The Other Election
Scandal and the Royal Progress
From MURRAY KEMPTON
NEW YORK
MR. JOHNSON has lost Walter Jenkins, his closest assistant, under circumstances which might, in ordinary times, have brought upon us a curse like the Profumo case. But poor Walter Jenkins has taken down only himself; his govern- ment seems as firm as it ever did. It is always 'Pleasant to watch scandals peter out and this one, thanks to the distraction of Labour's acces- sion, Mr. Khrushchev's dissolution and China's nuclear test, has petered out quicker than any.
The Jenkins scandal would have been a dread- ful thing to endure if it had been allowed to run its course. There was always from here a sense that there had been fewer genuine pleasures in Mr. Profumo's round than he and the journalists seem to have believed. But Profumo fell as ordinary men do and with some enjoyment; poor Jenkins fell to hell. Profumo's stage was Cliveden; Walter Jenkins's seems to have been the public washroom of the Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation.
While there seemed a chance that this stuff might be usable as a consumer good, one of the television networks bought an interview .from John Choka, who the Washington police say was Jenkins's partner in his alleged offence. The pro- duct does not seem to have been shown, which was a blessing for our national pride. For if we had had a Profumo case, our Christine Keeler would have been the sixty-one-year-old inmate of a home for disabled soldiers. Yet there was, for a moment, when the news of Jenkins's col- lapse and resignation came through, a sudden wild thought that Barry Goldwater might become President of the United States, nnt thanks to his Public self but rather to the private selves of other men.
There is a broad opinion that, if Nelson Rocke- feller had not chosen to marry again, he would have been the Republican nominee and we should not be enduring the uncertainties under which we labour now. Then suddenly the President's most intimate adviser had been arrested for the most depressing and pathetic of public nuisances; and, at 'first, one could only think that some terrible muse was pointing a succession of private troubles to a grand climax of public disaster. But then, wonderfully, no one seems really to have noticed. Voters, one suspects, do not care about scandal until they have decided to vote against a man for other reasons. If you trust a politician, You are sorry for his private troubles; if you dis- trust him, his private troubles are useful for giving you cause.
Jenkins's collapse found Mr. Johnson on cam- paign as he has spent most of October. The
President's insistence on touring the precincts had placed on Walter Jenkins a heavier burden of managing the public affairs than is normal even for Mr. Johnson's employees. Even the Presi- dent's friends in journalism—and no Democratic President has ever had so many friends there— kept saying that the affair was a personal stain on Mr. Johnson. But the reasons they gave were all about public morality and national security. The real trouble which this unhappy event displayed so cruelly was something else again.
Jenkins's supposed offence, an unplanned en- gagement with a stranger, seemed obviously the sort of thing a man does at the point of a break- down. It was not habit which drew him to • disaster but an impulse his exhaustion could not resist. Even by conventional standards, he was not a sinner but a victim, and I think a certain in- stinctive recognition of that condition by most of us explains in part why he went into the shadows unpursued. The President's closest friend had broken down. The signals must have begun a while before; it is impossible to believe that the president would not have perceived them if he had not been distracted by his royal progresses. We have noticed before that Mr. Johnson is part king delighting to reign and part minister passionate to rule. The campaign has unfortunately brought out all that is monarchical in him. For three weeks, he has been Greville's William IV: The king has been to Woolwich, inspecting the artillery to whom he gave a dinner, with toasts and hip, hip, hurrahing and three times three, himself giving the time. I tremble for him; at present he is only a mountebank, but he bids fair to be a maniac.
The king in Mr. Johnson does not seem to have heard the warning of the Jenkins case. The next day he was in upstate New York, enjoying one more instance of what has become the highest point in the relation of monarch to subject since the Diamond Jubilee. That afternoon there fell from power the best leader of the Soviet Union the West has ever had. Mr. Johnson gave this historic development his close attention in a twenty-minute telephone call to Washington be- fore he left Buffalo for even larger triumphs in Brooklyn. That night, in Madison Square Gar- den, he seemed at once exhausted and able to go on only through injections of applause. He came back to Washington at last; and on Friday it was revealed that the Chinese had exploded their nuclear device; and, on the third and last warn- ing, the king summoned back his ministerial salt.
He cancelled his campaign trip to Washington
and stayed at his real task during the early part of the week. But there is every reason to fear that, if history gives him a day's repose, he will give way again to the temptation to be a hived object again. It seems unlikely that he diverts himself this way because he is worried about re- election. He could hardly lose in any circum- stances; he would certainly not lose if he' an- nounced that the hour was too serious for a President of the United States to lurch around grimacing in motorcades. No, sad though it is to write, we have to conclude that he has given way to that vanity which is the only weakness in an otherwise splendid temperament.
Mr. Johnson is at his worst when the fit is upon him to feel himself loved. He is at his best when he is at his task and his notable determina- tion to make himself respected. He has served his crown and neglected his ministry for three weeks now; and he has never been a President less adequate than in these days when he is an all-conquering candidate.
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