Nation: Who’s Got the Button?

In the closing weeks of the 1960 presidential campaign, the most emotional issue between Kennedy and Nixon concerned U.S. prestige abroad. Kennedy charged that “we have not maintained our position and our prestige,” hammered away at the Eisenhower Administration’s refusal to release Government polls on U.S. prestige. The reason for the refusal, said Kennedy, was that the polls showed a “sharp drop.” Throughout it all, Nixon insisted, somewhat defensively, that U.S. prestige was at “an all-time high.”

The issue was phony. Most of the polls in foreign countries were based on the prestige of power—and, with Russia seemingly winning the space race and with Democrats yelling about the “missile gap,” a great many folks abroad understandably answered pollsters’ questions to the effect that they thought Russia was stronger militarily than the U.S.

That was in 1960. In 1963, the U.S. lag in the space race no longer seems quite so wide, the Kennedy Administration has admitted that the “missile gap” never existed, and President Kennedy is on record as saying that the U.S. should not base its policies on foreign opinion.

But the campaign issue has now boomeranged. Critics are saying that because of the Administration’s record on Cuba and the apparent flop of U.S. hopes in Western Europe, the U.S. has lost prestige abroad. At the President’s press conference a fortnight ago, a newsman asked Kennedy whether official prestige polls “are now being taken.” He admitted that they were, but he conspicuously passed up the chance to counter the critics’ charges with figures. Instead, he dismissed prestige polls by saying that the U.S. “is known to be a defender of freedom and is known to carry major burdens around the world,” a statement that Nixon could justly have made in 1960.

At last week’s press conference, the President was again asked about prestige polls, and again he evaded. The polls were not “embarrassing” to the Administration, he said, and results would be released “at periodic intervals.” But when newsmen tried to wring some poll results from the U.S. Information Agency, they kept hitting against stony insistence that the polls are “confidential.” Said one USIA official: “We are buttoned up.”