(0r l mirIIgat t UL
Seventy-Seven Years of Editorial Freedom
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
N.
Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH.
Truth Will Prevail
NEWS PHONE: 764-0552
Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 1968
NIGHT EDITOR: JOHN GRAY
..: ...
The Bombing Halt:
Too Little, Too Late
CONTAINED in the President's address
Sunday night was a guarantee of
American suspension of bombing in Viet-
nam outside the formerly Demilitarized
Zone (DMZ).
Although dramatically upstaged by his
announcement that he would not run
for re-election in 1968, the President's
promise has given hope to many that
peace in Vietnam is not out of sight in
the near future.
These visions of an early peace may be
quixotic. The premise that Hanoi would
be willing to accept this gesture of inter-
national goodwill while we augment the
size of the American troop commitment
does not seem well-founded.
THERE ARE several good reasons why
the Hanoi regime might not elect to
The Politics
Of Upheaval
SSPECULATION: Erstwhile and would-
be Presidential candidates will now be
re-evaluating their chances in the per-
spective of a Johnsonless race.
Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy,
their whipping boy no longer good for
political mileage, will turn on each other
full force. As the convention nears, and
the prophecy that realists will support
Kennedy because only Kennedy can win
becomes self-fulfilling, Eugene will step
down with the promise that he will be
Bobby's Secretary of State tucked neatly
into his back pocket.
Richard Nixon, stunned by the thought
that he might lose again to another
Kennedy, will make "experience counts"
the theme of his campaign. At the end of
especially trying days he will be heard
psychotically babbling to himself long
into the night.
Nelson Rockefeller will spend many a
windy afternoon with a wet finger ten-
tatively extended. Chances are he will
become convinced that the long-blowing
political gales around him now do con-
stitute an honest and legitimate draft.
Hubert Humphrey, itching to get back
into the political swing, will ask Presi-
dent Johnson if he can enter the West
Virginia primary. Johnson, wiser and
more mature in his political ways, will
undoubtedly advise Humphrey: "No
Hubert, 'you may not go out and play
until Bobby and Gene are off the streets."
Harold Stassen will begin to look more
and more like a serious candidate every
day.
-URBAN LEHNER
second class postage paid at Ann Arbor, Michigan,
420 Maynard St.. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48104.
Dily except Monday during regular academic school
year.
negotiate now. For one, although we
have indicated we will discontinue bomb-
ing, there -is no indication we would be
willing to make any political concessions
at the conference table.
Hanoi's recent Tet offensive shows
that it cannot be cast in the role of the
vanquished at a peace parley.
In addition, the leaders of North Viet-
namese may have every reason to believe
that by holding out until after the No-
vember election, they have still more to
gain. They are aware now that Lyndon
Johnson will no longer be running the
American military establishment. And
their expectations - whether correct or
not - of possible American withdrawal
by either Kennedy or McCarthy may
make it worth their while to wait.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, things just have
not been going that badly for Hanoi.
The call-up of American reserves shows
that our troops are not able to meet
Hanoi's forces with our present strength.
And the success of the recent Tet offen-
sive has also made it clear to everyone
that the American military forces are
not forging a lasting military victory in
Vietnam.
It boils down to a question of timing.
Perhaps if the present American offer
had been made a couple of years earlier,
Hanoi would have accepted eagerly.
American dissatisfaction with the war
was not then at such a fever pitch as it
is now. And America's military position
then appeared far stronger as well.
All Hanoi asked then was a cessation
to bombing. Yet Washington was unwill-
ing to yield. Now that things are improv-
ing for the North Vietnamese, the United
States can hardly expect Hanoi not to
hold out for a more lucrative settlement..
So any expectation that Ho Chi Minh
will rush to Washington with open arms
should not be founded on the recent sus-
pension of the bombing of North Vietnam.
THOSE WHO would have us escalate the
war will be able to point to Hanoi's
stubbornness and conclude that the only
way she will be brought to the conference
table is by rendering her militarily im-
potent by a further increase in the bomb-
ing.
Clearly there can be no justification
for such an American reaction. For Presi-
dent Johnson has really given Hanoi little
alternative after all. The Hanoi regime
has nothing to gain by negotiating now.
To hope for genuine peace in Vietnam
would require that the American govern-
ment be willing to make substantive con-
cessions at the conference table.
-STEVE ANZALONE
DANIEL OKRENTM
Dear Mr.l President:
I'llRemember You
'HANK YOU, President Johnson.
In your five years as President, you have done more concrete good
for America than any other chief executive in our nation's history.
You have liberated the minds of a generation: you have reversed
the perilous flow of the American mainstream; you have pushed us
that first crucial step down the road to real American freedom.
And 1 sat and listened to you spew out the same cliches that you
have used since you became President. I forgave you, this one time. For
your truly dramatic gesture caused me to reflect upon and recognize
all you have done for America.
The visible change in America's youth, something that only the
completely imperceptive could not notice, is indicative of the reaction
that you have created. Where people once passed by in monotonous
sameness, crew cut and bobby sox and more of the tedious same, today
they sport their new image with a greatly personal pride, each applaud-
ing himself for being conventionally outlandish, plumed hat and
drastic skirt and male shoulder length hair and costumes weird
beyond description marking not their sartorial tastes, but their figura-
tive thumbing of the nose at your society, Lyndon Johnson.
IT IS A GRAND thing you have done for this country, and maybe
only you could have done it. For the devastating changes to have
taken place as they have, it took a manipulator without peer, an in-
dividual who could revulse America with personality as well as policy.
We have a long tradition of Lyndon Johnson's dominating our
society, but you have done the best job of all of them. Nobody ever
despised Dwight Eisenhower, or even John Foster Dulles; you, however,
have achieved star status.
YOU HAVE SO SHOCKED even the very power structure that
makes it possible for a man like you to be President, that it has started
to divorce itself from its own dim past.
Within the past month, Life Magazine, nurtured into one of the
nation's most influential publications by arch-conservative Henry
Luce, published an agonizingly eloquent plea for real aid to the Amer-
ican black man-and realized that this is impossible as long as we
worry about setting up a fiefdom for a few Vietnamese landlords.
On the campuses, where people once saw the major event of the
year as a Homecoming Concert or a big football game, students flock
to hear Rev. Coffin or Norman Mailer tell them'how impossible the
situation is, tell them that they can do nothing, that the structure
upon which you perch is indestructible.
But, Sunday night, you opened a new door. In trying to salvage.-
a complimentary notice in the history books for yourself, you have
made us realize that we can, indeed, do something about our national
sickness.
IN YOUR RESIGNATION, you have rekindled a new patriotism,
a patriotism of fresh resolve stemming from thoroughly deserving self-
congratulation.
We have beaten you, Lyndon Johnson. And we are very happy
for it, but we can't let this one victory to the final victory; despite
what happens at the convention, no matter who wins in November,
there is much more to be done.
"Gentlemen, you won't have Lyndon Johnson to hick~ around any more"
t~pes olleDeluge'
4
By WALTER SHAPIRO
IT MUST BE awfully frightening
to be hated so much that the
announcement that you will not
seek re-election sends thousands
to celebrate in the streets.
This vast unpopularity of a
man who wanted to be loved so
badly is the underlying personal
tragedy of Lyndon Baines John-
son. No amount of personal vitu-
peration can destroy the grace of
his exit.
Since politics is an arena in
which a man's innermost motives
are scrutinized by all, one does
not have to be a devotee of "Mac-
Bird" to see Lyndon Johnson as
a mandestroyed by all-consuming
ambition,
And it was an ambition that
not only demanded that the Texan
be President, but exhorted him to
be the best damn President this
country ever had.
,It would be impossible to tell
when Johnson's longing for the
high office first arose. But it cer-
tainly flowered during the Eisen-
hower administration when he
emerged as the second most pow-
erful man in America as the Sen-
ate Majority Leader under a weak
President of a minority.
Johnson vigorously sought the
Democratic nomination in 1960
only to fail dismally beneath the
Kennedy juggernaut. Only an
acute, awareness of the political
maneuvering that would be neces-
sary to secure his election led
Kennedy to offer the Vice-Presi-
dency to Johnson. And only the
unpalatability of returning to the
Senate after striving so long for
a higher goal kept Johnson from
declining.
LIKE ANYONE who has long
sought (and long fantasized)
reaching a goal, Johnson had de-
veloped a fairly rigid mental image
of the kind of Administration he
would head.
Lyndon Johnson had been deep-
ly involved in Washington for 37
years and he had a fairly simple
view of the Presidency. In his re-
latively uncreative manner he
firmly resolved that he would do
everything his Democratic prede-
cessors did, only better.
'From Franklin D. Roosevelt
Johnson took the intellectual bag-
age of the New Deal and the no-
tion that Government could im-
prove the lives of the people
through a vast extension of social
welfare programs. And with this
came the paternalistic corollary
that Government knows best what
would improve people's lives.
From Harry Truman Johnson
inherited the fundamental cold
war doctrines which continued to
regard Communism as our num-
ber one enemy. Even though the
ideological differences which sep-
arated them from us had been
tempered over the past generation.
From John Kennedy Johnson
borrowed a lot. This is under-
standable because for all his per-
sonal loathing Johnson respected
Kennedy in the way that any hon-
est egoist respects the man who
bests him.
JOHNSON ADDED a few New
Deal extensions to the program
that Kennedy failed to maneuver
through Congress and this con-
stituted the much-heralded Great
Society.
Internationally Johnson accept-
ed in toto the Kennedy foreign
policy which differed little from
that of his predecessors.
Given these time-tested ide-
ologies and the deep conviction
that he had the skills to pilot all
his programs through Congress,
Lyndon was convinced that he
could become a great President.
Unfortunately for the Texan's
place in history, his administration
inadvertently demonstrated the
fundamental bankruptcy of these
hoary liberal doctrines. The key
to Johnson's downfall was that his
insatiable desire for greatness im-
pelled him to over-extend dogmas
which were basically shallow.
IT IS THIS pathetic fate of
being caught clinging to outmoded
doctrines and tired responses as
the rapidly changing world refuses
to quietly return to focus which
history seems to have had in ,store
for Lyndon Johnson. By wanting
too much he destroyed it all. One
can only hope that the twilight
of Lyndon Johnson marks the end
of an old ball game. And the
noises emanating from the bullpen
and the locker rooms represent the
start of an entirely new contest.
Letters to the Editor
To the Editor:
IN SATURDAY'S Daily article
"Won't You Come Home, Re-
sistance" several serious misun-
derstandings of the strategies and
goals of Resistance were revealed.
Far from abandoning campus
organizing, m o s t Resistance
groups, including the one in Ann
Arbor, intend to maintain their
efforts on campus while also at-
tempting to move into local com-
munities. In the words of Dan
Brody of New England Draft Re-
sistance, "We have to build a
radical awareness-not just on the
college campuses."
Resistance groups are not shift-
ing their attention but are in fact
expanding it. Since most college
students rejoin their local com-
munities when they go home for
the summer, Resistance would, in
The Daily's phrase, be "leaving
students to fend for themselves"
if it did not try to work in these
communities.
Yet The Daily displays a more
fundamental misunderstanding in
its interpretation of off campus
Resistance organizing. Part of
this confusion rests in its defi-
nition of community. In its view,
the community is something rad-
ically different from the college
campus. If it conceives of the
community as one large undifer-
entiated ghetto or poor neighbor-
hood then it is quite right in its
conclusions. As white middle class
individuals, we cannot and should
not organize in black areas. Yet
most communities contain large
middle class segments. Ann Arbor
High School and Washtenaw
Community College, for example,
aren't so alien to our backgrounds
that work there would be useless
Equally disturbing is The Daily's
perspective on the draft as an
issue. "Furthermore," comments
The Daily, "this new attempt by
Resistance is ,another attempt by
the non-poor to organize the poor
for what are ultimately middle
class ends." One of the most im-
portant criticisms of the draft law
is that the poor pay the cost of
the war while the middle class,
through the system of deferments,
is exempted.
While the draft is not the ma-
jor ghetto issue, it nevertheless
forms a part of that system which
oppresses the poor, black or white.
Organizing on this basis seems
reasonable if done by ghetto res-
idents in a manner which they
deem appropriate to their com-
munities. Although this probably
would not consist of turning in
draft cards, it would still com-
prise a part of the resistance ef-
fort. To call the draft ,a middle
class issue is to perceive it from
a middle class perspective.
Regarding demonstrations, Re-
sistance has shifted its emphasis
from ;size to kind. As Warren
Camp of New York Resistance put
it, "We want a solemn, moving
demonstration." This does not ne-
cessarily mean that large demon-
strations are being "phased out"
or abandoned (as The Daily
states) unless one assumes that
only small demonstrations can be
"solemn" and "moving." It means
only that demonstrations should
correspond in tone to the very
serious actions taken by the
resisters.
-Dennis Church
k
4
i
Kuc heI1Ra effrty:
By STEVE ANZALONE in California that George Mur-
RACE of faceless, godless phey's song-and-dance got him to
a fArE omte tepp, godessfthe Senate. And everyone knows
peasants from the steppes of that Ronald Reagan is not on
Asia strives to reach across our "Death Valley Days" anymore.
bodies for the prize of world dom-'The political make-up of Calif-
inion. They are armed with all Thpni ialahtf-u Rafferty Th
the sinister science which a psy- o i ht for Rafferty. The
chopathetic society can produce. people that will vote for a man
To defeat theirpurpose . . . wlike him are the shopkeepers, the
demand the massed wisdom and PTA crowd, and some of the ranks
understanding of the great minds of the service club noon-luncheon
ha ar r" fiVti" set.
From Fantasyland
To Tomorrowland
that nave gorse before us.
These words were written by
California's apostle of American-,
ism in his book Suffer, Little
Children. Since he wrote them,
we have become involved in a
war with "the faceless, godless
peasants" and Max Rafferty is
now a candidate for the U.S. Sen-
ate.
Rafferty, who suggests returning
educationally to the 3 R's, has
been the Superintendent of Public
[nstruction for the state of Cali-
fornia. And now he is ambitiously
?ngaged in a primary race to un-
seat Senator Thomas Kuchel for
the Republican nomination.
The rise to fame of Max Raf-
ferty, seven years ago superin-
tendent of the La Canada school
distict outside of Los Angels, can
only be interpreted as a tribute'
to the editorial influence of the,
Reader's Digest.
For a series of Digest articles
focusing on educational funda-
These are just people who would
be influenced by Reader's Digest
and like their dialectic simple,
:lear, and hard-hitting. They are
the sort who have had two years
>f college and regard themselves
as educated.
..AT THIS POINT the delinea-
tion between the type of person
who will vote for Rafferty and
George Wallace supporters should
be apparent. Wallace is more
likely to get the hard-core hate
vote of the uneducated - those
who hate Negroes, college profes-
sors, and the Supreme Court.
But the Rafferty followers are
more soft-core. They just do not
like 't'he foolishness" involved in
government. These "educated"
voters prefer a seemingly level-
headed candidate like Rafferty,
who will make clear the things
that they do not understand.
A coalition of the Reader's Di-
the total vote cast for Reagan.
As an educator, Rafferty viol-
antly opposes the cult of "pro-
gressive education" associated
with John Dewey that began in
the 1930's which sought to rid
education of memorization of
dates and events and attempted
to make the curriculum more in-
teresting.
Rafferty would replace Dick
and Jane in the schoolbooks with
such stirring literary figures as
Ivanhoe. He reaffirms the import-
ance of books in education, par-
ticularly those dealing with pa-
triotic heroes for Rafferty believes
that only by tales of great Ameri-
cans will teachers be able to
awaken their students' interests.
His favorite hero seems to be
Nathan Hale. Countless times has
orator Rafferty stirred the public
with the story of Nathan Hale.
And Rafferty does please the
crowd with these forensics.
WHAT MADE Rafferty decide
to run for the Senate is probably
related to his total lack of power
although he won his last election
by pulling 3,000,000 votes for the
role of Superintendent of Public
Instruction is only the executive
lackey of the state board of edu-
cation.
So now Rafferty probably
thought that he would turn his
"Anl art. ifn l++om nil- -
John Birch Society. But Kuchel's
voting record does not show a
very liberal leaning. His ADA rat-
ing is only 45 as compared with
90 for liberal Republican Jacob
Javits.
It is no surprise that Ronald
Reagan feels no special fondness
for California's senior Senator.
But Reagen cannot affordtoalien-
ate the moderate wing of the
party any more. So he has so far
remained neutral in the Kuchel-
Rafferty race.
A RECENT New Republic feels
that this neutrality on Reagan's
part is a trade for Kuchel's sup-
port of an almost completely con-
servative slate of delegates to the
national convention with Reagan
as their favorite son.
Kuchel must cater to the con-
servatives of the Republican party
in California without losing his
moderate support if he is to stay
in office. That will not be an easy
task when running against a su-
per flag-waver like Rafferty.
SO FAR Rafferty's polemics
have been more exciting than Ku-
chel's rather rapid presentation
of his record in Washington. For
one, Rafferty favors declaring war
on North Viet Nam and dealing
severely with those dissenters at
home who support the enemy. Ku-
chel's stand is ambiguous, con-
. ,