Mr. Acheson Views the Democracy
NEVINS, ALLAN
Mr. Acheson Views the Democracy A Democrat Looks at His Party. By Dean Acheson. Harper. 199 pp. $3.00. Reviewed by Allan Nevins Pulitzer Prize-winning historian; Professor of American History,...
...The main differences seem rather of method and outlook than character...
...but his heart is not in them...
...But the author is too much a statesman to write a party argument...
...he transcends party...
...but the Republicans think of high production in terms of capital investment, the Democrats in terms of consumer demand...
...Acheson strongly condemns the Republicans goes back before Eisenhower...
...It struck at the character and patriotism of those who devised and executed policies...
...Having lived through so much history (for we must not forget that he was Assistant Secretary of State before Pearl Harbor), he has much to say on all three of his topics...
...Both have made errors and met failures, but both have had their whole heart in the cause of freedom...
...If the Democrats had great liberals in Wilson and FDR...
...Both want clear social and economic controls...
...Acheson never really succeeds in writing a partisan book...
...the Republicans distrust intellect...
...But, by a queer inversion of the original character of the parties, the Republicans prefer control on the state and local level, the Democrats by the Federal Government...
...It assaulted institutions of government, and, as in the Bricker Amendment, even government itself...
...It involved the motives and character of nations and peoples associated with us...
...Except in one particular, he does not feel violently...
...Acheson, it is clear, is not much of a politician...
...Democrats may be able to make effective use of Mr...
...He goes through the motions...
...Acheson's book can be read with pleasure and enlightenment...
...but it should preserve the ancient Anglo-Saxon formulas of compromise...
...when the ignorant are taught to doubt, they do not know what they safely may believe.'" All of Mr...
...He combines a progressive intellect and a moderate temper...
...Will it set the stage for sharp changes, or for a maintenance of what (ever since the 80th Congress died in ignominy) has looked much like bipartisan harmony on our most vital problems...
...but they have different ideas about who shall carry the ball...
...Officials and departments of Government, the Army, civil servants, a whole political party, the labor movement, teachers and institutions, churches, writers and artists, were all cast into the limbo of doubt...
...Acheson describes in detail, and with convincing case-histories, the harm which security-hunters have done the Foreign Service...
...He mentions that "in 1950-52 the ferocity of the Republican attack knew no limits" without noting that he was one of its chief targets...
...But all such generalizations are risky...
...Save for a few modestly reminiscent sentences and a number of expert allusions, readers might never guess that the author had gripped the helm of the State Department during some of the stormiest years of our history...
...The new tenants found themselves the inheritors of suspicion...
...But here also his central plea is for unity...
...He was awakened to public ambition by Theodore Roosevelt and confirmed in his political liberalism by Woodrow Wilson, but he has none of TR's shrillness or Wilson's dogmatism...
...Government, he believes, should use imagination and empiricism for the service of the plain people...
...Professor of American History, Columbia University Perhaps the central question facing the country in 1956 is whether we shall choose a Democratic or a Republican President...
...Nor did it stop at the water's edge...
...However fierce the effort the United States must make in fighting tyranny on the world stage, it must maintain the hallowed freedoms at home or lose everything...
...He sets forth numerous reasons for believing that the Democratic party is far better equipped to deal with domestic tensions and world crisis than the Republicans...
...When Mr...
...Reading between the lines, we discern a certain sympathy for Mr...
...Within limits, it is a good campaign document...
...The Democrats have a catholic interest in ideas...
...But he is a hard-headed practical administrator, full of initiative, who also possesses a sense for the values illustrated by a thousand years of Western history...
...For...
...Acheson turns to foreign affairs, he still goes through the partisan motions...
...Brownell and others eagerly turned...
...The book may be read by all Americans, and its central plea for a united front against world and home tyrannies can be accepted by everyone, no matter which party takes possession of the White House in 1957...
...Both want agriculture, labor and business to make up a harmonious squad...
...The house of government was gutted...
...But the Truman Administration never had the illusion that complete security might be attained by strong-arm measures, and all too many Republicans did...
...That ferocious attack of 1950-52 he rightly calls unforgivable because it struck at national unity in a great ordeal: "It went beyond the policies involved and the competence of leaders...
...It is hardly too much to say that the whole conception of trust and confidence, including the confidence of the people in their own judgment, was brought into doubt...
...The Democrats, says Mr...
...The qualities of this meditation on parties, world affairs and freedom which most challenge our respect are its generosity and amplitude...
...Both parties, thank heaven, are actually great composites of the American population, and...
...Both parties are for high production by a free economy...
...Whichever view is taken, Mr...
...He does not conceal the fact that the Truman Administration itself opened the road down which Mr...
...But those who believe that the Truman and Eisenhower policies have not fundamentally been far apart will find his reasons rather weak...
...Acheson's final section on civil liberties is cogent and eloquent...
...It is essential to the survival of freedom, he writes, and of foreign respect for America, "that we regain our confidence in one another here at home and in the principles of government and justice that express that confidence...
...If the Democrats have given wider scope to the adventurer in ideas, the Republicans have paid more attention to trained experts...
...Acheson, represent many divergent economic and social elements: but the Republicans are primarily a party of business, and, as such, aloof from the masses...
...He does this with a detached thoughtfulness which even those who disagree will find singularly winning...
...In other words, will the approaching campaign deepen the differences between the parties, or leave the similarities unimpaired...
...The two men have striven hard for the same goals: support of the UN, strengthening the economy of the free nations, links with lands (even Spain) which can give us protective bases, lines of defense in the Far East, a great union of the Western democracies in NATO...
...If the Democrats have been closer to the sweaty laborer, the Republicans have been closer to the sweaty farmer...
...Because of his generous outlook...
...the Republicans had Lincoln and TR...
...Acheson addresses himself to three subjects: the nature of the Democratic party, the underlying responsibilities of our foreign policy, and the demands made on us by our civil liberties...
...Into his quiet pages, indeed, never intrudes a hint of the fact that few living men have contributed more to the strength of the West and the balance of the world, or of the parallel fact that no public servant of our time has suffered more ungrounded abuse...
...It is a book of philosophical overtones rare in political literature as written by participants in the hurly-burly...
...unifiers of the national life...
...He says it with wit, incisiveness, grace and a wealth of references that prove him a hard student of books as of affairs...
...as such...
...Perhaps the critical question is whether, 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...
...Acheson's short but highly interesting book...
...Still, the great fundamental fact remains--they are both composites, and curiously alike...
...The one particular in which Mr...
...Dulles...
Vol. 38 • December 1955 • No. 49
