Empty leadership

Henry Fairlie

Washington There are 2,700 political journalists in Washington. There obviously are not that number of scoops and, since they are by and large a rather mediocre lot, not that number of interpretations. They therefore follow each other, wherever one or other of them leads. Eugene McCarthy once said that the Washington journalists are like a lot of birds sitting on a telephone wire: when one of them flies to another wire, they all lift their wings and fly after it to the same wire.

They all seem to have decided this week, at the end of his first year in office, and after his first State of the Union message, that President Carter is in retreat: at any rate, sobering down.

The trouble with this reading is that one wants to know when, during the past year, Carter has been so clearly on the offensive that he can now be said to be on the retreat, and when his leadership has been so intoxicating, at home or abroad, that he can now be said to be sobering down or even up. His message to Congress is what one would expect from the first year of his administration: rather cautious, conservative, and unimaginative, but with his own stamp, and compensating for his own distrust of politics by suggesting that less politics is what the country wants and needs. He ran against 'big government' and 'Washington', and now in Washington as .head of the Government he is still against them.

Madame Tussaud's asked 3,500 visitors to its exhibition in 1976 which five people they hated most. The answers were interesting. First, Adolf Hitler; second, Idi Amin; thircl, John Christie; fourth, Jimmy Carter and Count Dracula. I have not heard the results of the 1977 questionnaire, but it is hard to believe that Carter will again be among such a company of suckers and spillers of blood. Yet it is interesting to recall how feared he was before his election, both in America and abroad, when what he turns out to be is a rather more than competent engineer of electoral politics, and student of public opinion in the polls, with a conservative southerner's and businessman's distrust of the federal Government, of which he is now the head.

His administration is not and will not be the same as a Republican one, because the interests inside the Democratic Party can still bring some pressure to bear on him, although by no means as much as they hoped or would like. It is inconceivable that any Republican president would have endorsed the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill to reduce unemployment, even in the watered-down form which leaves the President with virtual freedom to decide how

and when he will implement it. But nonetheless his Administration is conservative, and his emphasis on 'business confidence' , is in danger of becoming a standing joke, among liberals and conservatives alike. Any moment now he may say that 'The business of America is business'. All of this is just what he promised, although some of us overlooked the clues. But what is interesting is why the Democratic Party and the interests which it serves are unable to push him over the line from right-of-centre to left-of-centre, and for the answer we must look at Congress.

In the elections of 1974, and to a lesser extent of 1976, a large number of Democrats were elected to Congress as freshmen. They were thought to bring new blood. The class of '74, as the Americans say, were called 'young Turks'. The assumption was that, being young, they therefore stood to the left. But after challenging the Democratic leadership in the House on a rule or two, the 'young Turks' lay down like Christians before the lions, and when the class of '74 had to run again for election in 1976, lo and behold, they also tested the mood of their constituents, and took their stand against 'big government' and 'Washington'. Congress is more right-wing today than since Eisenhower.

Perhaps it should be put differently, and in fact more strongly: the Democratic Party in Congress today is totally without a public philosophy. It does not know what it believes, and has little idea of whom it represents. The death of Hubert Humphrey has only served to remind many people of days when it knew for what and whom it stood.

Given that the President also lacks any public philosophy beyond a vague desire to govern competently, one must expect the President to propose and Congress to dispose of very little in thenext year or two. It can be argued that this is good for the country — Carter made a lot in his State of the Union message of the fact that the United States is at peace and not rent by dissension — but is this really what the American people want?

I severely doubt it. My observation of the American people — now getting quite long, as Attlee said on a famous occasion — is that they cannot live for long in so flaccid an atmosphere. Denied the excitement of leadership, either from the President or from Congress, they will turn elsewhere for excitement. The Panama Canal treaties are an issue only because there are no other enthralling issues. Contrary to what is gen erally said, the American people do not like to be left alone to mind their business, to make money and scuba dive.

They are an intensely political people, and they look to Washington to provide the drama of political conflict. This is what Franklin Roosevelt understood so well. He preferred to be attacked than to bore the people. It is one explanation of the otherwise inexplicable attraction of Richard Nixon over so many years. He was in many ways a radical politician, a dangerous one, prepared to overthrow his previous policies, the traditions and beliefs of his party, and in the end the Constitution, in the pursuit of whatever he perceived to be his ends. His personal unpopularity was always balanced by a popular fascination with such a radical activist.

Whether or not the American people are in a conservative mood, they are certainly not in a quiescent one, and both the President and Congress are in danger of boring them. But I also doubt whether they are in a conservative mood. Many people have raised their eyebrows because recent CBS-New York Times polls have shown that a large majority of people are opposed to an abstraction called the 'welfare state', but that equally large majorities want every social programme of which the 'welfare state' is composed. Why should one be surprised? It is only another way of saying that they want the benefits without the taxes, and the one thing certain is that they will elect to keep the benefits even if it means keeping the taxes.

But at once on this issue, a fascinating fact emerges, which is made clear in the budget statement. More than half the households in the United States will now pay more in social security taxes than in income tax. Only after a family with one wage-earner makes about 14,000 dollars a year will its income tax start to exceed its social security taxes. In other words, the Government is now collecting the bulk of its revenues with a 'regressive' tax, which hits the lower income taxpayers proportionately harder than those with higher incomes, instead of with a 'progressive' tax. This is exactly the kind of issue which lurks behind all of American politics just now.

It is also the kind of question to which a Democratic President and Congress would in the past have given deep attention. The implications for the distribution of wealth, and for social equity in general, are obvious and must affect the support the Democrats can command.

When the Democratic Party shows signs of deserting its natural support among the lower-income groups, it always loses its • direction and in the end its support. At a meeting of the Republican National Com mittee in Washington last week, the Revd.

Jesse Jackson, the black leader, said that the Republican Party should open itself to black and poor people, so that they can have an alternative. If! were President Carter or the Democratic Party, I would shiver at such words to such an audience, and stop being satisfied to give quiescent and empty leadership to a nation wanting more.