The Roman Way

From MURRAY KEMPTON

WASHINGTON

Mile television, trying as all of us have and 1 failing as all of use must, ceased to talk late on a Saturday night and gave itself over to photographs of various corners and columns of the White House while a voice recited 'Oh captain, my captain, the fearful trip is done', which is Walt Whitman on Abraham Lincoln and the grand style. But no time is like the time one endures oneself; one's own time is personal not historical, one's house and not a temple, the ship has not weathered every storm. Mr. Kennedy is not Abraham Lincoln, not because he was anything more or less but because he is a remembered physical presence and Mr. Lincoln

is an image, a legend, his agony almost a comfort. How many years, just an instance, must all of us pass through before anyone would want to read a book about the day Mr. Kennedy was shot?

This is the poem in Cymbeline, a Roman play:

Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages : Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

But, if one is not Roman, there is only this terrible irritation with God and with self and with every face that is left.

Mbst of the President's Cabinet was away from Washington when he was shot. Sacked and

pillaged, all of his official establishment that could be assembled came to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington that- night to meet John Kennedy brought home from Dallas.

The heart was cruel to the self and the eye was crueller still to every face it saw. The planes came and went, their sound intruding every- where; the lighti were horrid. Under-Secretary of Commerce Roosevelt was there, his face even more that it has ever been the ruin of his father's.

One felt old and ugly. Every face one saw seemed old, and ugly. Nothing was visible about Under-Secretary of State Harriman except his

hearing aid. Every handicap, however blameless, every blotch, every fold under the chin of every

man among us seemed somehow his own fault.

We were all house-dogs waiting for the dead greyhound brought home. We have lost the illu- sion that we were young and could begin again. The day Mr. Kennedy was shot, the main story in Washington's morning newspaper detailed the explanation of a Congressman who had made a 1,000 per cent profit on the stock of a com- pany which had enjoyed his good offices with the Internal Revenue Service. The Senate which collapsed in shock at the news from Dallas had just before been waspishly debating the privileges and emoluments of public offices. The Republi-

can -minority leader had answered the criticism of one colleague who said that the Senate had

gone slack and corrupt and slothful by reciting all the words of all the critics who have said the Senate was corrupt and slothful in various occasions in the history of the Republic, the only argument for Congress as it is being the reminder that it has occasionally been worse. No one in the Capitol had talked with any Passion about anything except scandals and excesses for more than a month. The only issue in town was who was getting what. It could rationally be argued that the illusion of our

youth had already been lost, that the President was wasting in Washington and only nourished by the great crowds in the countryside. Everyone Who ever heard him there sensed that he was his

old self only away from Washington. The films of him in Dallas, though cruel to watch, fortified that sense. But it is easier to look forward to regret than back upon hope. This week that new generation of Americans, which less than three years ago Mr. Kennedy saw taking up the torch, has gone now across the shadow line—and old Mr. de Valera and old General de Gaulle come here to meet old Mr. Johnson.

The President's great blue and white plane came in bearing all the transition in one horrible, shiny package. There was a yellow portable elevator to bring Mr. Kennedy down in a casket that looked like a ship's chest with the Attorney- General, his brother, beside her. Half of Lyndon Johnson was visible looking down from the door above her. Mrs. Kennedy's weeds were her pink champagne suit. She tried a door of the ambu- lance—it stuck, as everything that was mechanical that was not an intrusion seemed to stick. At that moment the Attorney-General found a door that worked and then she was gone, the high Roman figure she would be all weekend. And President Johnson came on, emptied by misfortune of all his vanity and thus of almost everything else. His chin was uncertain; we were watching a man who might cry in public, and it was impossible to feel his better. He said something into the microphone that was distinguishable only for being hoarse and undeservedly apologetic, and then his new household gathered around him.

He has collected himself since. There is still no sensible way to measure him as a President except to remember that the American people usually get Presidents as good as they have to be. Mr. Johnson is remembered, but only remem- bered, as a powerful Senator before he was trans- mitted to the Vice-Presidency in 1961.

He has used his energies since for ceremonies rather than the exercise of command. The ques- tion is whether his muscles have memory. In the summer of 1960, he thought of himself as Mr. Kennedy's elder and infinite superior in capacity. He lost that sense somewhere in October of that campaign sitting on a platform in Texarkana, Texas, watching Senator John F. Kennedy with the jaw out and the finger pointing and wonder- ing, as a witness said later, just what this thing was that had growed up right before his eyes.

The Kennedy Administration thereafter found few substantial uses for him. He was a little fly-blown for its image of itself. He is a simple man, which means that he used to be able to be a bully and has always been able to be a back- slapper. He is dreadfully resented now—the dull resentment which so many people are so unable to focus has to fall on someone, however blame- less, and he is the largest visible object. That resentment will pass. Authority is forgiven even the things for which it is responsible, let alone those for which it is not. The issue is the state of his ego. If the Kennedys only bruised it, President Johnson might be malignant towards

the survivors of the dead President's official household. If the Kennedys destroyed him, he may be something far worse, merely loud, weak, and purposeless. He seemed with the weekend not to be loud and weak and there was no sign that he was malignant. Two years of enforced humility may have been just what he needed.

At the end, there was the parade of those servicemen with the ragged civilian faces who have been the glory of all our wars past St.

Matthew's Cathedral and then suddenly, like thunder, there was Mrs. Kennedy with the brother, the Attorney-General, on one side and the brother, the Senator, on the other and ram- rods up their spines. And behind them the powers and potentates of the earth. The Kennedys were marching with all of Madame Tussaud's in theit train. Mrs. Kennedy, for the moment made flesh, gathered her children and they began walking with their sunny blue coats up the stairs, and then they were gone. We had lived awhile with old Romans. Now the doors were closing. We must make do with ourselves.