This Man
pRESIDENT KENNEDY'S sensational victory over the United States steel industry has left a number of the issues gasping in the rear. First is the striking demonstration of the power of the Presidency if used by a man who knows exactly what he wants and a team willing and able to back him up. President Kennedy has no con- stitutional power to do anything about the price of steel, or of anything else for that matter. But instead of leaving the situation to deteriorate under the ineffectual pressure of exhortation, he surveyed his armoury, took down from the wall every weapon that could conceivably be used, and fired the lot off at once in the direction of the tycoons. Mr. McNamara announced that defence contracts would be swung away from those firms that insisted on raising their prices, brother
Bobby had the industry indicted before a Grand Jury on monopoly charges (pure bluff, this, as the industry was acquitted 'of identical charges some years ago when it was more monopolistic than it is now), and the President himself went on
television to denounce the economic royalists in terms more savage than anything 'that man' ever employed. The result was instant capitulation.
Now that it is possible to take a guided tour of the battlefield, some interesting sights are to be seen, apart from the distinguished industrial. lineage of the dead. It is clear. for instance, that the President's stock with the voters has gone bounding up;- the picture of the radical con- servative (which is what he is) has been firmly re-established: the killer who was seen during the campaign for the nomination and for the Presidency, but has been rather in the back- ground since, has come once more into his own.
There have been other incidental effects, too. The prestige of the Presidency as such (irrespec- tive of who holds it), which so woefully declined while the Goths were in the White House, has been dramatically restored; the President's room for manoeuvre when other price increases are put forward—on either side of industry—has been greatly extended: and of course he has made some powerful new enemies.
The effect can so far only be guessed at. For the moment they are in spectacular disarray. But the power of the leaders of the United States steel industry should not be underestimated—includ- ing their power of recovery from even so signal a defeat as this. However sharply he may have attacked them, the President knows that the co- operation of the major steel firms is very im- portant to him; and not only of the steel firms, for the ripple effect of the steel industry can be felt in areas other than'that of price. If he has for- feited permanently the good will of American big business his victory may turn out to be a trifle Pyrrhic in places.
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