Mr. Republican
Carey, George
"Mr. Republican" New Orleans. Freshman GOP Congressman David Treen of Louisiana, who is the first Republican elected to national office from that state in 100 years, was the victim of what I.~)fton calls the...
...FitzGerald is perhaps at her best when discussing the organization and operation of the National Liberation Front, although this section, too, must be read with caution...
...In part two, she introduces the Americans into her analysis and explains why they were destined to fail and why the communists are certain to win...
...For cong san, a phrase of Chinese roots suggesting a secular aggregate of individuals, he substituted xa hoi, a Vietnamese phrase linking the future distribution of wealth with the sacred communal traditions of the old village...
...And this is the flaw of an otherwise fine book...
...Why, to put the question otherwise, is Taft so important...
...and "Often the Front would assassinate a GVN official as an 'example' to the villagers of what might happen if they decided to work for the government" (p...
...The first half is, as the title implies, about Vietnam and the Vietnamese...
...Republican," "Reaching for the White House," and "Responsibility...
...Although the Democratic Party has apparently not increased its overt strength, the New Majority the Nixonites spoke of in the 1972 election has now become but a memory...
...He opposed the deployment of American troops to NATO during peacetime (liberals harken...
...Her discussion of "criticism" and "self-criticism" (thought reform)--ki~m thao, which she consistently but incorrectly spells Khiem thao (one of numerous misspellings in her employment of Vietnamese terms)--is too brief but otherwise quite good...
...He fought, as Patterson makes clear, Roosevelt's rather devious tactics to involve us in the European War (again, liberals should harken...
...She also notes such large-scale purges as the North Vietnamese "land reform" (which she calls [p...
...174] "In the month that they occupied Hue the Front and the North Vietnamese forces murdered some three thousand civilians, including not only 16 The Alternative November 1973...
...Many, myself included, after the decision of the Convention wept unashamedly in the stench of the stockyards...
...There are thirty-eight chapters under these major headings which in essence give us a chronology of Taft's ups and downs in the American political arena...
...And herein we find the great divide in the Republican Party and, indeed, within the Democratic Party as well...
...Unfortunately, although it may well "make sense" to the lay reader, it is not a very accurate analysis of the subject...
...But the problem here, so far as I can perceive it, comes to this: To what extent can the national government effectively operate to secure changes in our society...
...Estimates vary as to the strength of the Soviet forces, but virtually all indicate that the Soviet army had the capability of conquering Western Europe save for the fact that we possessed the atomic bomb...
...Call it ineptness, call it insensitivity (The Louisiana Republican State Chairman, Jimmy Boyce, was more direct, saying, I "told those silly bastards at the White House to tell the President that if he was going to mention the Democrats, mention Treen first...
...Patterson writes: "Taft's message seemed clear...
...How ironic it is that "Mr...
...But one who is familiar or knowledgeable about his philosophy of government knows that he would never suggest, as do our modern day liberals, that the national government (not to mention the state governments) has a carte blanche to supervise every aspect of our lives with the end in mind of making us "better...
...223) that the North Vietnamese "land reform" was undertaken in 1956 (in fact it was undertaken ,:n 1953 and concluded in 1956...
...In the first place, the name "Vietnam" was in the name of Ho's party in 1930, before the Comintern ordered that the name be changed from "Vietnam Communist Party" to "Indochinese Communist Party...
...The New York Times featured his speech on page one of its Sunday paper, and the services spread it across the country...
...The reader cannot but find irony in her assertion when discussing the National Liberation Front: "For a non-Vietnamese to write a full account of the NLF is finally an impossible undertaking" (p...
...223] "an anarchic campaign of terror" through which "by conservative extimate, some fifty thousand people of all economic stations were killed"), and the Hue massacre during the 1968 T'dt offensive ([p...
...It was a puppet organization created by the communists to rally more people to the Viet Minh Front, and it was clearly identified in its program as being the Vietnamese version of the Social-Democratic Parties of the Second International in Europe...
...Another indication of declining support for the GOP was a recent public opinion poll which indicated that only 23 percent of the American public now considers itself Republican, down 5 percent from the election, and at an all-time low...
...FitzGerald prepared herself more thoroughly than most people who write about Vietnam: she benefited from the experiences of her late father, Desmond FitzGerald, a senior CIA official with considerable experience in Asia...
...First, Taft was a man of principle...
...Yes, indeed, it must be that Taft felt that limited measures on the part of the national government might be effectual in alleviating certain problems afflicting the nation...
...He was a great man...
...this is one Republican administration that knows how to alienate its most loyal supporters...
...It does little more than voice wholehearted approval of the policies established by Ho Chi Minh's real party, the Vietnam Worker's Party (D~mg Lao D6ng Vi~.t Nam)--the actual successor to the Indochinese Communist Party...
...Republican," a man dedicated and loyal to his party through the darkest of its years, could not win nomination over a contender who really did not know whether he was a Republican or a Democrat until it was convenient to do so...
...187...
...and, on page 220, where she writes: "Upon bringing the name Vietnam into the name of his party, Ho Chi Minh took the concomital step of changing the phrase indicating socialism and his future social policy...
...Chapter one is entitled, "The Striving Bey," and chapter thirtyeight, "The Sudden Ending...
...Much is made of the fact that certain of Taft's positions, principally those concerning federal aid to education and public housing, were inconsistent with his earlier opposition to the welfare policies of the New Deal...
...b)The United States had demobilized after World War II, and we could not possibly hope at this juncture to defend Western Europe through the means of conventional warfare...
...Perhaps it will suffice to note that even anti-Vietnam war scholars have labeled the FitzGerald analysis of Vietnamese national character as "little short of disastrous" (David Marr, Journal of Asian Studies, May, 1973, p. 564), and to invite readers who desire a more detailed critique of this portion of Fire in the Lake to peruse the first few pages of Ngo Vinh Long's "Fizzle in the Lake" (Ramparts, January, 1973, pp...
...Throughout Patterson's work we find commentaries concerning Taft's political strategies and political philosophy...
...12.50 For some time now it has been fashionable to explain American failures in Vietnam with clichds about understanding the Vietnamese "mind," "character," "culture," or what-have-you...
...She has made a gallant effort to explain an extremely complex subject --Vietnamese culture--but she has not succeeded...
...This unilateral decision he felt to be a violation of the Constitution, another unpopular stance which was duly criticized, even though it was defended by no less than Edward Corwin in the pages of the New RepubZic...
...George Carey R iew...
...As Patterson points out, for instance, Taft opposed the Nuremberg trials because such ex post facto proceedings violated every tenet of justice and civility known to the western world...
...And (c) the situation in "faraway East Asia" was essentially different because we found leaders who pleaded for our support against communist aggression...
...The truth is that there is an answer, somewhat involved but well known to students of that era: (a)The European Community, if one can call it such, never has from the inception of NATO shown any enthusiasm for it...
...Or could it be because he was respected and admired by his colleagues, stood against the welfare policies of Roosevelt II, adopted a militant anticommunist stance at a very early date in the Cold War, sought to redress the imbalance that existed between labor and business, or possibly, opposed Roosevelt II's interventionist policies prior to World War II...
...He does not tell us why Robert Taft was unique...
...Fire in the Lake The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald Little, Brown & Co...
...FitzGerald reasons and writes well, and her book--while not essential reading--is quite good in parts and is recommended if read with caution...
...Patterson has divided his work into seven major sections: ~I~e Search ]~or Self," "The Political Apprenticeship," "Rising in the Senate," '~Sources and Uses of Power," "Mr...
...and she familiarized herself admirably with the English- and French-language literature of the field...
...Second, Taft was a practical but humane man...
...Perhaps the most impressive undertaking along these lines is Frances FitzGerald's Fire in the Lake (the title of which is a metaphor for "revolution" from the I Ching...
...Many, particularly those bern after World War II, will ask: Why would anyone write such a massive book (749 pages in all including index and extensive bibliography) about a senator who died nearly two decades ago and never did achieve, as we see from these pages, the pinnacle of political power in the United States...
...In the same vein Taft opposed the New Deal and Roosevelt II...
...Beyond this, and perhaps more impertant, he opposed the usurpation of presidential authority...
...To be sure, Russell Kirk and James McClellan do a more thorough job of analyzing Taft's political thought in their Political Principles of Robert A. Taft...
...Our betrayal of Chiang The Alternative November 1973 15 Kai-shek through such insidious devices as the "Marshall Mission" will always remain as a blot on our honor...
...156157...
...These matters seem to be of concern to Patterson, as well as to Kirk and McClellan...
...While the book is written with a distinct anti-Vietnam war bias, it lacks the elements of dishonesty found in many such volumes...
...Unfortunately, he was not at this time the match for a World War II hero who didn't know what "parity" or "closed" or "open" shop meant...
...Would that she had been as cautious in undertaking to explain the immensely more intricate subject, Vietnamese culture...
...This was an act of courage...
...he was willing to oppose communism in faraway East Asia, but reluctant to do so in Europe...
...In this instance, FitzGerald has simply misinterpreted her source (McA1ister and Mus, The Vietnamese and their Revolution, Chapter 7...
...During his first major address in New Orleans since the Watergate revelations, President Nixon gave high individual praise to the Leuisiana congressional delegation, but failed even to mention the Republican congressman by name...
...The answer was that he could not...
...Their contributions have been minimal and even counterproductive...
...Freshman GOP Congressman David Treen of Louisiana, who is the first Republican elected to national office from that state in 100 years, was the victim of what I.~)fton calls the White House's "creeping CREEPism...
...The French and the English constantly squabbled...
...In spite of its having been selected as one of the five most important books of 1972 by the New York T/rues, it is not a bad piece of scholarship...
...Why so...
...For the uninitiated there are at least three reasons...
...Critics jumped at the chance to denounce him," and Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley went so far as to declare that Taft "never experienced a crescendo of heart about the soup kitchens of 1932, but his heart bled anguishedly for the criminals at Nuremberg...
...How could he reconcile his denunciations of communist behavior with his opposition to NATO, an instrument intended to stop Soviet expausion...
...It is here that FitzGerald attempts to explain the Vietnamese character, and to introduce the reader to the history, organization, and operation of the National Liberation Front (NLF...
...Patterson's presentation might well lead us to believe that such is the case...
...As Patterson puts it: "Americans, it seemed, disagreed...
...Although her account of Vietnamese history is more accurate than that found in most anti-war studies, she makes a number of rather distracting errors (clearly the consequence of flaws in her scholarship, not in her integrity...
...141...
...The Abomb was our deterrent to Soviet aggression, not NATO, which to this day remains as nothing more than a paper barrier...
...The Socialist Party, like the puppet Democratic Party, remains active today in North Vietnam...
...As an honest and capable scholar, she is forced to acknowledge: "If a landlord refused to cooperate, or if the NLF felt his death would serve a political purpose, he would be assassinated-and usually in public" (pp...
...Is it because, for a very brief period, he was majority leader in the Senate...
...she studied under the guidance of the respected French scholar, Paul Mus...
...Patterson, at the very least, tells us why this is so...
...without congressional approval...
...It is impossible to understand the communist movement in Vietnam without first understanding thought reform...
...While there is a great deal of truth in the clich6s, all too often they are followed by simplistic interpretations which are of value only in confirming the veracity of the clich6s...
...On this point, Taft's critics, Patterson among them, are quick to allege inconsistency: Why did he oppose deployment of American troops in Europe, vote against the NATO treaty, but later adopt a hard line anticommunist position with respect to our China policy and the conduct of the Korean War...
...Xa Hoi Dang was the name of the socialist party within the Viet Minh...
...Patterson's work, however, is by any standard the most extensive we have of the life and times of Robert Taft...
...FitzGerald's explanation of the Vietnamese character is complete and convincing--certainly it is responsible for much of the attention which the book has received...
...One trained in political theory and familiar with the American political system must, perforce, go beyond the reasons offered in this volume for an appreciation of Robert Taft and what he meant for our Republic...
...And, yes, it will be Senator Mansfield who wins the day--~'let's get out...
...Actually, Fire in the Lake is two books...
...FitzGerald obviously has considerable difficulty with the subject of Viet Cong terrorism...
...I console myself by reading Lord Bryce's comments about why great men are never elected to or selected for the presidency...
...Moreover, as the Patterson volume makes clear, Taft did not believe we should indulge ourselves in the absurd Wilsonian notion that we could make the world safe for democracy...
...On balance it seems that Taft was unwilling to make any deals with the likes of a Harold Stassen, Earl Warren, or Wayne Morse...
...Taft himself had long ago joined the anti-Soviet chorus by accusing the Democrats of being 'soft' at Teheran and Yalta...
...The topic is too complex to entertain seriously in a few paragraphs of a brief review, and this writer is hardly qualified for the task even under ideal circumstances...
...Two examples are her assertion (p...
...she visited South Vietnam twice as a journalist (for a total period of about one year...
...Republican A Biography of Robert A. Taft by James T. Patterson Houghton Mifflin $12.50 To my knowledge, Professor Patterson's biography of Robert A. Taft is the most comprehensive published to date...
...And third, contrary to what Patterson intimates, Taft was never a serious contender for the Republican nomination until 1952...
...In the second place, the Vicar Nam X~t HOi D~ng (Vietnam Socialist Party) created by the Viet Minh in July, 1946, was not Ho Chi Minh's party at all...
...This alone is credit to Taft...
...45...
Vol. 7 • November 1973 • No. 2
