Tricky Hubie

HUBERT HUMPHREY'S nation-wide address Monday night showed very clearly that he knows he must break with President Johnson's Vietnam policies to capture the Presidency in November. It also showed that he is not yet willing to make the break. The speech was a masterpiece of deceptive political prose, and little more.

Humphrey claimed to be breaking new ground on the Vietnam issue by calling for a reevaluation of American commitments abroad and promising, if elected, to halt the bombing of the North. But on neither issue did the Vice-President genuinely dissociate himself from the stand of his predecessor.

The construction and delivery of the address were shrewdly designed to play up Humphrey's offer of a bombing halt, and to play down its conditional nature. But the text speaks for itself: "As President, I would stop the bombing of the North as an acceptable risk for peace... In weighing that risk--and before taking any action--I would place key importance on evidence of Communist willingness to restore the demilitarized zone..." The purposeful ambiguity of the section of text in which this sentence appears cannot disguise the fact that Humphrey, like Johnson, demands crucial concessions from the North Vietnamese before the U.S. will make concessions of its own.

And while Humphrey spoke of the need to reevaluate U.S. commitments abroad, the opening portion of his speech belies his intention--or ability--to meet that need. Humphrey justified the policies of the past four years with the frayed phrases of the domino theory. By its stand, he argued, the U.S. has permitted other sappling nations in Southeast Asia to protect themselves against the communist menace. In addition, we cannot withdraw unilaterally because such action would open Southeast Asia to "more violence... more aggression... more instability." If the Vice-President still sees unrest in Southeast Asia simply as the march of aggressive communism, he is a long way from a realistic reappraisal of our foreign policy.

Hubert Humphrey's speech bordered on political deceit, and drastically failed to live up to its promise as a departure on Vietnam policy.