rEms rHE VIEM
Mr. Humphrey in Vietnam
Fthm MURRAY KEMPTON
NEW PORK
PRESIDENT Johnson can count one victory in the depressing struggle for freedom in South- East Asia : he has liberated Vice-President Hum- phrey. Anyone who appreciates that immensely energetic and useful man is glad to see him up for air. But it is the nature of Humphrey's office that, instead of any assignment increasing the importance of the Vice-President, the mere fact of the Vice-President's being sent upon it auto- matically diminishes the office.
The Vice-President has no function in any game his government plays except to lead the cheers. The dispatch of Mr. Humphrey as his mini-potentiary for three days in Saigon is the best indication that Mr. Johnson is far too sensible to think that our tormented ally has any intention of building his 'decent society in Viet- nam' and that all talk of such is for us back here.
He could count on the Vice-President whole- souledly to be uplifted by the sight of Saigon; since last fall, Mr. Humphrey has been confined to visions of labour leaders, undeserving Demo- crats, and licensed pharmacists in convention assembled; after such submersion, anything would be inspiring. The President could count on Mc Humphrey to give a splendid display of how Americans campaign in democratic elections.
He could also count on the Vice-President to be entirely simple-minded about the solid progress of the present and the boundless perfection of the future. That is the function of Vice-Presidents on tour. In 1944, Vice-President Wallace addressed the guards at the Soviet prison camp in Kamchatka and remembered that his ancestors too had been pioneers in wildernesses that were now gardens. Vice-President Nixon was en. chanted with Generalissimo Trujillo; and Vice- President Johnson was reminded of Abraham Lincoln after one day with the unfortunate Diem.
Since Presidents have the responsibilities of office, they cannot afford to be as simple-minded as Vice-Presidents are. We may assume, there- fore, that, when he talks about the possibility of social reform in South Vietnam, President Johnson is merely being cynical rather than as foolish as he would be if he were sincere. The President has, in point of fact, suggested nothing in the way of social reform quite as large as was insisted upon by President Eisenhower in 1955 and disregarded by Diem thereafter.
At this stage of this war, it is hardly sensible to talk about winning the people; if they aren't won by now, they are lost. We are, in rhetoric at least, the last mature nation that takes Harold Laski seriously; we retain the illusion that men fight well only from some aspiration about the peace. Wars are, in general, profitably endured for rather negative reasons. The British and the Russians were extraordinary in the Second World War, the British for a government they voted out of office the first chance they got, the Russians for a government its successors testify was the blackest tyranny. But both the British and the Russians were fighting for their own country against a foreign invader. So, perhaps, our funda- mental problem is to make it clear to the Vietnamese that Ho Chi Minh is alien and Mr. Humphrey a native. But that is a little much to hope; Mr. Humphrey's assignment then was to the public to which he is native; he has been doing the only job our system knows for the Vice- President, which is to campaign for the Presi- dent before the American voter.
For, by now, this war has become our only domestic issue. We are approaching one of those moments like the one which passed over France in Algeria : that is, we are essentially alone and our war, whatever its military outcome, grows increasingly less supportable domestically. The President reports himself heartened because the polls show that his policy has the confidence of more than 60 per cent of the people. This week, fully 70 per cent of the members of Congress were announced as rallying to him against his detractors. In both cases the committed negative is appallingly high, and almost everything the President does reflects the urgency of his effort to bring it down. His pleased surprise at Air Marshal Ky can be explained by two considera- tions: he wasn't as bad as his populist prejudices had imagined, and there was even hope that, with care, he could be worked up into an in- spiring distraction for the American people. Senator Fulbright's public hearings on the war seem, in general, to have been accepted as a plus for the President. The difficulty is that no gain from the administration's presentation of its case could possibly make up for the disaster of its having to defend itself in public in the first place. A war is just not a proposition that a govern- ment can healthily debate. Its representatives are bound to seem worse than they really are. There is, for example, a strong argument that, having got into this mess, there is nothing we can do in honour but stay in it. But we cannot ask the men who got us there to make that argu- ment; and both Secretary Rusk .and ex- Ambassador Taylor were reduced to a sad mang- ling of history in order to insist that a series of decisions which had, in general, turned out wrong were part of a sober, coherent plan now moving towards its fulfilment. What is far worse, Secretary Rusk, from the necessities of practising diplomacy in public, was driven to the expression of hard positions which, if he really felt them, would make it terribly difficult for him to negotiate if the Viet Cone's commanders ever offer us that mercy.
They are unlikely to; they would appear to have us precisely where they want us. And there is nothing after all these weeks which gives us the slightest hope for a time when we shall be out of there. Mr. Humphrey must campaign in Saigon; for us now there is no Europe, no Alabama, no Appalachia; there is nothing except this sandpit and the November elections. They are inextricable; we have become a one-subject country with a one-issue politics.
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