Is There a Thaw in our Politics?
Howe, Irving
A major trend seems to be at work in American politics. The consensus of support for the Vietnam War is well an the way to disintegration. For the first time, if the polls can be trusted,...
...What seems now to emerge from these changes in mood is the strong possibility for affecting U.S...
...The consensus of support for the Vietnam War is well an the way to disintegration...
...Leading Republican politicians, like Senators Morton and Thurston, have attacked the President's course in Vietnam, not because they are principled opponents of the war but because they are shrewd enough to see the erosion of popular support...
...None of this is yet decisive, and it remains possible that, by a clever stratagem or a kind of peace offer, the President will recoup his political strength...
...It begins to seem that this election had, in the United States, an effect sharply different from that intended by the Johnson Administration: it brought home to many people the fact that the Vietnamese are desperately tired of the war and want peace at almost any price—perhaps, indeed, at any price...
...2) Even those who support the Johnson Administration must admit that it action...
...policy in Vietnam through a mixture of unconventional and conventional methods —protest and politics, pressure and polling, both completely within the honorable tradition of democratic life...
...nothing in politics is...
...3) Those theoreticians of social stasis and gloom who have been bemoaning the indifference of the populace, and who have developed notions which in effect posit a mass brain-washing, have again been shown to be—if not wrong, then—precipitous and premature...
...But perhaps that is the true source of the contempt certain American "leftists" feelthat a tin-horn military man like Ky can't get his 99% of the vote the way a Communist can...
...Within the Democratic party there is very considerable ferment, first because liberals who are principled opponents of the war have been organizing a campaign to oppose Johnson in primaries, and second because run-of-the-mill local party leaders have begun to suspect that Johnson may drag them down to defeat...
...Maybe once again we will have reason to feel renewed faith in the democra tic idea...
...stands at a major turning-point...
...For the first time, if the polls can be trusted, a majority of the people are prepared to express discontent with the war—though the political implications of this discontent are not yet, at this moment, clear...
...Ordinary Americans may not respond to political problems with the unfailing wisdom that characterizes the writers, readers (and critics) Of DISSENT...
...but they do occur...
...But if they are right in the latter claim, how can they logically protest against the way the elections were held in S. Vietnam...
...Rigged those elections may indeed have been, but cer - tainly not with the efficiency that Ho Chi Minh has achieved...
...Whether the current dissatisfaction will turn to the advantage of the doves or the hawks is not yet clear, though right now it favors the doves...
...Vietname, the crisis in the cities, rebellion on the campus—all are related...
...P. S. I cannot forbear noting that some 01 those who have been crying out most loudly—and rightly enough—against the rigging of S. Vietnam elections are also people of "left authoritarian" persuasion who declare democracy impossible or irrelevant or even undesirable in underdeveloped countries...
...The processes of political change are slow in accumulating...
...but neither are they simply a collection of middle-class slobs and unfeeling fat cats...
...The military junta received a mere 35% of the vote...
...often they are molecular and subterranean in nature...
...There is a feeling, among many people, that the U.S...
...But the prospect of continuing the present situation seems intolerable to more and more people...
...It has no course of of internal pressures within its ranks, draws back...
...Or perhaps that is what they mean in saying that underdeveloped countries can be "modernized" only under Communist auspices...
...A major trend seems to be at work in American politics...
...The signs of discontent are, however, clear...
...They ought simply to say that the whole idea of elections should be scrapped...
...A sharp turn is required: end the war press for the kind of social allocation proposed by the Randolph Budget, gradually reunify the fragmented leftliberal community...
...There is much moral uneasiness in the country—far more widespread and of ultimate political significance than emerges from any protest demonstration...
...Three very tentative conclusions suggest themselves: 1) The election in South Vietnam, rigged though it may have been, was strikingly a vote for peace...
...But at this moment, the Administration seems frozen into a posture of rigidity: it has, apparently, no ideas in regard to Vietnam except to keep slogging through, bombing, burning, and sacrificing a growing number of young Americans in a war that, short of holocaust, cannot be won...
...Imagine a Communistrun election in which the party slate gets only 35% of the vote...
...it seems to flirt with the idea of a bombing pause and then, perhaps because is immobilized...
...Who knows...
...Nelson Rockefeller is said to be considering a shift of line: a stronger weighting of the dove percentage in the Harris polls may persuade him that taking a mildly dovish stand is consonant with patriotism...
...the various civilian candidates represented a majority of the voters and were almost all identified in some vague way with the idea of peace...
...it has nothing to propose...
...For socialists, as for liberal and other opponents of the Vietnam War, there is reason for moderate cheer: there are things we can do, right now, through the peace, trade union, and other movements, to press this country into ending the bombing of North Vietnam and enter into serious negotiations for peace...
...It will not be easy...
...But no one, except Everett Dirksen and John P. Roche, has any use or enthusiasm for the Johnson policy...
Vol. 14 • November 1967 • No. 6
