The Spectacle is Over
Rosenberg, Bernard
To nobody's surprise, the amiable man of limited educability and his venomous protege won themselves a thumping victory. Ike, the charismatic non-leader, "manifested" himself here and...
...By far, because of "the separateness of forty eight Republican and Democratic parties, each walled off behind state boundaries...
...Seaton's predecessor, Interior Secretary McKay addressing the U.S...
...Throughout the Northwest advocates of public power like Senator Morse won on this issue alone...
...What, more parties than in France...
...Nevertheless, one fact stands out: Negroes and those who care about them will not continue to be reliable Democrats...
...Where Republicans fared well, other forces were at work...
...By now an impressive Iist of witticisms and apercus uttered by the President and his official family could be assembled...
...He goes on: Therefore, we are going to try our best to preserve that free enterprise and put all of these problems in the hands of localities and the private enterprise of states [the what?—B...
...And it provided his party with an issue...
...It seems that the President's advisers were casting about for a gimmick like the one that had clinched Ike's victory in 1952...
...Obviously he could not go to Korea again...
...Hardly anything was said on the subject of civil rights...
...For some time the Democrats thought they had discovered one chink in Ike's armor...
...This, at least is the most plausible reconstruction of a mystifying episode...
...Why should politicians be agitated about them...
...One hears no more wild public talk about repeal...
...Regardless of their voting record, they all get letters of warm commendation from the President, and many receive personal bubble - top visits to bolster them...
...and thirdly, in this dispersion of power...
...Chamber of Commerce: "We're in the saddle as an Administration representing business and industry...
...However profound, the statement is abstract...
...October 12, 1954, as reported in the Baltimore Sun, Secretary of Labor Mitchell...
...These changes are no doubt complicated...
...While this pressure was brought to bear on a matter that really engaged the Administration, another, quite minor matter, the "President's" school aid bill, was laid quietly to rest...
...Therefore, the unbeatable Eisenhower carried fewer members of his party with him than any other winning President in a hundred years...
...The Republicans said, "A vote for Stevenson is a vote for Eastland...
...First he said, "We believe that it is free enterprise that has brought these blessings to America...
...The NAACP leader, Roy Wilkins, has pointed out that this time the Southern Negro vote was proportionately more Republican than the Northern Negro vote...
...In the first flush of victory, Ike held a press conference and made an extended statement on the meaning of modern Republicanism that deserves careful study...
...On November 8, Marquis Childs made an original contribution to political science...
...We now know that such instruments will always be at our disposal, without the labor party that is so sorely needed in America or with it...
...If these iniquities from the Roosevelt-Truman era are ever to be wiped out, it will not be on account of initiative exercised from the White House or from Capitol Hill, but simply because they all involve grave constitutional questions on which the Supreme Court may decide to pass...
...What happened next is not entirely clear...
...Ten days after the election, when he had had time to think over its deeper significance, Interior Secretary Seaton explained in Salt Lake City, "If there is anything basically wrong with the Eisenhower concept of water and power development it's a question of salesmanship rather than right' or Justice...
...I do not think we would want it different...
...Democrats were expressing deep alarm— none more so than Adlai who started out in good voice on this theme—over the "irresponsible" reduction in our air force and in the size of our standing army...
...So now we have both Dickie and Eastland...
...May 23, 1956, the capstone to all this, Presidential Assistant Howard Pyle's own little gem: "The right to suffer is one of the joys of a free society...
...April 24, 1953, Under-Secretary of Agriculture True Morse: "Price support programs tend to keep the inefficient farmer in business instead of allowing the 'normal healthy adjustment' that should take place in agriculture...
...The shabby spectacle is over...
...The specific image is apparently irrelevant...
...The phrase, "these blessings," happens to have no antecedent in his statement, and it would be captious to search for one in any of Eisenhower's valuable off-the-cuff comments...
...Did he have to dine with Talmadge...
...its features, though always radiant, are infinitely plastic...
...Concretely, a modern or Eisenhower Republican has been defined as any Republican running for office...
...This position, on top of his conciliatory attitude at Geneva, even endeared him to an odd trio of supporters: Henry Wallace, Harry Bridges and I. F. Stone (the "Eisenhower Marxist" who later defected to Stevenson...
...The situation gave Senator Symington, himself a Presidential aspirant, material enough for the electrifying speech he delivered a hundred times in the last session of Congress...
...Was it necessary to fraternize with the ex-Governor, now, the Supreme Court help us, Senator from Georgia...
...a relatively big unemployment total...
...January 29, 1953, Mr...
...As a testament of unwillingness to participate in injustice, it is very much alive all the way from Budapest to Montgomery, Alabama...
...Doris Fleeson sums up part of the shift, "The city revolt affected Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Louisville, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, Boston, St...
...To the superficial observer this would suggest a repudiation of the Eisenhower alliance with private utilities...
...It now appears that no combination of circumstances could have stopped Eisenhower from being re-elected...
...The Smith Act, the Internal Security Act, the McCarran-Walter Act—a part of chat ]arl;er legacy which also includes Taft-Hartley—all this legislatian has been institutionalized...
...For instance, in West Virginia, a grotesque racist, Chapman Revercomb, who failed to secure Tom Dewey's endorsement in 1948, came out of eclipse and was returned to the Senate...
...Ike soothes the people as a prince of peace—and thrills them to the point of paroxysm when he brings not peace but a sword...
...Let us note a few: • May 24, 1956, Mr...
...The personal magnetism of a man who can turn any political condition to advantage is an awesome thing, and widespread worship attendant upon it deserves to be called Ikenology...
...is a good thing, a sign of economic health and progress...
...In his syndicated column Childs indicated that we do not have a one party system or a two party system or a six party system, as various observers have contended, but rather that there exists in the U.S...
...We may have to wait for the ghost of an inarticulate memoirist to supply us with details...
...a ninety-six party system...
...Not that Ike is unconcerned with repealing much of the New Deal...
...R.] wherever we can, because it happens that the great difference, as I see it, between myself and people of a philosophy that believes in centralized government, is that I believe to have this free enterprise healthy, you must have, first, integrity in your fiscal operations of the Government...
...To be sure, the Vegetarian Party got its herbivores on many ballots, alongside the Pig Party's carnivores (they probably canceled each other out), and the Vegetarian Party's Vice-Presidential candidate declared with justice that his was the most radical group in the field since it "went to the roots of matters...
...It is not without irony—or tragedy—that Southern Negroes should be forced to go Republican...
...Urban centers and the South, both securely Democratic in an earlier day, switched to Ike and, in several cases, to his supporters...
...Ike remained adamant in his conviction that the world could be blown up with fewer wings in the Air Force, and with the army largely converted into an elite guard of technicians to guide intercontinental ballistic missiles...
...THERE WERE other curiosities...
...Therefore, Adlai who had been bitter about military cuts, now adopted the administration point of view, favoring a small establishment` equipped with modern atomic weapons...
...However, several Washington correspondents provide a general outline...
...It takes an ingenious electoral system to achieve such results...
...There are other, more important forms of political action, and other, more relevant traditions in this country...
...The quetion arises: did Adlai Stevenson, darling of the ADA, have to spend most of his time between elections mending Southern fences...
...Meanwhile, we reserve the right to keep laughing...
...second, you must preserve a sound dollar or all our plans for Social Security and pensions for the aged fall by the wayside, they are no good...
...a vice-president in charge of sales then decided that his candidate should steal Ike's thunder...
...Civil disobedience spread from Concord to the minds of Tolstoy and Gandhi...
...While fantastic eruptions were taking place in other parts of the world, the United States continued to behave predictably, if somewhat peculiarly...
...Does it pay, even from the viewpoint of "practical" politics, to weasel on civil rights...
...It was nearly enough to make this socialist regret that he had not reg istered so that he could thereafter master the complexities of write-in voting to write-in even an uncounted vote for Darlington Hoopes...
...It is part and parcel of our American way of life...
...WE LEAVE a precinct by precinct accounting to the pollsters...
...He was a sure thing in prosperity or depression, peace or war, and one almost feels, dead or alive...
...Ninety six parties...
...but he could propose to end the draft, and he could offer to stop H bomb experiments...
...The Administration promised to cut back on military expenditures, and actually did so...
...Its ineffable Secretary of Defense was eloquently threatening to go even farther in the same direction...
...Louis, New Orleans and lesser known but important industrial citadels in North Carolina, West Virginia and Tennessee...
...Nor is this an isolated expression of wisdom...
...Charisma cannot be transmitted from the hero to those who live in his shadow...
...And they were right...
...To nobody's surprise, the amiable man of limited educability and his venomous protege won themselves a thumping victory...
...Not to be outdone by his team the President is quite capable of dazzling us with his own pyrotechnics...
...It improves the digestion...
...Now, that, at home, as I see it, represents modern Republicanism...
...Its aftermath will discourage only those who chronicaIIy put too much stock in elections...
...And Carmine DeSapio couldn't find it in his heart to let three decrepit Socialist parties whose collective vote would have totaled, shall we say, four thousand to remain on the New York State ballot...
...The Democrats said, "A vote for Ike is a vote Dickie...
...Ike, the charismatic non-leader, "manifested" himself here and there, brought his magic aura with him, smiled and tranquilized a restive people...
...Moreover, he built the last half of his campaign around ending the draft and the H bomb experiments— which provoked Ike and his idolators into opposing what they had all along intended to propose...
...His opponents, such as they were, claimed that he was jeopardizing American security...
...When it looked as if Congress might be derelict in not turning Hell's Canyon over to the Idaho Power Company, which was panting for it, two calls came from the White House staff to every member of the House and Senate...
...In vain...
...Once, and perhaps not by chance, the American environment produced a man like Henry David Thoreau...
...Seaton's Assistant Secretary, Felix Wormser: "There are business failures even in times of great prosperity...
...Democratic strategists somehow learned of the dramatic gesture Ike might make...
...They were right...
...But there were others, generated not so much by the good sense of voters who had suddenly become judicious ticket-splitters, as by the campaign itself...
Vol. 4 • January 1957 • No. 1
