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A curious mix of optimism and pessimism for this week, ending on April 26th in 1964.

On the optimistic side - President Johnson announced to the world that the U.S. would make substantial reductions in Nuclear Weapons and Uranium enrichment production. Simultaneously, it was announced by Nikita Khruschev via Radio Moscow, that the Soviet Union would do the same thing. The news was greeted with a sense of relief and UN General Secretary U Thant offered an evaluation on what was deemed a hopeful sign towards an easing of Cold War tensions.

On the Pessimistic side - tensions were brewing between the U.S. and Cuba as Cuban Premier Fidel Castro vowed to down any U.S. Reconnaissance planes flying over Cuban territory as it had been doing since 1962.

On the optimistic side - Sec. of State Dean Rusk returned from a fact-finding mission to Saigon and offered an upbeat assessment of the situation in Vietnam, saying the South Vietnamese Army could handle themselves nicely.

On the Pessimistic side - Defense Secretary Robert McNamara conceded it will "take time" for any progress to be made in Vietnam and that the South Vietnamese Army is running a defensive strategy rather than an offensive one. Oh well.

Meanwhile - the four year long negotiations between the Railroads and the Unions was finally at the settlement stage. And just in the nick of time, as the settlement averted a threatened strike.

President Johnson went on a brief tour of the Appalachia region, hitting the towns and cities worst hit by poverty and unemployment, touting his War on Poverty legislation. He was greeted with waves of enthusiasm.

Not so enthusiastic were reports from Capitol Hill saying the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was at a standstill, making the future unclear for passage of the Legislation.

And the much publicized "Stall-ins", threatened for Opening day of the New York Worlds Fair on April 22nd, didn't materialize. But that didn't stop some 300 Civil Rights demonstrators from being arrested from the Fair opening anyway.

All this in one week, ending on April 26th 1964, as reported on the ABC Radio Voices In The Headlines program.

Continuing a sampling of economic figures in various White House Administrations, Dr. Walter W. Heller was an adviser to the Kennedy White House and, after JFK's assassination, adviser to Lyndon Johnson and was one of the contributors early on in the creation of the Marshall Plan for economic recovery after World War 2.

A Keynesian, Heller was an advocate of cutting marginal income tax rates which was credited for boosting the U.S. economy when it was enacted in the Johnson Administration. He also suggested Johnson declare a War On Poverty, which was enthusiastically accepted.

Here is an interview on Meet The Press from September 3, 1961 where Heller discusses a number of topics, including what effect the Berlin crisis was having as well as the domestic programs recently enacted by the Kennedy Administration were going to have on our economy.

Dr. Walter Heller: “When you look at the programs that have been proposed by and carried out by this administration and enacted by Congress you find that a very substantial contribution has been made to recovery. There was a speed-up of many payments, the GI Insurance payments, the speed-up of refunds, speed-up of military procurement and so forth. There was the enactment of extension of benefits under the Temporary Unemployment Compensation Act. We had further an enactment of expansion of the housing programs and so forth. Now most of these will recede just as they have been expanded for recovery they will contract, later on as the recovery proceeds to a satisfactory level of output and employment. So on one hand, as I say, there have been some very definite programs, I didn’t mention area redevelopment, I could mention many others. On the other hand I’d like to stress the fact that many of these programs will more or less automatically shrink, or can be reversed just as you speed up highway construction to fight a recession, then you pull back the program if you run into excessive economic activity and inflation.”

Heller resigned his post as Adviser to LBJ due to the escalation of the war in Vietnam which Johnson insisted on waging without raising taxes to pay for it. After resigning his post, Heller returned to teaching at the University of Minnesota where he became chair of the Department of Economics.

Another in a series of prominent economic voices.

(LBJ in 1965 - Great plans, great ideas - eclipsed by Vietnam)

(Until we get back to normal, Newstalgia is reposting a series of articles on the Health Care issue, in case you missed them the first time around.)

When Lyndon Johnson gave his first State Of The Nation address on January 4, 1965 after winning the 1964 election, it was filled with hope and optimism. Every good idea and plan for the American people was on the boards and ready to go. Many of the programs were implemented - Medicare, The Civil Rights Bill, the War on Poverty - a lot of programs still in effect today.

LBJ: “We must open opportunity to all our people. Most Americans enjoy a good life. But far too many are still trapped in poverty and idleness and fear. Let a just nation throw open to them the city of promise. To the elderly, by providing hospital care under Social Security and by raising benefit payments to those struggling to maintain the dignity of their later years.”

But there was that one element which would eventually turn the focus from all the good programs to what had become one very bad idea: Vietnam.

By the end of 1965 our involvement went from "training and advisers for the South Vietnamese Army" to increased draft calls and escalating weekly casualty figures of our own. We were in it and we were stuck in it. And by the end of 1965 there looked like no turning back.

The domestic programs were great. The Great Society was a wonderful idea. It's often been said that, had there been no Vietnam, LBJ would have gone down in history as a truly progressive President. Vietnam would become the thorn in his side and his eventual downfall.

It's one of those quirks of history - the ones that often repeat.

(Sec. of Commerce Luther Hodges - 1964 was something of a fishing expedition)

Howard K. Smith (ABC News): “If anyone drew up a list of the seven wonders of the modern world, the American economy would certainly be one of them. In the lives of men now at middle age its gross output of wealth has doubled, then doubled again and then doubled again. But one of the most impressive, or depressive aspects about it is, that while it has multiplied our wealth it has not distributed it well. A fifth of our people live in poverty and we have the highest unemployed rate of any modern Western country.”

Cautious optimism, whistling in the dark - 1964 was a year of contrasts. First, we were recovering from the assassination of President Kennedy and were putting our faith in Lyndon Johnson to carry on the JFK legacy. The social programs (the Civil Rights Bill, Medicare) were evolving, the War on Poverty was about to get rolling. But then so too was the Vietnam War with the infamous Gulf Of Tonkin incident in the not-so-distant future of August.

But on January 5, 1964 when this installment of ABC News Issues and Answers was aired, Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges and Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz voiced optimism that all would be well with the world in good time. Sadly, no. But at the moment, America needed some bolstering. It was heading into unknown territory and it wasn't sure what the future would bring.

It came soon enough.

(LBJ at The UN - selling The Great Society was one thing - Selling Vietnam was something else)

When President Johnson addressed the United Nations General Assembly on the occasion of its 20th anniversary in June 1965, he had very little trouble selling his concept of The Great Society to the rest of the world. It was when the subject of Vietnam and Southeast Asia came up that ears suddenly turned deaf and support dwindled. Support for the war was rapidly fading in the U.S. and protests were mounting in intensity on an almost daily basis as the war escalated to no seeming end.

So it was with mixed results that President Johnson made his case to the world body.

LBJ: “ We in this country are committing ourselves to great tasks in our own Great Society. We’re committed to narrowing the gap between promise and performance. Between equality and law and equality in fact. Between opportunity for the numerous well to do and the still too numerous poor. Between education for the successful and education for all of the people. It is no longer a community or a nation or a continent. But a whole generation of mankind for whom our promises must be kept and kept within the next two decades. And if those promises are not kept, it will be less and less possible to keep them for any. And that is why, on this anniversary I would call upon all member nations to rededicate themselves to wage together an international war on poverty.

War on Poverty sounded good - War in Southeast Asia - not good.

(Sargent Shriver in 1964 - Peace Corps to The War On Poverty in one fell swoop)

As an extension of the JFK Administration, the LBJ Administration launched a number of Programs focusing on domestic poverty. As former head of The Peace Corps (a successful program begun in 1961 under the Kennedy Administration) Sargent Shriver was put into service as head of the Poverty Program, a wide range of social services designed to raise the economic and basic standards of the nations poor. No small feat, even in 1964. And of course, there were the detractors.

On March 22, 1964, Meet The Press did an interview with the newly installed head of the Poverty Program Sargent Shriver to answer the critics and to outline just what the program entailed.

Lawrence Spivak: “Mister Shriver, as you must know, that there are people, and they’re not all Republicans, who believe that this is just another political gimmick, and that there’s going to be a great deal of talk about it up until election time but that we’re not going to see many results. Now how long do you think it’s going to take you to show some tangible results?

Sargent Shriver: “Well let me, right off the bat deny that it’s a political gimmick. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it Mister Spivack, if that’s all it was. We have tried to establish . . . create a program which would meet the test of criticism and represent the consensus of intelligent thinking in this country. And I’ve been very much gratified by the number of leading businessmen, for example, as well as labor leaders who have been attracted by this program. You’ll notice that so far in Congress that it has not been attacked once on its substantive merits. There hasn’t been one criticism from the Republican or Democratic side about the substance of this program.”

The Poverty Program or The Great Society as it came to be known, probably would have been a great success, had it not been for a little thing called Vietnam and Nixon in 1968. The war managed to suck the life out of a lot of things, and the Nixon Administration gutted most of what the program was about, and good intentions were the first to go.