Richard Nixon knew enough about current country-and-western music to put in two requests for a Johnny Cash performance at the White House next week. The President passed the word that he would like to hear Welfare Cadilac (as the song's composer spells it) and Okie from Muskogee, an almost satirically Middle American hymn ("We don't take our trips on LSD, / We don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street, / 'cause we like living right and being free").
The choice of Welfare Cadilac seemed especially peculiar. Written five years ago by Guy Drake, a sort of combination Pa Kettle-Tex Ritter, the song portrays the welfare recipient as an improvident lout battening on the public purse. ("This house that I live in is mine but it's really a shack, but I always manage somehow to drive me a brand-new Cadilac.")
Nixon's choices did not agree with Johnny Cash's pro-underdog sympathies. When he expressed his reluctance, a White House aide told him that he could sing anything he wished. That freedom of song persists, even at command performances, is reassuring. That the President should request a number that ridicules society's least favored souls seems oddly off-key.