How Liberals Survive in Washington

...Their stage army is constantly marching under new banners...

...Others see it as a local manifestation of the Zeitgeist...

...Memoranda and whole passages of speeches pour in upon the candidates, and happy is the Washington hand who hears one of his phrases on a nation-wide telecast...

...None of them, of course, comes anywhere near the power and wealth of the business lobbies (particularly the oil companies and airlines...

...If the difference must be put in a phrase, it is the difference between positive and negative government...

...To this extent, there is a modicum of validity to the dark suspicions many Neanderthal Senators harbor about the persistence of a liberal underground on the government payroll...

...and there are others, not so liberal, who appreciate the ideas, well-turned phrases, and ghost-written articles that can make a rising politician well known...

...Nevertheless, 1953 did make a real difference in the Washington atmosphere...

...If the resources are available, they will open an office...

...After 1953 the ocean was hardly visible...

...Thus, the increasing political impact of civil rights legislation made it possible, at the beginning of this year, to organize a fight against the filibuster rules in the Senate which rallied 38 votes in that august body, and gave the Southerners the worst fright they have had in a generation...

...Nothing has replaced the White House as the sort of sounding-board which can command front-page headlines at will...

...Pamphlets will be published, testimony at Congressional hearings organized...

...Some, indeed, appear to have been won to Senator Lyndon Johnson's view that the only causes worth pushing are those upon which both conservative and liberal Democrats can be united...

...What remains of the New Deal within the government is still capable of putting forth fresh shoots, and some of them eventually appear in the rhetoric, if not in the performance, of the Administration...

...It is true that FDR himself ostentatiously dismissed "Dr...

...The application of atomic energy to peacetime purposes is attracting particular attention, both on its own merits and because of the opportunity it offers for frontal attack upon the oil and power lobbies...

...Without it, much of the press seems like a paper curtain, impervious to the liberal case...

...Still others left in disgust...

...Somewhat less economically secure, but often giving more scope to individual initiative, are the "do-good" organizations which have established beach-heads in the capital...

...Some woud like to leave, but find themselves deeply rooted in the community and its distinctive, somewhat easy-going way of life...

...There are even a substantial number who have taken up farming, not so much to make a living as in the reasonable expectation that the expansion of government (and hence of Washington) will multiply the value of their land...

...The majority, it is clear, will dig in for at least another four years...

...and that the difference between the two parties in Congress, hardly discernible at present, was never very wide or deep...

...In spite of their professional optimism (and their private hopes that somehow things might turn out differently) most liberals had anticipated the result, and discounted it in advance...

...For this, some people blame the drying up of the flow of facts and ideas from the government depart ments-it being assumed that, in an increasingly complex world, the day when pen and paper are adequate for creative thought has passed, and ac cess to the ample resources of govern ment-financed research is essential...

...No wonder a pervasive day-dream is that of running for Congress oneself, editing one's own newspaper, in some way becoming No...

...Since poli tics has the manic-depressive quality of an afternoon at the racetrack, a local victory, a favorable public opin ion poll, even a well-attended conven tion tend to promote a temporary state of euphoria...

...but all, to a greater or lesser degree, give their staff members the feeling that they do, or might, have some perceptible effect upon the course of events...

...The emphasis tends to be very much upon what is achievable, rather than on maximum objectives...

...But-such is the charm of this singular city-many of them are already feeling the pangs of removal...

...SOMETIMES, on particular subjects, they can take the offensive...

...One day it may come, one day the exiles may return to power, one day Washington may again be the center of events rather than a sleepy and over-grown Southern town...

...The hardening of Washington's arteries started long before 1953...

...Those who happen to be lawyers are, of course, the most affluent, because the demand for lawyerlobbyists seems insatiable...

...THE MORE ACTIVE remnants of the New Deal survive outside the government...

...Last year, the labor lobbyists gave first place to securing a minimum wage of $1.00 from Congress, rather than the 900 the Administration favored...

...They are somewhat encouraged that the high tide of anti-intellectualism is passed, that even the Republicans are looking for "egghead" supporters...

...It was left for the Eisenhower Administration to take apparent pride in not doing, or even proposing, things...

...It is true that no new social legislation had been enacted since the conservative bipartisan coalition gained control of Congress in 1938...

...IN THE ENTHUSIASM Of their 1952 victory, some conservative Republicans envisaged a mass migration from Washington of all government employees tinged with liberalism...

...It is frustrating to be a stagehand behind the scenes rather than the actor upon whom the limelight plays...

...ON THE WHOLE, the shock of defeat was less numbing in 1956 than in 1952...

...Some write the planks of the party platform, then gnash their teeth as the politicians trifle with their carefully chiseled phrases...

...A good percentage of liberal Senators and Congressmen still welcome liberals on their staffs...

...Hence the increasing emphasis upon public relations techniques, and the priority they have come to command in organization budgets...

...Until then, life for the capital's liberal intellectuals, in contrast to the bustling, money-seeking world about them, has something of the dreamlike quality of a prolonged intermission between two heart-beats...

...As the initially long list of "possibles" sifts down to the short list of "availables," there is a tremendous amount of jostling to get close to the front-runners...

...For example, a zealous spokesman of the Food and Agricultural Organization (a specialized agency of the UN) sought to promote its interest by telling Senators and Congressmen that the UN Expanded Technical Assistance Program was infiltrated with Communists...

...Winthe-War...

...Those interested in a particular subject (for example, aid to the peoples of the under-developed areas) will begin by meeting for lunch...

...Nothing, of course, troubles the stagnant waters so deeply as the ap proach of a Presidential campaign...

...Under Roosevelt and Truman, ideas were constantly bubbling upward through the bureaucracy...

...Others succumbed to the loyalty-security dragnet...

...On the ritual occasions when they gather at a banquet (the seating is a problem, because even among exiles some are clefinitely more equal than others) they can put on quite an impressive show, 252 and reinforce their confidence that some day they will return to power...

...There are still a great many liberals, new and old, working for the government-in spite of the diligent efforts of the Republican National Committee...

...Madison Avenue seems to require a surface polish and a degree of competitiveness which the old Washington hand does not possess (government is, after all, one of the most old-fashioned of American professions...

...The road back to the campus is not attractive, although many have taken it...

...What, then, has been happening to the New Dealers of yesteryear-the bright young men who arrived in the capital with nothing but their Ph.D.'s, their battered flivvers, and their ideas for changing the world...

...Already they are talking of new Presidential candidates, new means (for instance, the Madison Avenue techniques which are thought to have won _for Eisenhower his unquestioning acceptance as a "father image") to pierce the prevailing fog...

...Others have joined the staffs of newly-elected governors, preferring to take their part in modest advances at the state level rather than be confined to holding actions at the national...

...Some are finding opportunities abroad...

...Once the choice is made, the same people move en masse into the campaign headquarters of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates and the expanded offices of the Democratic National Committee...

...In present circumstances, these efforts tend mostly to be rear-guard actions, aimed at forestalling disastrous defeats...

...1 instead of No...

...So the time passes among the castaways on this beach, all of them scanning the horizon for the long-awaited turn of the tide...

...Here and there one of the new rulers has realized that it is easier to make a name for oneself by doing things than by keeping them from being done (the sad example of Mrs...

...Usually, their ambitions are limited to survival...

...Some have left, but more have remained...

...Other issues, Iike Federal aid to schools, are being pushed in the hope that they may somehow reach and stir suburbia, defined by most political geographers as the dead center of the present political apathy...

...The well-conceived gimmick, the aptly turned phrase may pierce the silence...

...One by one, people are pulling up stakes...

...There are the Congressional staffs, which have expanded greatly in size...

...Others have gone into private business having little or no relation to their previous government employment...

...They will give themselves a collective name, raise money, hold a conference to attract public attention...

...This opened it to damaging attack, and the liberals had to mobilize their forces quickly (and, as it turned out, effectively) to prevent US support for UN technical assistance from being drastically reduced...

...New issues are being canvasseddisarmament, a massive attack upon the new problems of urban living, Federal grants-in-aid to the states and the local governments so as increasingly to supplant their regressive systems of taxation with the more progressive Federal system...

...While they begin by bringing much of their staff with them, the vacancies tend to be filled from Washington it self, both because competent people are on hand and because they already know their way around...

...Except when asked by his superiors, the surviving liberal bureaucrat tends to keep his ideas to himself...

...Others are locked in the proverbially smoke-filled rooms with the king-makers...

...Over four years have passed since then, but the change has not come...

...Oveta Culp Hobby may have been a salutary one...

...Quite a few people had said last year that they would not stick out a further four years of Eisenhower in Washington, particularly if it seems likely to be followed by four or more years of Nixon...

...Many liberals were "riffed," i.e., fired as part of the "reduction in force" ordered by the Eisenhower Administration in its early days...

...Others simply blame Eisenhower, and the degree to which his relaxed atti tude toward his duties has induced a similar relaxation among his fellow countrymen...

...They are not quite a "government in exile," as some observers call them, but they partake of something of its quality...

...There was, moreover, some consolation in the Congressional elections, which brought to Washington some fresh recruits for the small and often battle-weary band of liberals in the Senate and the House...

...Some-the more eminent, with a following, contacts, a talent for "working in and out" of the government agencies-have set up as consultants, on every conceivable subject and for every conceivable employer, including clients whom they might have rejected in more fortunate days...

...There were other bureaucrats who could at least recognize someone else's new ideas...

...But this has not happened...

...There are heretics, however, who insist that the real problem is not the lack of new ideas but the impossibility of putting old ones into effect, or even of communicating them...

...Of the reality of the change there can be no doubt...

...The staffs of Congressional Committees have also grown in size and competence, and there is a steady demand for expert knowledge...

...At its worst, the Truman Administration kept proposing new programs, even if it was unable or unwilling to put them into effect...

...Now that the McCarthyite terror has passed and fresh victims of the loyalty test are infrequent, they are breathing somewhat more easily...

...that, despite his genuine sympathy for their objectives, President Truman was less at ease with liberal intellectuals than FDR in the yeasty New Deal days...

...They feel little of that alienation from politics which characterizes most American intellectuals-for it is their preferred environment, their way of life...

...Nevertheless, a defeat is a defeat, and the political dictum that only once in a generation are the American people in a mood to move forward is being quoted with increasing frequency...

...If they live in the suburbs, they have in many cases changed their registration from Democratic to Republican-a conversion occasionally genuine, arising from age or from a willingness to take the professions of "modern Republicanism" at something like face value...

...Wherever they have found refuge, these people generally know one another, attend each other's cocktail parties, take in each other's intellectual washing...

...Still, the idea that the government exists to do something dies hard...

...2. People in Washington are constant ly telling each other that new ideas are needed-that the old ones can no longer disturb the profound apathy which has descended upon the politi cal scene...

...When the convention comes, the en tire government-in-exile turns out for it...

...Liberals faced the problem of remaining in Washington and still making a living...

...During recent years, more and more trade unions have moved their national headquarters to Washington...

...Many of its most able and intelligent practitioners have to accept a professional anonymity...

...New Deal" and called in "Dr...

...In most Committees, even the patronage appointees are expected to know their jobs...

...They shift, with relative facility and frequency, from one job to another...

...But a more natural habitat for the experienced bureaucrat is a new bureaucracyand there are some burgeoning ones in the capital...

...Like all governments-in-exile, Wash ington's liberal intellectuals live in the hope of a restoration...

...If they are assistants to Senators or Congressmen, it is their chiefs who receive public credit for their ideas and their work-so also in the trade unions...

...It is a life of constant and strenuous activity, but it has, of course, its occupational malaises...

...It's time for a change...

...Others still get a vicarious thrill out of the proximity of power, even if it is wielded-or limply dangled-from other hands...

...Before 1953 the tide was run ning out, but there was still a feeling that it might turn soon...

...In the cubicles of Government offices there were people giving earnest study to the nation's problems, and every once in a while coming up with new and fresh ideas...

...Even when asked, he expresses them in guarded language, and is resigned to seeing them stifled in apathy and inertia...

...Anyone with promise can acquire some volunteer helpers to feed him ideas, place him on the right rostrums, even travel about the hinterland drumming up support for him...

...Early in 1953, so a Washington fable goes, a blackboard in one of the government office buildings was discovered bearing the chalked observation: "The Republicans have been in long enough...

...Years before the national convention, people are grouping themselves behind the various "possibles...