Letter from Washington

John Connally has gone back to Texas, but will be traveling a lot. First, around the world; then, out to any Republican gathering that wants to hear his views about just about anything. He is running for President. Some observers here think he got out of the White House at the right time, and in the right way. By never signing on the White House staff in a formal way—he was an unpaid adviser in the second term, operating out of the Mayflower Hotel—he was not really part of the current debacle. He cannot be blamed for not helping solve it; but his departure did not cause any unsettling waves. Now he (like California Governor Ronald Reagan) must watch with special interest the unfolding story of the criminal investigation of Spiro Agnew. Connally and Reagan will be the principal competitors for Agnew’s supporters if the investigation cripples Agnew.

When some unforeseen or unforeseeable fortuity caused something to go right for President Franklin Roosevelt, he would laugh and say, “I planned it that way.” With beef disappearing from meat counters across the nation—the utterly predictable result of keeping the freeze on beef prices until September 12—some Administration aides are suggesting that the Administration “planned it that way.” The theory is that this is the quickest way to discredit controls in the eyes of the maximum number of people. Well, something is certainly being discredited. Soon there may be: export restrictions on all feed grains; eggs selling for $1.50 a dozen; a spinach shortage; an onion shortage even worse than the one at hand; even more food black markets than have already appeared; more of the sort of cattle rustling that is keeping the state police busy around the feeder lots in Nebraska and South Dakota; and on and on.

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John Connally has gone back to Texas, but will be traveling a lot. First, around the world; then, out to any Republican gathering that wants to hear his views about just about anything. He is running for President. Some observers here think he got out of the White House at the right time, and in the right way. By never signing on the White House staff in a formal way—he was an unpaid adviser in the second term, operating out of the Mayflower Hotel—he was not really part of the current debacle. He cannot be blamed for not helping solve it; but his departure did not cause any unsettling waves. Now he (like California Governor Ronald Reagan) must watch with special interest the unfolding story of the criminal investigation of Spiro Agnew. Connally and Reagan will be the principal competitors for Agnew’s supporters if the investigation cripples Agnew.

When some unforeseen or unforeseeable fortuity caused something to go right for President Franklin Roosevelt, he would laugh and say, “I planned it that way.” With beef disappearing from meat counters across the nation—the utterly predictable result of keeping the freeze on beef prices until September 12—some Administration aides are suggesting that the Administration “planned it that way.” The theory is that this is the quickest way to discredit controls in the eyes of the maximum number of people. Well, something is certainly being discredited. Soon there may be: export restrictions on all feed grains; eggs selling for $1.50 a dozen; a spinach shortage; an onion shortage even worse than the one at hand; even more food black markets than have already appeared; more of the sort of cattle rustling that is keeping the state police busy around the feeder lots in Nebraska and South Dakota; and on and on.