up a number of House seats in these states. Of concern to both parties are 62 "marginal" districts that the Democrats wrested from the G.O.P. by pluralities of 5% or less in the 1964 landslide. If the Republicans recaptured one-third of them, they would neutralize Johnson's power in the House, which is based on a working majority of only 35 or 40 votes, despite his overwhelming 151-seat numerical majority. That, in turn, would enable the G.O.P. to build toward a formidable challenge in 1968.

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