ON POLITICS AND CHARACTER
P., S.
Before Tom Hayden's unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic senatorial nomination in California is quite forgotten, a comment is in order. Running against an ineffectual opponent,...
...But then, if he claims to be a serious political person, he has an obligation to explain to his friends and followers why he has changed on one thing and not another...
...His sentence about "the radicalism of the 1960's" becoming "the common sense of the 1970's" is all very well as a catchphrase, but (a) it's not true and (b) it's not serious...
...Usually, with greater or lesser candor, we acknowledge these changes and offer explanations, rationalizations, excuses...
...the politics of authoritarianism (his defense of the North Vietnamese Communist regime...
...Is he any 434 different...
...Running against an ineffectual opponent, Hayden received 1.2 million votes, an impressive showing...
...He quotes, with grim satisfaction, a Fresno policeman as saying: "You're going to get a lot of votes from people who hated you a few years ago...
...to intervene...
...Tom Hayden, Op Ed Page, New York Times, July 12, 1976...
...In what respect...
...Of course, certainly...
...politics: he even wears suits—oh, the shame of it...
...Should we therefore have brushed aside the differences we had with Hayden when he was a spokesman for the New Left in the late 1960s...
...Remember what he stood for: the politics of "confrontation" ("up against the wall, mother...
...But perhaps more important than the specific content of his politics is the way he goes about making changes...
...But that's not the case with Hayden...
...Still, there's generally been some relationship between past and present thinking...
...And Tom Hayden—he wasn't wrong...
...the politics of violence (his article in the New York Review on Newark riots...
...All of us have looked back upon formerly held views with a sense of wonderment or embarrassment...
...Or consider Vietnam...
...Our guess is that a good deal of the 1960s remains in Hayden's politics, but that the leftauthoritarian underlay is for the time being kept covered...
...He has not behaved like a responsible, democratic figure who tries to explain to friends and followers why certain changes are required...
...Well, Hayden seems to have changed with regard to U.S...
...Does he still think in that style of selfrighteous, half-suppressed fanaticism that, together with his unquestioned talents, characterized him in the late 1960s...
...That's enough to make socialists and liberals profoundly suspicious...
...Hayden didn't merely, like many of us opposed to the war, believe that it was wrong for the U.S...
...We were wrong and misled...
...With what scorn Hayden attacked Dissent editors for advocating something so "reformist," so "compromising," as working in the Democratic party...
...None but the most flea-bitten sectarian has not changed political positions over the years...
...435...
...The extent to which he satisfies these fraternal and democratic requirements is more important, finally, than the "correctness" of anything he may be saying at the moment, or just for a moment...
...Is it true that "the radicalism of the 1960's is fast becoming the common sense of the 1970's...
...Many of the things he said during his campaign were the kind of things liberals and socialists have been saying...
...he actively preferred, championed a victory of the Communist regime in Hanoi...
...With regard to left-authoritarian regimes, he may be somewhat silent these days, but as far as we know he has not changed...
...In fact, Hayden insists upon affirming that, in some ways, he's still the same fellow he was seven or eight years ago...
...How...
...Doesn't a man have a right to change on some things and not on others...
...All he says is, "times are different...
...Not for that Hayden the messy devices of "coalition politics...
...A leader speaking in the name of a better world has, at the least, the obligation to tell us honestly and fully why he has changed his ideas...
...1 for one wouldn't have voted for Hayden if I lived in California—even if his speeches were often close to what democratic socialists believe...
...Otherwise, he is behaving precisely like the manipulative leader whose existence Hayden used to say he deplored...
Vol. 23 • September 1976 • No. 4
