Washington-U.S.A.
DUSCHA, JULIUS
WASHINGT0N-U.S.A. By Julius Duscha Birth Control Controversy Makes Religion a 1960 Campaign Issue THE EXPLOSION of the birth control issue undoubtedly has singed the Presidential prospects of...
...But if Kennedy does win the primaries that count, this in itself is likely to intensify the anti-Catholic campaign that probably will be used against him...
...No other Democratic candidate, of course, would discuss Kennedy's Catholicism openly to discredit him...
...Are we indeed afraid of the "yellow peril" which French President Charles de Gaulle unfortunately alluded to in his recent press conference...
...There is a somewhat wistful feeling among a good many Democrats that probably Adlai Stevenson ought to be given a third chance, but there is also a feeling that Stevenson is really acceptable only as a last resort...
...The ironies of Kennedy's position are indeed bitter...
...a good manv people in the U.S...
...And then there is what the politicians call the peace issue...
...The birth control controversy, which undoubtedly would have been raised sooner or later in the course of his campaign, was brought to the front pages, however, by the Catholic Bishops...
...Kennedy supporters have found a good deal of solace in the excellent record made by Catholic gubernatorial and senatorial candidates in the 1958 elections as well as in the responses to polls which indicate that the majority of voters would cast a ballot for Presidential electors pledged to a Catholic...
...President Eisenhower's trip to Europe and Asia certainly has enhanced his party's already considerable reputation among the voters that it is the party of peace...
...No matter how hard Kennedy tries, the Catholic issue undoubtedly will continue to bob up like a lone apple in a tubful of water...
...yet while all but one of the other candidates pussy-footed around the matter Kennedy has unquestionably been the only person who has been hurt by the incident...
...The memorandum did recall to many persons in Washington the shrewd way in which the Eisenhower supporters used the Texas delegate fight to cast doubt on the ethics of the Taft partisans...
...The corner into which Kennedy was backed by the birth control issue was plainly an unpleasant place for him...
...If Kennedy can win big in two or three of the key primaries next spring, the Democratic convention may have no alternative but to accept him as the party nominee...
...Why not birth control for Europe or the U.S., too...
...Kennedy can take some comfort, however, in the fact that as the year draws to a close no other Democratic candidate seems to have excited the curiosity of the voters as much as he has...
...But when the primaries come and the convention gets closer, the supporters of the other candidates can be expected to use everything against the man who is still the trom-runner and is likely to remain so unless he stumbles badly in New Hampshire or Wisconsin, Maryland or Oregon...
...The Senator tried to meet the question early in 1959 through an article in Look magazine which left some political cynics with the feeling that he was almost reading himself out of the Church in his efforts to reassure any doubting voters about his ability to think and act independently...
...Kennedy did not hesitate to say that he opposed birth control, and he also made it clear that if he were President and if birth control legislation came before him he would put the interests of the United States above whatever his personal and religious beliefs might be...
...The Democratic domestic program must deal with the issues that are germane to 1960 not to 1930 or 1940, just as its foreign policy vistas must look ahead to 1970 rather than back to the glorious days when Harry Truman and Dean Acheson talked tough to the Russians but still caught hell on Capital Hill...
...Symington is still looked upon as a dark horse...
...In fact, the article was criticized by some Catholics on precisely these grounds—that it was not a firm enough statement in support of Catholicism...
...By Julius Duscha Birth Control Controversy Makes Religion a 1960 Campaign Issue THE EXPLOSION of the birth control issue undoubtedly has singed the Presidential prospects of Senator John F. Kennedy (D.-Mass...
...has not even begun to overcome his Southern handicap, however much he may try to emphasize a 10-gallon Western point of view...
...The argument over the seating of the Texas delegation to the Republican convention is a jolting reminder of the uncertain road that any candidate must be prepared to follow...
...Another delicate question which Kennedy touched on in his statement is the implication in many of the comments about birth control measures that they ought to apply only to the peoples of Asia and Africa...
...With the exception of Senator Stuart Symington (D.-Mo...
...No one except Kennedy has caught on at all...
...Who would have thought that the Eisenhower supporters could call into question the integrity of the Taft people...
...Once the issue got into the papers, Kennedy's reply was both quick and candid...
...And each time the issue comes up, it probably will be harder to push it back down to the bottom of the tub...
...Only a handful of the true believers in the Senator and his conservative cause must really think that the big, bad internationalists from the wicked East succeeded in handing over the nomination to General Eisenhower...
...is flying and talking around the country but apparently gaining no real support...
...The church hierarchy in the United States obviously was more concerned about the Draper Committee's suggestion last summer that the U.S...
...Senator Lyndon B. Johnson (D.-Tex...
...The statements seemed to have been drafted with one eye on the Catholic vote and the other on what is presumably the dwindling Planned Parenthood bloc...
...The meeting of the Democratic Advisory Council in New York this month used up a lot of newsprint and produced some diverting pictures of the plethora of Democratic candidates, but it is doubtful that the meeting stirred up much interest except among the already converted...
...But there remains a feeling among many persons in Washington that state houses, the Senate and the polls aside, there is a big difference between winning a state office and being elected President...
...If the Republicans are able to translate the new personal diplomacy being practiced by Eisenhower into a political issue—and there is every reason to believe that they can do so—perhaps it will make little difference who the Democratic candidate is in 1960...
...may someday want to include birth control information in its foreign aid program than it was about Kennedy's Presidential prospects...
...The birth control issue has intensified discussion in Washington and doubtless throughout the nation about the effect of Kennedy's Catholicism on his Presidential prospects...
...Among the 36 Democratic governors the only possibility would seem to be Pat Brown of California, but so far he appears to have neither the personality nor the reputation to give Vice President Richard M. Nixon or Governor Nelson Rockefeller a run for the roses...
...It may be difficult to excite a complacent and affluent America with bread-and-butter political issues next year, but if the Democrats do not do a better job of trying to charge the 1960 campaign with such interest they will find that the Republicans will hold the White House for yet another four years...
...And it is an issue that the Democrats can hardly expect to exploit with a bit of me-tooism...
...Different standards are usually applied by the majority of voters to the Presidency than to a governorship or a seat in the United States Senate...
...The glee with which some Protestant groups seemed to rush to their mimeograph machines to pillory Kennedy after both he and the Bishops had spoken is an indication of the ease with which anti-Catholic feeling can still be kindled in this country...
...Only a few days before a Democratic candidate's position on birth control seemed to become more important than his ability to stand up to Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev, the late Senator Robert A. Taft's analysis of his loss of the 1952 Republican nomination to President Eisenhower suddenly turned up in Washington...
...The controversy over contraceptives ought also, however, to remind all the other Presidential candidates in both parties that, try as they may, they cannot control the issues that can sort the nominees from the candidates...
...unquestionably would ask...
...Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D.-Minn...
...So far the Democratic search for new issues has failed to turn up anything except a warmed-over New Dealism that is hardly likely to ignite a political prairie fire...
...This reputation is bound to help the 1960 Republican Presidential nominee, whether he be Nixon or Rockefeller...
...Yet there he and his followers were at the most crucial phase of the campaign for the nomination, backed into a shadowy corner by an alert and aggressive opposition...
...The nomination probably would have been Eisenhower's even without the superb handling of the delegate fight by the General's supporters, but the lesson ought not to be forgotten by any of the candidates for the 1960 nominations...
...Many Americans, perhaps a majority, probably share the feeling expressed by the President at his press conference that birth control is a highly individual matter and is not the proper subject for governments...
...If Taft stood for any single principle in the minds of most Americans, it was integrity...
...Yet in his statement to the New York Times, he acquitted himself well...
...the other Democratic candidates issued equivocal statements which left them plenty of exits...
...Furthermore, the possibilities of a birth control rider to a foreign aid bill being approved by Congress are about as remote as are the Presidential prospects of, say, Senator Wayne Morse (D.-Ore...
...To his credit, Symington said without equivocation that he believes in birth control...
Vol. 42 • December 1959 • No. 47
