A Triumph for Democracy
H., I.
RIGHT NOW, A BIMONTHLY is not exactly the most convenient medium for commenting on the rapidly shifting and enormously exciting political events of the past few days. It would be foolish, a...
...The thousands of students who plunged so marvelously into the McCarthy campaign had an electrifying effect...
...No matter...
...A political system in many ways outdated...
...Might it not be time for an end to certain sorts of pseudo-revolutionary posturings which have afflicted the Left in the last few years...
...Democracy seems to have come through pretty well...
...And the point is not that Lyndon Johnson suddenly had a conversion to the true and the good: we may well doubt that...
...unromantic in the eyes of some who yearn to surrender their wills and persons to charismatic tyrants...
...A national tradition of violence...
...He was forced to announce a partial end to the bombing of North Vietnam, an inadequate step but still one that opens the possibility of more serious initiatives toward peace...
...The mere fact that he took so extreme a step as declaring himself out of the race shows that he was forced to acknowledge the political realities...
...our readers must get enough of that every day...
...And this represents, perhaps belatedly, a triumph for the democratic process...
...we have a lot going against democracy...
...So often the bulwark of domestic social advance, the unions were sadly out of touch with the profound changes that took place in our political and social life...
...Nor is there a guarantee that democracy will always yield the political and social results we wish...
...Human failings and sloth...
...It would be foolish, a few weeks before these words reach print, to say anything about the fluid tactical alignments of American politics...
...We have deliberately not changed a word of it, so cogent does it still seem...
...Yet there is nothing more valuable, especially for those of us who continue to work for radical social change...
...Yet through aroused publics, through protest and politics, the seemingly rigid system which threatened us with the dismal choice of Johnson and Nixon was made to give...
...forced to acknowledge the growing opposition to the war...
...And a turn, instead, to the hard work of radical social reconstruction...
...Creaky and slow...
...full of faults which need urgent correction— that is democracy...
...sneered at by those who unreflectively accept its advantages...
...For us there is one depressing aspect to the recent events, and that is the dismal role played by the labor unions...
...An underlying form of economy, capitalism, which contains within itself profoundly authoritarian elements...
...And much else...
...The point is that in a democratic society he had no choice but to acknowledge the political realities—those deep shifts in popular response which could not have been created or expressed without the opportunities provided by democracy...
...What made that triumph possible was a complex combination of factors: popular protest, the courage of Senator McCarthy in declaring himself a candidate when no one else was ready to, the growing recognition among millions of Americans that we face an acute crisis at home, etc...
...forced to acknowledge his all-but-universal unpopularity among the youth...
...The courage of McCarthy himself stirred enormous numbers of people...
...From one point of view it hardly matters whether Johnson "means it" or not...
...But regardless of what one may guess to be Johnson's secret motives, it is absolutely clear that his sensational announcement signifies a recognition that his popular support has been corroded and that his policies have become increasingly unpopular...
...For we do not believe for a moment that the mere election of McCarthy or Kennedy is going to solve our problems, or that their election combined with an end to the war will remove the need for unremittant struggle in behalf of new radical programs.--I...
...An end to apocalyptic fantasies which often COMMENTS AND OPINIONS come to no more than cop-out...
...But about this, more in our next issue...
...RIGHT NOW, A BIMONTHLY is not exactly the most convenient medium for commenting on the rapidly shifting and enormously exciting political events of the past few days...
...H. • There follows directly after these remarks an article written by Lewis Coser a few days before Johnson's announcement...
...About one thing, however, there can be no doubt, and we of the democratic Left ought to be the first joyously to affirm it: the recent dramatic turnings in American politics, no matter how one estimates them in detail, represent a triumph for democratic processes and values...
...He was forced to acknowledge the successes of the McCarthy and Kennedy campaigns...
...There is only the certainty that without democracy our existence—political, social, moral, cultural would be intolerable, In the U.S...
...Perhaps his statement is a maneuver, though at the moment he seems to be sincere—whatever "sincere" may mean with a man like him...
...What made Lyndon Johnson say he would not run again...
Vol. 15 • May 1968 • No. 3
