A SEASON FOR DEMOCRACY
Howe, Irving
It has been a pretty good season for democracy, the summer of 1974. Not quite the triumph some writers have suggested, but encouraging enough both in Europe and America. EUROPE. The collapse...
...AMERICA...
...Probably the answer is: both...
...470 For once, let's stick with something in this country and not flit to the next "show," as if public life were equivalent to turning a TV dial...
...Honest he may be, but politically he remains the dull-spirited conservative hack he's always been...
...In neither case does there seem to have been an internal resistance movement powerful enough to have overthrown the dictatorship...
...That means continued investigation, a prosecution, neither vengeful nor lax, and efforts to improve the political structure so that there is a richer democratic substance within our democratic (but insufficiently democratic) forms...
...There is the larger problem that neither country has a sufficiently deep-rooted political life, with parties extending beyond mere cliques of operators and clients—except for Communist parties, whose mass support represents another and severe problem for the survival of democracy...
...You don't develop a mind just because you change your address...
...One would like to know whether the military cliques ruling Portugal and Greece came to a realization by themselves that they were incapable of governing a European country, or whether they were pressured/driven out of power by social forces that had previously supported them...
...Well, yes—but not an unqualified yes...
...Nixon, a piece of flimflam that ought to sharpen skepticism as to how well "the system worked...
...Ford pardoned ex-Pres...
...The nar rowness of his victory over Humphrey in 1968 may support that judgment, but not the fact that he was able to run against Humphrey in the first place...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS...
...the press had no choice but to pile up the evidence indicting Nixon and his cronies as liars and thugs...
...Everyone understands that the restoration of democracy in both countries is still fragile...
...Nixon was so clearly a fabrication, that even his removal is hardly—if you consider the powers he accumulated—sufficient reason for placebos that "the system works...
...And perhaps most urgent of all, both countries need extensive reforms in order to create the social conditions in which democracy can survive—though it may be that neither has the resources fully to carry them through...
...There is the problem of removing from positions of power repressive officers, especially in Greece...
...The resignation of Nixon is a good in itself...
...But if "the system works" in the sense that ways were found to expel a man from the presidency who, by elementary moral standards, should never have been there at all, that does not warrant the self-congratulation that followed his resignation...
...Yes, it works...
...In both countries, this had to do with foreign policy: the Portuguese empire and the Cyprus disaster...
...It should also put an end to the sentimentalism about "the new Gerry," which swept the country for a few weeks...
...If the "European community" were what its advertisers claim it to be, it would now proceed to offer substantial help at both ends of the continent in order to strengthen the democratic base of Europe...
...Not by chance do Portugal and Greece lack strong liberal and/or social democratic movements offering viable democratic alternatives to the authoritarians of both extremes...
...Gerry Ford may well be an honest man, but his policies remain those of the mindless right, chipping away at the edges of the welfare state and proposing that the burdens of inflation be borne mainly by the workers and the poor...
...and in the televised hearings of the House Judiciary Committee there were some voices trying to think the problem through, clearly concerned with the preservation of democratic norms...
...The liberal-left has advanced concrete pro posals, some in the pages of this journal and others elsewhere...
...What new procedures are to be built into the political system, so that the domination of big money can be—not removed, since that is impossible in a capitalist society— but at least held in check a little...
...The wounds of Watergate and all it represents cannot be healed until properly treated...
...Will the array of intellectuals who supported Nixon as the candidate of "prudence" now contribute to the upkeep of the New York Times another ad offering retrospective thoughts...
...There comes a point when a government must leave the scene, not because, as Nixon said in his •dishonest speech of resignation, it has lost its political "base" but because it no longer commands the elementary moral authority, which, short of terror, is the premise of government...
...It's the relationship between the two possibilities that seems intriguing...
...But we cer tainly would not deny that this represents a serious deformation of democratic norms...
...The collapse of the Portuguese and Greek juntas, good news intrinsically, raises fascinating problems...
...And perhaps most important: how was it possible, what failures in our society enabled a cheap-jack like Richard Nixon, whose past record was a matter of public knowledge, to gain the Republican nomination and then the presidency...
...A generous suggestion for heading such an ad: What Price Prudence Now...
...These lines were written before Pres...
...There ought to be some looking-back at political choices...
...Why did the Congress show itself to be so supine over the last period—so that the issue of Nixon's unsanctioned invasion of Cambodia seemed to require an evasion by the House Judiciary Committee on the ground that, if illegal, the invasion should have been challenged by the Congress immediately...
...Do George Meany and all the meanies still think it was right to be "neutral" in 1972...
...A "mere accident"?' We doubt it...
...There is something ironic in the sight of a country congratulating itself that it has a few reflective men in its Congress, but let that pass...
...Now the time has come to formulate them more sharply and to drama tize them, so as to resume political debate and move us beyond, while not forgetting, the shame and miseries of the last few years...
...but how well does it work...
...It also means that, since the Democrats can not coast into the coming congressional elec tions by simply chanting "Watergate," concrete proposals must now be forthcoming for cop ing with the economic crisis...
...But of all this, more next time...
...Haven't recent events done anything to shake their complacence...
...The change of guard in the White House has been hailed as evidence that "the system works...
...When all is said and done, and one remembers the blood that accompanies political successions in other countries, there was something impressive about the recent American events...
...Questions remain to be probed, facts discovered, judgments considered...
...What apparently happened, both in Portugal and Greece, was the worsening of an internal crisis among the men in power and, still more, a recognition within the bourgeoisie, the larger ranks of officers, and segments of the middle class that the military cliques in power had reached a point of utter incapacity...
...The notion that advertising methods in political campaigns render democ racy a fraud, a mere charade manipulated by slicksters, is one that we reject...
...Difficult problems remain: How was it possible for so great an extralegal concentration of power to occur within and near the executive branch, from the White House to the CIA...
...The rhetoric at the moment I write these notes (it may have faded by the time you read them) is that we must now "heal the wounds...
...Not so fast...
...The public exposure, though by no means complete as yet, took on a merciless character...
...P.S...
...The whole story isn't out yet, and it ought to be...
Vol. 21 • September 1974 • No. 4
