The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Statesmen and Presidents ON APRIL 27 I wrote a column entitled. "Will Clayton and the Marshall Plan," the springboard for which was a short biography of...
...In my little essay I ventured this remark: "If at the time the Marshall Plan was fashioned we had had in the State Department the sort of pronouncement-making routineers whom we have been watching for some years, Europe would surely have gone to pot...
...Somehow, during the next few months, our two parties must select candidates which can be depended upon to do something toward leading us in the right direction—something comparable to what was done by the men whose achievements have marked the political chapters of my life...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Statesmen and Presidents ON APRIL 27 I wrote a column entitled...
...The one sure thing is that we cannot stay where we are...
...Thus the modern trend toward state ownership (which finds it apex in complete state capitalism or Communism) must be modified and blended with a return to emphasis on free enterprise (private capitalism) in order that we may come forth with a government philosophy—neither all state capitalism nor all private capitalism—for our new close-together world...
...Some of these ideas were put into motion when my father was in the government...
...Ellen Clayton Garwood...
...They thought their own thoughts...
...she is interested in government, and my little remark about the sort of men required in Washington caught her eye...
...Each of them stood up for what he believed and, Congress or no Congress, put through a good part of his program...
...What this country is now is due largely to these four men...
...The Republican campaign managers have been largely responsible for this, for they have replaced political argument with Madison Avenue publicity techniques...
...Garwood spoke with modesty about her father's talents and achievements...
...They were all men who stood up like mountains...
...I promptly received a letter which is too good to keep concealed: "My book is only the first that will eventually be written about Will Clayton and his contribution to creative government policies, and I am grateful that you have recognized that these policies need to be emphasized—that we need more action and fewer 'pronouncements.' Teamwork by 'a set of realistic, energetic men' can accomplish much, of course, but what I hoped to point up in my book (something in which I perhaps failed I was that this teamwork, essential as it is, is not enough...
...I just fear sometimes for our seeming inability to come up with strong, middle-of-the-road leaders...
...Garwood said enough to indicate that we are passing through a time which requires both courage and wisdom...
...But, like many other Texans...
...we have anemic middle-of-the-roaders and strong rightists and leftists, but what we need—I think you will agree—is an inspiring statesman of integrity who can blend creatively the best of both...
...I can remember the regimes of four great presidents: Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...I wanted my study of my father's life to show that this was and is possible...
...Mrs...
...This time let us pick a fifth man as great as the other four...
...In her short letter, Mrs...
...But to put them into motion there was the need of a strong and compassionate individual to do the pushing, much as a symphony orchestra, in order to do justice to a great composition, must be led and pushed by a Toscanini or a Charles Munch...
...No one can tell what our government will be like ten years from now...
...A really good man, Adlai Stevenson, was buried under mountains of slick printed and televised stuff and as a result we have had two terms with a President who has obviously and openly enjoyed his great office as a nice, easy job on which to float into history...
...During the past two national campaigns we have had the most inadequate examinations of candidates and programs anyone could imagine...
...which he fathered—and help for the masses, carried out by state subsidies to tide over industries and labor that must reconvert, by state loans or grants from developed to underdeveloped nations...
...This philosophy is one which my father preaches and exemplifies: Freedom for the individual, preserved in a gradually developed free trade throughout the world—a start having been made in the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT...
...I am presenting this letter in the hope that it will add something useful to the present great discussion of the office of the Presidency...
...Where do we want to go and how can we get there...
...What sort of combination of the suggested principles in our society will give us the best life and how can we attain it...
...Will Clayton and the Marshall Plan," the springboard for which was a short biography of the Texas statesman, written by his daughter...
...It has to be sparked, triggered by an outstanding dynamic individual at the helm and such a person can be produced only by a free society—one which, in the tradition of Christ, emphasizes the individual quite as much as the masses...
Vol. 42 • June 1959 • No. 25
