1964: United States

A summary of United States foreign relations, political events, and legislative and judicial developments in 1964 is presented below.

Foreign Relations

From the longer view of postwar history the events of 1964 demonstrated again that world politics had entered a new era of multiplicity and realignment. By 1964 the economic recovery and technological advancement of the Western world, added to the rise of new nations in Asia and Africa, had produced such a varied and persistent clash of national ambition and purpose that the older United States—Soviet conflict had ceased to be the major determinant in world affairs. It appeared evident that U.S. leadership recognized the transforming pressures of nationalism, overpopulation, racial animosity, and technology on the international system. Thomas L. Hughes, State Department director of intelligence and research, declared in July: 'The day is gone, if it ever existed, when an alleged Communist menace would trigger an automatic Pavlovian response in Washington. . . . Let us beware of thinking that all internal violence can be charged off to Communist influence, when that influence may often be merely one element among others. . . . In each situation we confront we must try to identify clearly the real problem, the real enemy, and the real opportunity.'

What characterized the external challenges to American will in 1964 was their growing number and complexity. Early in February, President Lyndon B. Johnson told a White House press conference that in no less than 'eight different situations' the United States had demonstrated again its determination to keep the peace. In large measure the problem of Southeast Asia remained that of Communist ambition. But in such areas of disagreement and conflict as Western Europe, Cyprus, Panama, Cuba, Malaysia, and Africa the challenge to the U.S. purpose emanated less from the Communist bloc than from this nation's own allies. Laboring under the perennial demands for greater successes abroad, accentuated in 1964 by a presidential campaign, the national leadership sought to parry the major developments around the globe by avoiding costly or dangerous decisions. By December the nation's repeated failure to have its way in any of a wide range of confrontations suggested that power itself was no longer a guarantee of leadership, prestige, or even security.

Relations with Europe.

The Challenge of De Gaulle.

For the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization remained the pillar of Western defense. So clearly was NATO in trouble, however, that many believed its usefulness at an end. The crisis was not over the ability of the alliance to discourage Russian aggression. Rather it was over the U.S. role in Europe's defense. What disturbed Charles de Gaulle of France and other Europeans was the question of U.S. reliability. To demonstrate its deep commitment to Europe's defense, the United States continued to maintain 400,000 troops in Europe as hostages to the NATO allies. To De Gaulle, however, not even the presence of these forces in Europe assured U.S. nuclear involvement in some future European war, for the United States was no longer invulnerable to nuclear destruction and U.S. action depended solely on orders from the White House. Such doubts were deepened by the U.S. policy of 'flexible response.' Europeans feared that a war fought with conventional weapons, with its dangers of invasion, occupation, and liberation, would be total for them whatever its advantages for the United States. For the French the concept of flexible response simply invited an aggressor to seize territory in order to keep destruction from his own soil. Nothing less than strategic weapons in the hands of those willing to employ them, concluded De Gaulle, could effectively deter aggression. Clearly the answer to this dilemma lay in either an effective deterrent in European hands or a greater allied accord on strategy which would give Europeans at least partial control of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

Supported by such reasoning, De Gaulle pursued military policies which threatened to wall off continental Western Europe as a separate defense grouping, contending as he did that Europe would never again be Europe as long as its basic defense structure was linked to that of the United States. In May, without warning, he withdrew all French naval officers from NATO military commands. In the French national assembly, Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville suggested that Paris might press for drastic revisions in the alliance before the original treaty expired in 1969.

The Multilateral Nuclear Force.

Washington's dual effort to erase European doubts over U.S. intentions and limit the spread of nuclear arsenals remained fixed on the Multilateral Nuclear Force (MLF). By 1964 this plan called for a joint NATO fleet of 25 missile-carrying cargo vessels, manned by mixed crews representing all participating nations. As designed, the MLF carried less a defense burden than a political burden, for it would block a possible German demand for a national nuclear deterrent by giving West Germany, along with other cooperating allies, a share of a NATO nuclear deterrent. European reaction varied from coolness to repugnance, for the new program contained a built-in contradiction. If the United States retained a permanent veto over the firing of missiles, MLF was superfluous; if the United States gave up the veto, it endowed Germany with a nuclear arsenal which the program was created to prevent. As General Lauris Norstad, former NATO commander, declared in November, the flaw in the U.S. plan was that it 'does not go to the core of the problem—who will control nuclear arms and how is that control to be exercised.' France continued to reject the project outright. Prime Minister Harold Wilson declared before the British House of Commons in November that his government believed a mixed-manned surface fleet would add nothing to Western defense and would increase the difficulty of NATO in reaching any East-West agreements. As late as December 1964 only West Germany of the allies revealed any interest in MLF. So divisive had the issue become that critics suggested U.S. withdrawal of the multilateral proposal before it broke up the alliance completely.

United States-West German military cooperation, contrasting sharply with NATO's general disarray, culminated in mid-November when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and West German Defense Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel signed a broad pact on procurement, research, and logistics. German military purchases in the United States, the two ministers recalled in their communiqué, had since 1960 averaged $700 million per year. They predicted that this established level of German-American cooperation in matters of defense would continue. The two ministers agreed in principle to the establishment of a multilateral nuclear fleet and the need of making it 'an effective military force, as well as an instrument of unity.' As a quid pro quo for Bonn's sweeping commitment to U.S. defense policy, Washington late in November assured the West German government that it would eventually receive missiles capable of reaching Soviet targets. For Bonn officials such a weapons system appeared essential to present a credible deterrent to a Soviet ground attack on West Germany or Western Europe.

NATO in Disarray.

When the North Atlantic Alliance's Foreign Ministers Council met at The Hague in May, the time had long since passed when the preponderant strength of the United States was sufficient to obtain agreement among the allies. Yet it was clear that the stresses within NATO were more the product of success than of failure. If the alliance, as established in 1949, had lost much of its validity, it was because the economic rebirth of Western Europe and the reduction of Soviet belligerency had vastly reduced the danger of war and created that very security which now permitted the member nations to pursue national rather than allied interests and objectives. Convinced of the inevitable triumph of French policy, Couve de Murville at The Hague was prepared to stress the importance of European responsibility for Europe's defense. Western Europe possessed the energy, he declared repeatedly, to defend itself from conventional attack and even to mount a credible nuclear deterrent. Thus the final implementation of French policy, he concluded, would leave the Atlantic world stronger than it had been in the past. To counter this French emphasis on European competence, Secretary of State Dean Rusk declared before the Belgian American Association at Brussels that Americans 'simply cannot understand the revival of the notion of absolute independence in dealing with affairs within the free world.' This nation's many commitments, he asserted, permitted it very little freedom of action. More, not less, coordination of policy was required, he added, to assure the security and well-being of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

In their concluding communiqué of May 14, the NATO ministers reaffirmed their faith in the alliance as 'the indispensable guardian of security and peace.' They accused the U.S.S.R. of exerting unrelenting pressure on the international system but repeated their determination to achieve a genuine relaxation of international tensions. They expressed their concern over the rivalry between Greece and Turkey, two NATO members, arising from the continuing disorders in Cyprus. In deference to West Germany, the ministers reaffirmed their conviction that a just solution for the German problem could be reached only on the basis of self-determination. They declared that 'every suitable opportunity should be taken to bring nearer to realization the wish of the German people for reunification in freedom.' Thereafter U.S. leadership reasserted this basic American purpose for Germany on numerous occasions. In June, President Johnson and Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, following a White House conference, declared that 'only the freely elected and legitimately constituted government of the Federal Republic of Germany and no one else can speak for the German people.' Later that month, in a tripartite declaration following the announcement of the Soviet-East German friendship pact, the United States, Britain, and France reminded the Kremlin of its responsibility for maintaining Western access rights to West Berlin. Late in November, Secretary Rusk and German Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroeder, meeting in Washington, reaffirmed the U.S. determination to sustain its policy regarding Germany and Berlin. For some Americans, concerned less with defense than with an East-West détente in Europe, this persistent reiteration of the goal of German unification simply measured the price which the United States paid for its NATO commitment, for there could be no political settlement in Central Europe as long as the Western democracies insisted on keeping part of Germany in a military alliance.

Relations with Asia.

South Vietnam.

Throughout 1964 the nagging problem of South Vietnam involved the nation ever more deeply in Southeast Asia's turmoil, without the promise of either an early victory or an acceptable avenue of escape. Late in January, for the second time in three months, Saigon's government fell before a military coup. For those three months General Duong Van Minh, the strong man who had engineered the overthrow of the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963, had failed to mount the promised counteroffensive against the Vietcong guerrillas. Suddenly Lieutenant General Nguyen Khanh, promising action and reform, seized the government in a bloodless uprising and quickly announced the formation of a new regime with himself as premier. France's De Gaulle deepened the confusion in Washington and Saigon by announcing his government's recognition of Communist China and calling for a neutral, unified Indochina. Khanh threatened to break diplomatic relations with Paris and retorted, 'A lot of blood was shed during the war against French colonialism. We must not betray the dead who died so that we can be free.'

Washington promised full U.S. support for the new regime, but neither continued U.S. aid nor Khanh's assurance of reform produced any notable successes outside Saigon. Clearly the Khanh government required something to offset the deepening pessimism and to direct its energies toward a renewed military effort. On March 8, accompanied by General Maxwell D. Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara arrived in Saigon on his fourth mission to that country since May 1962. McNamara, impressed by the wisdom of Khanh's reform program, promised the Vietnamese premier increased U.S. aid. On his return to Washington the secretary predicted optimistically: 'In the entire week, I did not talk to a single responsible official who was unable to agree that, if the proper effort is made, the war can be won.' Through such phraseology, the Johnson administration hoped to pump some confidence into the Saigon government, and Khanh responded by launching a program designed to reverse the fortunes of war. Not only did he repeat the promise of reform but he also decreed the mobilization of the entire country. On March 26, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge predicted the defeat of the Vietcong and observed again that Washington had rejected De Gaulle's neutralization proposal. Three weeks later Secretary Rusk, on a tour of South Vietnam, assured a group of villagers, 'We are comrades in your struggle. Some day that regime in Hanoi will disappear and you and your brothers in the north will be able to join in a free and democratic Vietnam.'

Unfortunately such official optimism decreasingly reflected the actual decline in Khanh's fortunes. When McNamara returned to Saigon in the middle of May, he entered the city wearing a bullet-proof vest. The secretary inaugurated a deeper American commitment of men, money, and matériel to South Vietnam. He still promised victory, but warned that it was not going to come soon. Never before, observers agreed, had the situation in South Vietnam looked so bleak. Throughout the summer of 1964 the pattern of success and failure outside Saigon was too confused to establish a trend. Yet on July 15, McNamara announced in Washington that he had detected some 'favorable factors and developments' in South Vietnam.

Despite these setbacks in the jungles the U.S. commitment to Saigon remained firm. Early in June, U.S. officials, meeting in Hawaii, reminded Peking and Hanoi that the United States was determined to prevent a Communist victory in Southeast Asia. In July the appointment of General Taylor as U.S. ambassador to Saigon, replacing Henry Cabot Lodge, was viewed as symbolic of continued U.S. determination. Lodge, returning to Washington, declared hopefully that the 'downward spiral' in the Vietnamese war had been stopped. In an interview several days later, the former ambassador insisted that the war could be won without enlarging its scope. Meanwhile the United States increased its military contingent in South Vietnam to 16,000. Supported by an ever-increasing American investment, however, the Khanh regime appeared less concerned with reform than with pursuing the war into North Vietnam. In August, a U.S. intelligence report indicated that the Saigon government was still losing the battle for the allegiance of the Vietnamese people. At that moment the issue of Southeast Asia burst upon the United Nations when North Vietnamese torpedo boats fired at U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The United States responded by bombing several North Vietnamese naval bases and warned both Hanoi and Peking that it would retaliate further against any repetition of the attacks on American vessels. Simultaneously Washington laid the issue before an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. On August 7, Congress adopted the joint resolution supporting any means required 'to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States, and to prevent further aggression.' But there were no attacks forthcoming and the crisis died as quickly as it had arisen.

By the middle of August, Saigon's ruling military council, with the full backing of Ambassador Taylor, had placed the nation on a full wartime footing and had granted Khanh almost unlimited power to wage the war against the Communists. Unfortunately, the Vietnamese refused to accept Khanh's dictatorial powers. After bloody rioting in the streets of Saigon, Khanh resigned under Buddhist and student pressure, becoming head of an interim triumvirate. In the middle of September one bloodless coup overthrew Khanh while a second reinstated him. To end the dissension, a high national council was inaugurated on September 28 to prepare a new constitution. Late in October the council announced a 'provisional' government for South Vietnam under Premier Tran Van Huong. A Young Turk movement upset the council in December, however, once again bringing the military to power, apparently headed by General Khanh. Premier Huong was not among those arrested, though, and he continued to seek the reinstatement of civilian rule, a goal that had Ambassador Taylor's backing.

Without the existence of a stable, popularly supported regime in Saigon it was not clear how South Vietnam, whatever the logistical support it received, could launch a successful offensive. On November 30, Premier Huong used paratroops to crush a Buddhist demonstration against his government. By the middle of December Buddhist leaders, in their campaign to remove Huong, had sought the support of Ambassador Taylor. Not even such political instability in Saigon, however, gave Washington pause in its expanding commitment to victory. Increasingly, U.S. military personnel, now numbering 22,000, moved beyond their purely advisory role in combat situations. Late in November, Taylor reported in Washington that the outcome of the struggle was 'very much in doubt' unless the United States expanded the war. Soon Taylor returned to Saigon with instructions to 'consult urgently' with Premier Huong on measures to improve the war against the Vietcong. On December 11, Saigon, assured all the U.S. support required to win, hinted that it would soon carry the war into North Vietnam. With the overturn of the civilian government, however, the United States began to reconsider its commitments in South Vietnam. Pending the reinstatement of civilian rule, talk of expanding aid was halted, and only routine operations were planned.

Laos.

Events in Laos further demonstrated the extreme difficulty in achieving political stability in a region of Asia where the strategic advantage lay with the forces of revolution or subversion. In Laos, as in South Vietnam, the United States faced the ultimate choice, it seemed, of entering the struggle directly or packing its bags and returning home. As in previous years, the problem of Laos was a matter less of equipment and manpower than of the will to fight. General Phoumi Nosavan, the right-wing leader, had received the bulk of the half billion dollars in U.S. military aid since 1955. He had never won a major battle or even fought one.

Laos returned to the list of critical areas in April when a right-wing coup forced Prince Souvanna Phouma, the neutralist premier, to announce a new coalition between the country's neutralist and right-wing factions. Immediately Prince Souphanouvong, leader of the left-wing Pathet Lao, whose action had provoked the new merger, declared that he would reject Souvanna Phouma as premier if he continued to act as spokesman of the two factions. Receiving no satisfactory response, Souphanouvong mounted a new offensive. Already in control of two thirds of the country, the Pathet Lao seized the rightist stronghold of Tha Thom, 90 miles northeast of the capital at Vientiane. It then struck the Plaine des Jarres and after bitter fighting drove the neutralist forces of General Kong Le from positions they had occupied since 1962.

This burgeoning disaster brought a direct U.S. response. Washington announced that it was flying jet reconnaissance planes from the U.S. carrier Kitty Hawk over the Plaine des Jarres. At the same time the royal Laotian air force, as well as U.S. fighter-bombers flown in from the Philippines, bombed Pathet Lao installations. These attacks produced violent accusations in Peking of 'wanton bombing and strafing' by U.S. planes and demands for an immediate meeting of the 14-nation body which had signed the Geneva accords of 1962. Again Laos threatened to draw the United States and China into a direct confrontation. For the United States, unwilling to commit troops to Laos, the goal of its Laotian policies remained unchanged. Without escalating the war, U.S. leadership hoped to establish a better bargaining position from which Souvanna Phouma might reestablish a stable neutralist government. U.S. officials agreed with the Laotian premier that the reconvening of the 14-nation conference on Laos would be futile unless preceded by a cease-fire and the withdrawal of the Pathet Lao from territory seized after May 17 in violation of the Geneva agreements of 1962. Unfortunately, it seemed clear, the Pathet Lao was equally determined to establish positions of maximum military advantage before it would agree to a Laotian conference.

Late in July, Souvanna Phouma called upon the British and Soviet governments to arrange a conference of the three Laotian factions on neutral territory. The Kremlin, favoring an immediate, unconditional 14-nation conference on the Laotian problem, rejected the British proposal that such a conference be held only after an effective coalition regime had stabilized the situation within Laos. During September the spokesmen of the three Laotian factions met in Paris but accomplished little. Souvanna Phouma blamed North Vietnamese support of the Pathet Lao for his country's problems. For the prince it was impossible to separate the future of Laos from that of South Vietnam. During August, President Johnson warned that any movement of Pathet Lao troops toward the border of Thailand, to whose defense the United States was committed by treaty, would bring direct American intervention. In lieu of any settlement in Laos, Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana urged the administration to consider carefully De Gaulle's proposal for a new 14-nation Geneva conference. What stood in the way of such a conference, as late as December, was the absence of agreement among the major powers on the question of an agenda.

Latin American Relations.

The Panama Crisis.

Behind the violence which broke out in the Panama Canal Zone early in January was the disturbing question of sovereignty, especially as it applied to the flying of the Panamanian flag in the zone. Trouble began at the U.S. high school in Balboa when U.S. students raised the flag of the United States in defiance of the order that no flags were to be flown in front of schools. The Panamanians, asserting the general principle (agreed to in 1963) that the two national flags fly together—and only together—planted a flag of their own only to see the Americans defile it. Thereafter violence and destruction spread rapidly throughout the Canal Zone. Before order could be established more than 20 were killed and hundreds injured, mostly Panamanians. President Roberto F. Chiari severed diplomatic relations with the United States and demanded a complete revision of the canal treaties. The actual matter of conciliation he left to a special peace committee of the Organization of American States (OAS).

President Johnson quickly telephoned President Chiari and promised to send a group of advisers to survey the situation. When the two presidents reported their positions publicly, however, it was clear that they agreed on very little. Thereafter, negotiations between the United States and the Republic of Panama broke down over the words 'discuss' and 'negotiate.' For weeks the OAS committee struggled over the phraseology of an agreement to terminate the immediate controversy and prepare the way for a long-term settlement. On March 15, the committee decided to issue a joint declaration, without interpretation, but with the consent of both nations. Eventually the committee released the statement to the press only to have the Panamanian leaders interpret the phraseology as a U.S. concession to negotiate a new canal treaty. On the following morning President Johnson rejected the OAS accord completely. Several days later he admitted that it was not unreasonable to contemplate treaty alterations, but that the U.S. government did not want to promise them in advance.

Cuba.

U.S. policies toward Cuba, measured by their declared objectives, experienced a year of frustration. Washington had never disguised its ultimate purpose of weakening and eliminating Cuba's Castro regime. Yet in January 1964 that government passed its fifth anniversary, still not confronted by any organized opposition at home or abroad. Every U.S. approach to the Cuban problem contained its own limitations, for none promised gains commensurate with the potential costs. Exile organizations, determined to capture the island, existed on U.S. soil, but the government could neither encourage nor condone them. The Kremlin warned the United States, moreover, that it would defend Cuba against any external assault. Even the U.S. reconnaissance overflights contained an element of uncertainty, for the U.S.S.R. had trained the Cubans in the use of defense missiles capable of bringing down high-flying planes. Noting the U.S. determination to continue the flights, Nikita Khrushchev warned on May Day, 'We declare once again that . . . flights into Cuban airspace may have catastrophic consequences.'

Unable to bring any direct pressure to bear on the Castro regime, the United States anchored its anti-Cuban policies to an economic boycott of the island. When it became clear in January that Britain, France, and Spain, accepting large orders for buses, trucks, and locomotives, were openly defiant, Secretary Rusk reminded them in a New York speech that Castro's regime represented an 'unacceptable intrusion' of Marxism-Leninism into the western hemisphere. What accentuated this U.S. quest for cooperation in Europe was Castro's decision during January to cut off the water supply of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo and the U.S. decision to lay off all Cuban employees at the base residing outside the naval complex and to obtain its water from other sources. Again at The Hague in May the secretary found little enthusiasm for a trade boycott of Cuba. Instead, the growing European resentment toward U.S. policies which favored trade with such Communist countries as the Soviet Union and Poland but denied it to Cuba and China compelled Secretary Rusk to explain at length why the United States pursued different policies toward the world's Communist nations. In July, the United States experienced a moment of triumph in its anti-Castro policies when the OAS, by a vote of 15 to 3, accepted a resolution condemning Cuba for 'its acts of aggression and of intervention against the territorial inviolability, the sovereignty, and the political independence of Venezuela.' The signatories agreed to maintain neither diplomatic nor consular relations with Cuba. Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay, nations which recognized the Castro regime, voted against the sanctions; Bolivia cast the lone vote of abstention.

The Alliance for Progress.

In March 1964, the Alliance for Progress entered its fourth year, still beset by the frustrations and disenchantments which had characterized its earlier history. The basic premise of the alliance had proved false. Nowhere had economic and popular pressure, encouraged by U.S. aid and the fear of Castroism, compelled the Latin American oligarchies to give up their political and economic privileges. This perennial failure of the alliance to achieve its initial purpose confronted the United States with a dire choice—to consign the program to the list of lost causes or turn it into another unilateral or bilateral foreign aid program.

President Johnson's decision to trim the alliance program to political reality became clear as early as February when he appointed Thomas C. Mann as director of all U.S. Latin American policies. Mann, thoroughly experienced in Latin American affairs, had accepted the necessity of working through the oligarchies and military dictatorships which actually governed most of the region. To offset Latin American charges that the United States had lost interest in hemispheric problems, President Johnson, addressing representatives of the OAS in March, recalled the Good Neighbor Policy and added reassuringly, 'Today my country rededicates itself to these principles and renews its commitment to the partnership of the hemisphere to carry them forward.' Washington officials continued to stress the need of elevating the status and increasing the income of the agricultural and laboring groups of Latin America. Simultaneously the United States continued to appropriate its millions for Latin American progress. Still the effective coordination of such ends and means proved elusive. During September, the Inter-American Committee for the alliance, meeting in Mexico City, estimated that over $2 billion committed to alliance projects had not yet been put to work. United States and Latin American officials could point to houses, hospitals, roads, and a variety of development programs as achievements of the past; they could point to no genuine transformations in the social structure. Perhaps this explains why many Latin Americans who had lauded its original concept now viewed the alliance with indifference.

Legislation

The 88th Congress' first session, in 1963, had been marked by so much talk and so little action that there was widespread fear that the nation's legislative machinery had become antiquated and rusty, and was in dire need of major overhaul. But by the end of its second and final session, in 1964, this Congress had turned out to be one of the most productive in years.

Although the record of the 1963 session was not wholly negative, with its ratification of the nuclear test ban treaty and passage of the first significant federal-aid-to-education legislation in five years, the bulk of the legislative program President Kennedy sent to that session had made little headway.

In 1964, President Johnson embraced all of the Kennedy-backed measures as his own. There were so many that he added only one additional major bill, the War on Poverty package, consisting of some old Kennedy proposals and some new Johnson ideas. Very soon after the second session began on January 7, there seemed to be an upsurge in activity in Congress. By its end, in the early afternoon of October 3, most of the broad program outlined by President Kennedy and endorsed by President Johnson had been enacted.

The $11.5 billion tax cut bill, the largest in history, had been adopted. So had the most sweeping civil rights bill since Reconstruction days. These two bills alone were enough to assure the 88th Congress a place in history. But there were more, including passage of aid in the development of urban mass transit systems, a permanent food-stamp program to aid the needy, a bill raising the pay of federal workers including congressmen, the most important conservation legislation in years, new aid to cotton and wheat producers, and new protection from unqualified dealers for securities investors.

What accounted for the faster pace in 1964? One reason was that much of the important groundwork for the legislation had been laid the previous year. President Johnson also benefited from the 'honeymoon' period accorded to him as part of the emotional reaction following President Kennedy's assassination. But credit goes, too, to the Johnsonian brand of legislative legerdemain. Much of his attention after the murder of his predecessor was directed toward Congress. He had served in both houses of Congress—10 years in the House and 12 in the Senate, including a stint as an extremely effective majority leader. He knew when to give and when to take in a legislative struggle, and just what strings to pull for key votes.

Members of Congress were wined and dined at the White House. The White House gave a 'Salute to Congress.' Members found the president turning up at their daughters' weddings, and their wives were taken on tours of the upstairs living quarters at the mansion. Dozens of fountain pens used in bill-signings found their way from the White House to congressmen who had helped pass those measures.

All this helped. So did the president's early emphasis on budget cutting. Almost daily, pledges of economy flowed from the White House at the start of the year. Johnson talked about turning out lights at the White House to save on the electric bill, and he asked government agencies to hold down on hiring. In his State of the Union message on January 8, he announced a budget of $97.8 billion, smaller than the one submitted by President Kennedy in 1963.

The effect was to smooth the way for legislation that might otherwise have been killed by the perennial Republican charges that Democrats are fiscally irresponsible. For example, most observers credit the so-called economy campaign with speeding the Senate's deliberations on the bill reducing personal and corporate income taxes.

Sometimes the Johnson approach was muted. On the civil rights bill, the president remained publicly in the background during the long Southern filibuster, leaving the direct approaches to his lieutenants on Capitol Hill. Sometimes his approach was as subtle as an H-bomb. He pleaded directly by phone. He told members that unless they went along with a particular bill he wanted, they could not count on administration support for another he knew they desired.

His success with Congress, however, was not total. Administration programs found relatively easy going in the Senate, where Democrats held a 67-to-33 majority, but in the House, where Democrats held a majority of 254 to 177, the coalition of conservative Southern Democrats and Republicans was often able to work its will. The coalition, for instance, was effective in stopping the $1 billion program sought by the president to give economic aid to the depressed Appalachia region. The bill, a Johnson 'must,' was approved by the Senate but did not reach the House floor. House leaders withheld it because of their inability to drum up enough support in the face of the opposition of the conservative coalition. Another major administration failure in 1964 was the bill to provide health care for the aged under the social security program.

Among the other bills left for another year were those dealing with immigration, federal minimum wage extension, U.S. participation in the International Coffee Agreement, and the sugar import-quota system. Congress also failed to enact legislation spelling out just when a vice-president takes over the duties of a disabled president and how to fill a vacancy in the vice-presidency.

Civil Rights.

Of all the legislation passed by the 88th Congress, history may best remember the steps taken to advance equal opportunities for Negroes. The most far-reaching civil rights law since Reconstruction days was passed after the Senate shut off an 83-day filibuster.

The law, destined to face a host of legal tests, outlawed racial discrimination in most hotels, restaurants, theaters, and the like. It also (1) authorized the attorney general to initiate suits or to intervene on behalf of aggrieved persons in school desegregation and other discrimination cases; (2) prohibited racial discrimination by employers or unions; (3) permitted halting of funds to federally aided programs in which racial discrimination is allowed to persist; (4) prohibited registrars from applying different standards to white and Negro voting applicants; (5) created a Community Relations Service to help resolve local civil rights problems. In many ways, the bill went further than the measure submitted to Congress by President Kennedy in 1963 after widespread Negro demonstrations. It was passed by the House on February 10 by a vote of 290 to 130.

The Senate filibuster went on until June 10, when the historic vote came to shut off debate. The vote was 71 to 29, 4 more than the 67 votes needed for cloture. It was the first time the Senate had voted to shut off a filibuster against a civil rights measure. Nine days later, the Senate cleared the bill, 73 to 27. And the House accepted the modifications by a 289 to 126 vote on July 2.

A few hours later, President Johnson walked into the East Room of the White House and sat down with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and television cameras before him. After a short speech to the nation, in which he announced steps to implement the law, he signed the bill into law.

Foreign Affairs.