A Cool Cat for President:

...they found it in splendor in a Franklin D. Roosevelt, in tragic grandeur in a Woodrow Wilson...

...McKinley, Harding and Hoover were hardly persons to arouse deep passions in themselves or in others, and we were once enjoined to "Keep Cool With Coolidge...

...In this respect each reflects the opportunism and the ethical relativism which are so profoundly a part of the temper of the times...

...Since each is a man who means business, there cannot at any time be any question but that he really has the principles which he really has acquired...

...What does it mean w hen Arthur Schlesinger Jr...

...they may publicly violate the Ten Commandments, and elicit only our compassion...

...Yet passion or no passion, there was never any question of the principles to which these men were committed...

...And August Heckscher wrote at about the same time: "Mr...

...While this thought may be offensive to devout partisans, it is time for someone to say what more and more independent voters are beginning to think: that between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy there is an extraordinary lack of significant difference...

...They did not incidentally acquire these principles...

...And James MacGregor Burns reports of Kennedy that "he has never been seen—even by his mother— in raging anger or uncontrollable tears...

...For each has some inheritance of principle and each has acquired some principles, Nixon is the "good Quaker" so far as he stands for racial justice, for responsibility to other nations and for a relatively conservative approach to economic questions...

...In this respect each candidate is un-Beat...

...He is not, for that matter, a man of principle at all...

...Both men are cool to passion...

...In at least three respects both Kennedy and Nixon have the marks of the kind...

...But the same ambiguity is a part of Kennedy...

...These are what Spengler called the "great fact-men," who will have power at any price, and who are marked especially by coolness and ruthlessness in decision...

...Perhaps we can afford less heart if we can get more will, for there is no intrinsic evil in power, and a democracy asks only that power be exercised with justice and wisdom...

...Of course, partisans of both will come forward at this point to affirm that, really, each has his commitment to principle...

...In the case of Nixon, we cannot call typically Quaker his earlier predilection for dirty fighting, or his continuing virtuosity at purely manipulative techniques in politics...

...Thus, it is demonstrable that, in practice, Coolidge was the ideal Congregationalist...

...His tolerant, humane, liberal opinions are not nourished by any discernible hatred for injustice or any fellow feeling for the suffering and the deprived...

...Both men are cool to principle...

...But it is power more than principle which stands out in the character of a Kennedy or a Nixon...

...Once again, this focus on the self, rather than on some outward and objective loyalty, is a trait of the times...

...Senator Kennedy is unashamedly a man on the make...

...But Lipton sees only one variety of the species and he fails to grasp the most important principle in understanding the Beats...

...So James Reston reports that the Harvard liberals from the beginning felt confident of Kennedy's stand on questions of economics, "but he always seemed to them to be somewhere else physically or spiritually when the battle was raging over civil rights or Senator McCar-ran or Senator McCarthy...

...But we live in the time of the deliquescence of principle, of the dissolution of ideals, of the conversion of ideas into ideologies...

...At this point the James Burnham of The Machiavellians might charge that we are beginning to twitter and twaddle our way into sentimentalism...

...Both men are cool in a calm self-concern...

...At Lima, when I saw the soft answer would not work, I allowed myself the luxury of showing my temper and called them cowards...

...There are the Heroes and Heroines of Pleasure, who minister to our appetite for entertainment...

...In brief, there is no category in religion or in politics that will hold either man, The first and the final thing to be said in each case is: Nixon is Nixon...

...Kennedy is Kennedy...

...Not of McKinley, nor Teddy Roosevelt, nor Wilson, nor Harding, nor Coolidge, nor Hoover, nor Franklin D. Roosevelt, nor Truman, nor Eisenhower, could such things be said...

...These are esthetic judgments, not ethical ones...

...The cool cat is found not only in the party pads of North ROBERT E. FITCH is a professor of Christian Ethics at the Pacific School of Religion in California...

...If these words seem to be too sharp in their judgment of the Senator, they may be matched with the milder, but no less precise, dictum of another liberal observer: "Kennedy admits that he has found in politics as in no other pursuit a purely selfish happiness...

...nor does it deny that each has in him some ingredient of the social ethics of his religious tradition...

...For the other side of us, the ascetic side, there must be the Heroes of Power...

...But the commitment will have come not from the heart but from the cool, calculating intellect...

...What a spectacle it will be if the two of them meet head on in the final fray...

...but the principles arose from the bone and the marrow of the man—even were that bone brittle and that marrow meager...

...and his affirmation that "for the office holder nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution" has been denounced by Catholics and by Protestants alike as simple secularism...

...Each one undergirded and overarched with a massive armor of concentrated wealth, each one buttressed on all sides with a magnificent panoply of modern political technologies: When the clash comes, and then the crash, which one will rise up and prove himself to have been of an unbrittle and indomitable mettle...

...indeed, there is an extraordinary resemblance between the two in essentials...

...Moreover, each man has acquired certain principles and we have been able to watch them do so...

...In the case of Kennedy, it must be said that, in some very important respects, he represents what is still a minority, liberal group within his church...

...It is true that among these men there were those who might have been thought to be cool to passion...

...It may be, however, as James Reston has suggested, that what we need most at the moment is just such a fact-man, an executive who will indeed put into effect his ideals...

...When I use the phrase "cool cat," I am of course ignoring the rather careful definition of the term given by Lawrence Lipton in the glossary to his The Holy Barbarians...

...Beach, Venice and Greenwich Village...

...Whatever the outcome, moreover—and regardless of the brawling of rabid partisans in the bleachers— I hazard the guess that, as the one moves in to splinter the other to bits, each combatant will conduct himself with the coolest courtesy...

...And this focuses our attention not so much on the heart of the man—since that is precisely the organ whose existence is in question—as on the head...

...Who knows, moreover, but that the challenges and the opportunities of the office may, as they have done before, call forth a hidden excellence in the man...

...Yet we are embarrassed to speak of Nixon as the good Quaker or of Kennedy as the good Catholic, This intends no reflection on the genuineness of his own religious affiliations...

...Nixon is not a man of conservative principles...

...But neither one is adequately the "good type...

...Now we have two sorts of Heroes...

...If this is to be the case, then the American people will have completed a cycle in their evolution...

...Eisenhower also bears its stamp, and even the ordinary man, Harry Truman, in those magnificent moments when he came out fighting for civil rights or stood intransigent against Communist depredations, had a share in its luster...

...And one wonders what to make of the curious criteria by which Kennedy passed judgment on Jimmy Hoffa—"no discrimination or taste or style...

...A COOL CAT FOR PRESIDENT By Robert E. Fitch The mark of both Nixon and Kennedy is that they are controlled rather than committed NO MATTER WHAT happens in November, it now looks as though the American people will have a cool cat for President...

...one might give oneself in magnificent and even in reckless abandon to a commitment and to a cause...

...Likewise a correspondent for the London Economist speaks of the "emotional thinness" of the Senator, and remarks that "he has no reservoir of deep feeling about public issues...

...For the Beats are not rebels against our society: they are merely grotesque and protuberant caricatures of all that the rest of us may be...

...His approach is almost wholly cerebral...

...is quoted as saying that he is "ideologically for Humphrey but realistically for Kennedy...

...they had it in a George Washington or an Andrew Jackson...

...It was deliberate, letting my temper show...

...Adlai Stevenson said in 1956: "Nixon's deportment and views are not the product of principle or conviction but of ambition and expediency...

...Franklin D. Roosevelt the superlative Anglican, Woodrow Wilson the pluperfect Presbyterian, just as Eisenhower is today the classical Pietist in politics...

...For such as any of these men one might cut through customary political allegiances...

...These are the popularly privileged ones: They may have inordinate wealth, and waste it, and yet come under no criticism...

...In all these respects—coolness toward passion and principle and concentration on the self—the two men differ from all the men who have been President of the United States in the 20th century...

...By the religious "good type" I mean simply one whose public policies cohere with the social and cultural heritage of his peculiar denomination...

...In the service of his own ambition, he is wily and coldly calculating, but not hypocritical...

...nor did they have these principles thrust upon them...

...They are not "good types" religiously...

...it will not generate enthusiasm, For while the candidate will really have the principles, we shall not be sure that the principles really have him...

...They had it pre-eminently in Abraham Lincoln...

...The men who moved us deeply in the early history of this republic were Heroes of Principle...

...But the phrasing I have just used for Nixon is taken verbatim from an appraisal of the character of Kennedy by a correspondent for The Economist: "Egotism and a fierce will to succeed are Senator Kennedy’s ruling characteristics...

...Indeed, it has been fascinating to watch them gradually acquire what are commonly called liberal principles...

...Yet it is a cool power, organized with all the skill of the calculating intellect, and disciplined by every latest device in public relations and in the manipulation of the emotions of men...

...But while Burnham in that book may have shown some understanding of the political patterns of other nations, he exhibited an almost complete incomprehension of the aspirations of his own countrymen, For the American people have liked to find in their President some great quality of humanity, some measure of spiritual stature...

...he postures and prattles in the parlors of the intelligentsia, in the sitting-rooms of the bourgeoisie and in the councils of politicians...

...We may have had enough of the leadership which is sincere in its commitment to principles, but is content merely to mouth them, What if our next President should be one who has too patently and expediently adopted his principles, provided only that he act on them with precision and power...

...If each is nominated and confronts the other in the concluding campaign, it will be still more fascinating to see which one acquires the more liberal principles more expeditiously...

...Kennedy is the "good Catholic" so far as his opinions in economics agree with the great encyclicals of his church on social ethics...

...Nor could there by any serious question as to what they did deeply and irremediably stand for and stand against...

...To others it may bring conviction...

...Costello, with the help of cartoons by Osborn, has documented for us the portrait of Richard Nixon as a wily and coldly calculating person, unashamedly a man on the make, who is determined to get himself ahead in the world no matter where he may get others...

...In such circumstance, when idealism is linked to efficiency, when principle is applied with power, there could be a return to national greatness...

...In another respect, moveover, the two current candidates differ from all recent predecessors in the office of President...

...So William Costello speaks of Nixon's ability to "turn his feelings on and off," and collects for us some of the notable utterances of the Vice President: "The only time to lose your temper in politics is when it's deliberate...

...The essence of the cool cat is that he is controlled rather than committed: that is, he is self-controlled, rather than controlled by ideals to which he has given himself...

...And really they will be right...

...This is the reason why a frustrated and as yet inarticulate portion of the public still yearns after a Nelson Rockefeller or an Adlai Stevenson or a Chester Bowles...