Sidelights on the Election

...Amid all the prophecies of victory and defeat, it is risky to attempt a comprehensive analysis of the elections...

...Safely in the GOP bag are New Hampshire (2), Nebraska (2), South Dakota, Kansas and Maine, with Michigan, Idaho and California probably secure...

...The elimination of Dewey Short from the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee would itself almost be worth the loss of GOP control...

...Finally, the New York Herald Tribune is engaged in its regular bout with its conscience over supporting GOP candidates who detest everything the Trib stands for, and it may be predicted that its conscience will lose...

...The theory of the Presidency on which this rests is that the chief magistrate is a sort of chairman of the board of directors, a view which the late Chief Justice Vinson once characterized in an opinion as the "messenger boy" interpretation of the office...

...This is certainly the case in Iowa, where Democratic Senator Guy Gillette has an independent constituency which will support him while voting Republican elsewhere on the ballot...

...A Democratic victory this fall would not necessarily be a repudiation of President Eisenhower, but the latter has in effect announced that it would be, has put his stake in a game where the dice are loaded against him...

...Recall again the Congressional results of the 1952 election, when Ike-in-the-flesh led the ticket, and then consider what limited effect Ike-in-the-spirit can have...

...President Eisenhower could go to the nation at that time (I assume that he will run again) with the plea that he had been interrupted in the midst of his mission by obstreperous Democrats and only needed a GOP majority in Congress to finish the good work...

...The Maine election, traditional kick-off of the fall campaign, has come and gone, leaving in its wake a bitter argument over who really won...

...Thus, a 2-3-per-cent drop in Republican support could lead to a Democratic victory of imposing magnitude in the House...

...To take but two areas dear to the President's heart, military and foreign policy, it is patent that the Congressional committees charged with oversight of these areas would be more sympathetic to the Eisenhower view if dominated by Democrats than they are today...

...Each Congressman and Senator is therefore largely on his own this fall...

...In the five Congressional elections which have been held since 1944, only about 25 per cent of the seats in Congress have shifted from one party to the other once...

...The habits of a generation in the wilderness are hard to break, but if the Republicans are to convince the skeptical American electorate that they should control Congress, they must learn that denunciation is the weapon of the opposition, not of the party in power...

...Furthermore, a Democratic victory would strengthen the forces of parochialism within the party, would give great strength to Congressional leaders at the 1956 Democratic National Convention...

...Indeed, these elections are national only in the sense that they are nationwide, for there is no common denominator which holds together New York, Iowa and Alabama Democrats or Pennsylvania, California and Illinois Republicans...

...a Democratic Congress would not be controlled by New Dealers, whom the President might find obnoxious, but by Southern Democrats, who have little ideological quarrel with his "middle of the road" views...

...in Massachusetts, where Lev-erett Saltonstall consistently runs far ahead of the Republican ticket...

...The attempt this year is to turn the elections into a referendum on Presidential policies, with major emphasis being placed on such slogans as "Don't Let Ike Down," "Continue the Eisenhower Program" and "Support the President...

...The impact of the Democratic cries of "Big Business government" and "unemployment" remain to be seen, but certainly they will have considerable appeal in those states where in 1952 significant segments of the working class voted for Eisenhower...

...Any troubles that develop between 1954 and 1956 can be blamed on the Democratic Congress...

...This year, the big-city Democratic machines will operate without the disruptive problem of the Eisenhower name at the top of the ballot, and the Republicans, no matter how hard they try, will be unable to recreate the crusading atmosphere of 1952...

...In injecting his reputation and policies into the elections, President Eisenhower has taken a great risk...

...2. Unlike the Democrats in 1934, '38, '42, '46 and '50, the GOP has only a hair-trigger majority in both houses and cannot afford to lose any ground...

...Sidelights on the Election By John P. Roche Autumn is officially here, and, since this is an even-numbered year, the characteristic winds of September and October are being rapidly augmented by the rising cadence of political dispute...

...With respect to the Senate, the GOP is in a somewhat better position, but the big-city vote, if efficiently mobilized, can easily be decisive in Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio and New Jersey...

...The latter, for example, tend to underemphasize the needs of urban constituencies and the aspirations of the urban voter, as urban areas supply few Congressmen with the seniority necessary for attaining positions of power in Congress??committee chairmanships...

...The Republican party is undoubtedly in a difficult position in these competitive areas, as most of the marginal districts in the House are urban, suburban or a mixture of both, and are precisely those which were carried for their GOP incumbents by the Eisenhower magic...

...Thus, a Democratic victory this fall will tend to weaken the position of Adlai Stevenson within the party and strengthen the hand of such Presidential aspirants as Senator Symington and Senator Kefauver...

...It is even conceivable that the 1956 election could continue this balance by electing a Democratic Congress and re-electing Eisenhower...

...This has put New Jersey liberals in something of a predicament, for the cost of bailing Case out is the defeat of a New Deal Democrat ; yet, many have moral compunctions about leaving the courageous Republican, who denounced McCar-thyism at a time when most politicians were under the table and has consistently supported good causes, to the mercy of Hartley and his wolf-pack...

...3. Seldom in the history of off-year elections has the President intervened so actively in the Congressional campaign...

...there are no coattails to ride...

...With respect to the House of Representatives, nomination by the dominant party is equivalent to election in 75 to 80 per cent of the Congressional districts in the United States...

...It might be suggested that, to the extent the President identifies himself closely with the GOP, he weakens his national standing...

...Both these dubious candidates were defeated, but with the aid of the now extinct two-thirds rule, which encouraged favorite sons to stay in the running rather than allocate their votes on the second or third ballot...

...It is not altogether out of the question that President Eisenhower would get along admirably with a Democratic Congress, or, at any rate, that he would get along better with one of this orientation than with one controlled by the GOP...

...and in New Jersey, where Clifford Case is attempting to turn the Democratic left flank and has been deserted by right-wing Republicans as a consequence...

...The Republican majorities are threatened not only by the Democrats externally, but also by Republican dissidents internally...

...Off-year Federal elections are a triumph of parochialism...

...The vertical issues of 1952??Korea, Communism, corruption??seem to have led many voters from lower-income brackets to break their traditional allegiance to the Democrats, but these slogans have largely vanished from the political scene today...

...In short, while a GOP Congress is overpowered by isolationist or neo-isolationist committee chairmen (Jen-ner, McCarthy, Reed, Taber, Short, Velde, et al...

...But there are facts which should be taken into consideration by any realistic analyst: ? No matter how much talk there is about McCarthyism, Indo-China or Europe, the coming elections will be fought largely on local issues...

...But I see no reason why it could not materialize...

...In short, the decks are being cleared for the big Congressional fight, and the laws of libel and slander are moving into their biennial hibernation...

...The situation in the Senate is similar??relatively few positions are genuinely competitive...

...This is probably part of the right-wing Republican strategy: Congressman Hartley and his McCarthyite friends want Case to lose so that they can use his defeat as a vehicle to obtain greater power in New Jersey Republican circles...

...It must not be forgotten that, while Eisenhower defeated Stevenson by roughly 7 million votes, the Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives received 240,000 more votes than did the nominees of the Republican party...

...The shifting which does take place, and which yields the margin of victory in the House, is confined to a small number of marginal seats that swing back and forth on national tides of opinion...

...A regular New Leader contributor, he also writes for scholarly journals...

...The Southern Democrats have waited twenty years to get a "messenger boy" into the White House, and, provided he delivers the messages, they would have no reason to evict him...

...The fact that the Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate hail from Texas may be adduced as evidence for this generalization...

...On the other hand, the Democrats are losing no sleep over Alabama, North Carolina (2), Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Rhode Island, Louisiana, Mississippi and West Virginia, while only an extremely strong GOP swing could capture Kentucky, New Mexico, Iowa, Montana or Delaware...

...Of the 37 Senate seats at stake this fall, not more than 16 are really in the competitive category...

...Most of the elections are already decided de facto if not de jure...

...It is also true in Kentucky, where Alben Barkley will probably defeat John Sherman Cooper, about the best liberal Republican in the Senate...

...The President is taking to the airwaves for a series of "non-political" talks??a sure portent of the seriousness of the situation, for only the most significant political problems rate the "non-political" approach...

...Given the fragmented nature of the elections, the local issues on which they turn, the absence of any unifying force, it is doubtful that the President can lend much effective aid to his party's candidates...

...Probably as an outgrowth of his long service in the Army, the President has an exaggerated respect for Congress and in many ways, like President Grant, looks to Congress for policy leadership...

...There is no uniform name at the head of the ballot as there was in 1952, so that in some states the Congressional elections may become involved in state issues, while in others, e.g., Virginia, there may be no significant state races...

...The 1954 elections are unusual in many ways: 1. For the first time since 1930, the Republican party is attempting to hold its Congressional edge against the mid-term tradition that the party in power loses...

...John P. Roche, Associate Professor of Political Science at Haverford College, is co-author of The Dynamics of Democratic Government...

...The electorates in these seven states will decide who shall control the Senate...

...For instance, New Jersey Republicans have almost guaranteed the election of the Democratic candidate for the Senate, Charles Howell, by their bitter assaults on Clifford Case...

...The personalities of the candidates may in many instances be more important than their party affiliations...

...The basic struggle within the Democratic (and the Republican) party is between the national leadership (Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman), which tries to take a broad view of the party interest, and the forces of parochialism (the Congressional leaders) , who take a much narrower view of the party's function...

...Either way the November elections go, tremendous problems will develop for both parties: If President Eisenhower succeeds in rallying strength behind his personality, the GOP will have to learn to live with its leader...

...while Harry S. Truman, although subdued by his doctors, is sharpening his bowie knife for a thrust or two...

...While Democratic seers have exaggerated the outcome of the Maine election by comparing the results this fall with those of 1952, it remains true that when compared with 1950??the last off-year election??the Democratic candidates for the House in Maine gained between 2 and 4 per cent of the popular vote at the expense of their opponents...

...In the 1952 election, only 88 of the 435 Congressional seats were won by less than 10 per cent of the popular vote, that is, by less than a 55-45 ratio...

...From the point of view of a liberal Democrat, this is not a very cheerful prognosis...

...While he is clearly not a New Dealer, Eisenhower would probably share the convictions of a Congress dominated by Southern Democrats more fully than he accepts the viewpoint of one run by isolationist Republicans...

...Vice President Nixon and House Speaker Martin, abjuring the "above-politics" pitch, are stumping the country...

...It is predictable that, if Case loses, Hartley will claim it was because he was a "New Dealer" who did not have the confidence of Jersey Republicans...

...Adlai Stevenson is also back at his stand, mellifluously presenting the American people with counsels of reason...

...Elsewhere, the GOP is busily engaged in internecine warfare??it almost seems as though denouncing the Government has become so much of a habit that many Republicans cannot give it up even though now they are the Government...

...The Democrats have troubles of their own: A victory in this fall's elections may set the stage for a Republican recovery in 1956 on the Truman model of 1948...

...The crucial area of competition thus narrows down, unless there is an unpredictable landslide for one party or the other, to the states of New Jersey, Ohio, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Wyoming...

...Perhaps he can beat the tradition, but the 1952 election would indicate that the American electorate trusted Eisenhower but not the Republican party...

...In 1912 and 1932, in each instance after the Democrats had captured the House of Representatives in the off-year elections of 1910 and 1930, the Congressional forces at the Democratic nominating convention pushed the Speaker of the House??Champ Clark and John N. Garner, respectively??for the Presidential slot on the ticket...

...if the Democrats win, liberals may well discover that a common-law marriage between the President and the Southern Democrats will frustrate their ambitions for some time to come...