The Politics of "Moderation"
H., I.
The last three months of 1955 were marked by one dominant event: the collapse of the "Geneva spirit," at least until expediency requires its resurrection, and a return to the cold war with...
...But Khrushchev and Bulganin, who seem utterly unimpressed by the conclusion of the liberal intellectuals that "the age of ideology" is over, keep hammering away at their simple, demagogic but effective ideological themes...
...No wonder that, as Theodore White reports in Colliers of Oct...
...What has collapsed is a foreign policy based on a failure to understand the dynamics of the modern world—a failure that has deep roots in class psychology, and not merely in individual obtuseness...
...24, 1955...
...The beginnings of an "economic aid" policy by the Russians with which they mean to compete against the U.S.—a policy that in Burma has already met with a certain success...
...27, 1955, "The alchemy of time has transformed several Dixie states from bitter Stevenson enemies to a potent bloc of support...
...and a six-party system in which both formal parties contain a left, right and center with the moderates coalescing to neutralize any form of extremism...
...And especially, nonsense about Adlai Stevenson, The Man with the Brooks Brothers Speech...
...well...
...He praises "moderation" and when Secretary Dulles praises him for stressing "moderation," he praises Secretary Dulles...
...CSM, Nov...
...Because he so neatly typifies that mood of somewhat weary accommodation to things as they are, with a strand of aspiration toward a new manner of elegance, and a still present fondness for the rhetoric of elevated "responsibility...
...The remarkably successful tour of Khrushchev and Bulganin in Asia, together with the even more remarkably obtuse statement of Secretary Dulles in support of Portuguese imperialism...
...Those who wonder about the "magic" of Russian foreign policy simply fail to understand that the one sure "secret weapon" of Russian policy is the predictable responses of the State Department...
...All the electoral rhetoric notwithstanding, the two parties keep drawing close to one another, the distinction between liberal and conservative becomes increasingly hard to preserve, and the endlessly publicized virtues of the two-foursix party system in the United States proves to be little more than a choice among "moderate" custodians of the war economy and our limping foreign policy...
...Thus in terms of 1948 dollars the number of families in this category dropped only to 9,400,000...
...15, 1955), James Reston puts the matter with his usual frankness...
...Allan Nevins above...
...and along these lines it is interesting to speculate on Joseph Harsch's theory (CSM, Nov...
...Allan Nevins, with a complacence not at all exceptional, writes (in the New Leader, Dec...
...Tentative but significant reestablishment of cordial relations between Yugoslavia and Russia...
...The sudden and apparently deep penetration of Russian diplomacy in the Near East...
...Hardly so...
...A further deterioration of the U.S...
...a four-party system with each party so splendidly divided that undemocratic discipline cannot be forced upon it...
...support of Chiang Kaishek, Syngman Rhee and their like is merely an outer symptom, too easily confused by certain liberals with the inner disease—is shared by Republicans and Democrats alike...
...19, 1955)—a very cynical theory —that the possibilities for a detente opened at Geneva were so extreme that both power blocs felt a need to withdraw into the more familiar postures of recalcitrance...
...Here are a few indices: • A considerable advantage recently won by the Communist Party in Indonesia's elections...
...The failure of U.S...
...The establishment, with consequences not yet measured, of diplomatic relations between the Adenauer regime and Russia...
...policy...
...In our next issue we will offer an analysis of the present state of French politics...
...And the increasing coalescence between the Republicans and Democrats—hailed by so many emptyheads as a sign of national "maturity"— does nothing whatever to reassure the Asians or the Africans that there is any reason to expect a serious improvement in U.S...
...Or to Kefauver...
...Be it said to the credit of Arthur Schlesinger Jr...
...Oct...
...After all, the Portuguese constitution includes Goa as a province...
...And so long as an intelligent writer like Joseph Harsch, the foreign expert of the Christian Science Monitor, can congratulate (November 3, 1955) Secretary Dulles for creating an alliance that reaches to Tito on the one hand and Franco on the other— this, Harsch feels, is proof that we are not taken in by mere ideologies —there is little to hope for from liberal criticism...
...but if it isn't a matter of political standpoint, why should liberals still find in Stevenson an image of the hero...
...That Khrushchev and Bulganin are utterly demagogic in their Asian speechmaking, that their behavior in India constitutes a gross example of the very imperialist interventionism they repeatedly denounced, is obvious —and beside the point...
...Indeed, the remarkable admission by Dean Acheson in his recent book that the "excesses" of the Eisenhower administration in regard to civil liberties can be traced back to the policies of the Truman administration should be a prod to Truman's Secretary of the Interior to acknowledge that the failures of the Republican administration in foreign policy are intimately related to, even if also at times caricatures of, the course first taken by the Truman administration...
...Well aware that the winds blow soft these days, he calls himself a liberal-conservative (or is it conservativeliberal...
...So long as the United States con tinues to be regarded, in the eyes of the world, as a center of "restorationist" policies, as a center of conservatism and social inertia, the crisis in foreign policy will continue...
...A barrage of publicity has accompanied Stevenson's candidacy...
...But if we are blessed with such diversity of political organization, what meaning does it have at a time when the area of political choice keeps narrowing down...
...And this failure in political imagination— of which U.S...
...At home, the most important event of the quarter, though hardly noticed, was the announcement of the Joint Congressional Committee on the Economic Report that from 1948 to 1954 "the proportion of families with money income under $2,000 dropped from 25 percent to 20 percent, or in numbers, from 9,600,000 to 8,300,000...
...policy in its long-range and fundamental aspects is calculated to reinforce the appeal of their demagogy in Asia...
...high administration sources are "seriously disturbed" because "events are running steadily against the administration's policy in Germany .. . (There is] a deterioration of U.S, influence in Southeast Asia and the Middle East," and it is felt by unnamed members of the Western bloc that the U.S...
...The last three months of 1955 were marked by one dominant event: the collapse of the "Geneva spirit," at least until expediency requires its resurrection, and a return to the cold war with the position of the West considerably weakened...
...ment, lived "at or below poverty levels" in 1954...
...and that, together with a few economic carrots and a bit of military pressure, continues to win victories for them...
...It is hardly an exaggeration to speak of a severe crisis in U.S...
...However, the value of the dollar dropped 12 percent in that period...
...Nor is this simply a matter of discovering that such puerile slogans as "Massive Retaliation" and "Unleash Chiang Kai-shek" have been proved to be empty...
...Were the above topics considered with a certain seriousness in the discussion of presidential candidates, a great deal of nonsense might be avoided...
...In the new view, Stevenson seems much more palatable than Harriman, whom they think of as a Tammany-controlled radical...
...Of course, businessmen are generally more realistic than academicians, and there is more to be learned from the statement made by Louis Wolfson to the Montgomery Ward stockholders—"1 assure you that just as long as there is a Cold War the firm will prosper" —than from cartons of textbooks on politics...
...While we would be the first to agree that Dulles' statement on Goa was a piece of stupidity hardly paralleled in the Christian era, it should be added that it is the kind of stupidity that has its sources in an ingrained imperialistic outlook: Dulles finds it natural that Portugal should defend its "rights" in Goa, and can not understand why India creates such a furor about a small strip of land...
...Poverty Amidst Plenty...
...10, 1955...
...In other words, Stevenson understands that the best, or easiest, way to get Fj the Democratic nomination is to present himself as a Democratic equivalent of Ike— more literate, more intelligent, but with policies that are essentially indistinguishable...
...position in Germany...
...policy to take into account the dynamics of the modern world—the fundamental though intermittent impulse to profound social change, the deep-rooted hostility felt by the whole Asian-African world toward the Western powers, the thirst shared by all the "underdeveloped" countries for a rapid industrialization as a prerequisite to improved living standards—this failure flows not merely from Republican parsimoniousness with foreign aid funds...
...Political scientists spend much of their time—they have recently been joined by sophisticated liberals, a kindly name for ex-radicals—in justifying the two-party system...
...and disastrous...
...It is very possible, of course, that some resumption of the "Geneva spirit" may yet take place...
...Consider the quite remarkable speech made by Gabriel Hauge, Administrative Assistant to President Eisenhower, in which he formally seals the pact between the not very liberal conservatives and the increasingly conservative liberals...
...12, 1955) that "no matter who is elected, we shall continue to maintain in the domestic and, above all, the foreign field a set of policies which have remained fairly identical under Truman and Eisenhower...
...foreign policy...
...I. H. DISSENT was going on the press when the French elections were held...
...They define it as a one-party system, which shows the cohesiveness of American society...
...CSM, Oct...
...But whatever may happen, the fundamental drift of things remains as before: Stalinism, stopped for a time in Europe, continues to register appalling victories almost everywhere else, and the Western powers, be it because of class rigidity or mere stupidity (and after a time, the difference is hard to make out), prove unable to cope with these victories...
...The New York Post has called upon Liberal Party members in New York State to drop this last feeble symbol of independent politics and register in the Democratic primaries, since the outcome of the putative battle between Stevenson and Harriman "can make political history...
...without a welfare state...
...that he, almost alone among the liberals, has put the issue squarely: "What kind of prosperity is it when farm income drops persistently, when 22 per cent of all American families have incomes of less than $2,000, when prosperity itself is based on the greatest expansion of consumer credit in our history...
...But then Stevenson becomes little more than an Eisenhower for the professional classes...
...According to the Business Men's Council of the ADA, about 30,000,000 Americans, despite prosperity and full employ...
...Hauge tells us that the Eisenhower conservative is determined to preserve all the social legislation passed by the New Deal...
...NY Times, Oct...
...29, 1955...
...The New Republic has once more begun quoting everything Stevenson says...
...has lost the gamble to arm and unite Germany within the North Atlantic Treaty alliance...
...that he desires "a welfare society...
...Can it be said that he is more liberal than they...
...But from a liberal point of view, even from an ordinary ADA point of view, why is Stevenson preferable to Harriman...
...Writing in the New York Times (Nov...
...since Stevenson himself does not try to deceive his ADA friends...
...Point Four, valuable as it may be, cannot be a substitute for a coherent political policy in regard to large areas of the world...
...14, 1955) Moderate Candidates...
...What matters is that U.S...
...that the Eisenhower conservative recognizes the need for "a larger role for government in many areas as economic interdependence and urban industrialized society have grown...
...And there we are...
...True enough...
Vol. 3 • January 1956 • No. 1
