Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words. NIEBUHR AND NIXON Reinhold Niebuhr's article, "Catholics and the...
...Nixon won the Republican...
...Just as labor leaders and "liberals" often tabulated votes of Congressmen as favorable or unfavorable, so the Republican high command tabulated the votes of Mrs...
...This slogan, not Nixon's "clawing," won these elections...
...This was called by "an astute political observer" as "undoubtedly the dumbest political move he had ever heard of" (pp...
...A columnist for the San Marino Tribune wrote a series of articles urging debates between Nixon and Voorhis...
...He smiled and so did I. We shook hands...
...In November, they met in the finals...
...Even the disclosure of sources of the Douglas campaign fund has not changed this rationalization...
...Los Angeles Stanley M. Arndt REALISM AND REVOLT Konrad Kellen's review of my book The Reluctant Satellites (NL, June 6) poses a great many problems for the author...
...When Nixon made like charges, "liberals" now say he was "clawing his way to victory" and engaged in "dirty fighting...
...They picked up 5 Senate seats and increased their House membership by 31 and won 6 Governorships from the Democrats...
...the Hiss scandal, and the reluctance, and in some cases refusal, of some prominent Democrats frankly to admit the facts...
...But they were 'packed' in more ways than one...
...He made practically no primary campaign but ran on his record...
...239...
...The majority in his district were for it, but Voorhis voted against it and to sustain Truman's veto (p...
...I speak from personal observation...
...Some of the left-of-center voters considered the fair Helen a Dame Galahad riding to the White House, only to be unhorsed by Nixon...
...239...
...RFE was merely identified as the agency most diligently engaged in wrecking it...
...This cost him more friends...
...VI, no...
...The anti-Nixon group often point to these debates to substantiate their charges against Nixon...
...By election day, Voorhis had antagonized center and right-of-center Democrats, farmers, Bank of America stockholders and borrowers, the CIO and most businessmen...
...Nationally, "Republicans gain a victory of landslide proportions as they win control of both Congressional chambers and a majority of state governors," said Facts on File, vol...
...I know it had taken no definite action to bar Communists from participation and I had said a good many times that I believed that failure to take such action was a fatal mistake" [p...
...She was too far left for many of them and too Hollywoodish for many others...
...334...
...This made Nixon a villain to them...
...In 1950, Helen Gahagan Douglas won the Democratic nomination for Senator...
...Douglas...
...Are those words (written in 1947 when the facts were fresh in Voorhis' memory) the words of one who believed that Nixon had "clawed his way to victory" over him...
...The least Kellen could have done was to disqualify himself, since it was likely that the editor was not aware of the contents of the book when he assigned Kellen to review it...
...331-342), but he makes no charges against Nixon...
...Just how long would Kellen have remained a staff member of RFE had he found my evidence convincing...
...Voorhis ran a signed advertisement saying: "Under present top leadership of the CIO in California, there is at least grave question whether the Communist party does not exercise inordinate if not decisive influence over State and County organizations...
...Leslie B. Bain...
...He did not even carry his home town and lost the election by 14,592 votes...
...California elected Republicans to every state-wide office...
...But by 1946, the 47 Democrats in the Assembly had shrunk to 37...
...Where in heaven's name has he found that in the book...
...Voorhis complained of the action of a "representative of a large New York financial house," a statement by Raymond Haight, editorials in newspapers "owned by outside interests," Republican national strategy and anonymous stories and threats (pp...
...the national trend to the right...
...337...
...Why did he win...
...Nixon was elected to Congress in my Congressional District and to the Senate in my state...
...Nixon won by 680,947 votes...
...More serious "stories" and "threats" occurred in the recent West Virginia Democratic primaries...
...347...
...The Republicans held a "grass-roots" convention and its fact-finding Committee recommended Nixon...
...335-339...
...334...
...Nixon had two more elections—each time for Vice President...
...Later, he degenerates into an "our gang" form of political bigotry by saying of Richard Nixon, "I remember how he clawed his way up the political ladder until it became politically wise to be respectable...
...the active campaign of Republican women and young Republicans...
...His "Big Crusade" was a plan to print unlimited quantities of fiat money...
...Their hatred of him started with the Hiss affair and was inflamed by the Douglas defeat...
...Irving Ives became the first Republican Senator from New York in 20 years...
...Niebuhr's attack on Nixon was dragged into his article...
...I confess, however, that if I could rewrite that speech I would not support the bill" (pp...
...This quotation and all quotations herein from Voorhis are from his Confessions of a Congressman, published in 1947...
...Voorhis finally accepted...
...Many left-of-center partisans could not believe that any fair-minded voter would vote against their darling Helen...
...Labor-hated Robert A. Taft beat Labor-backed Homer Ferguson by a large majority...
...Voorhis was defeated for assembly that year as "an avowed EPIC candidate...
...Throughout his review Kellen seems to be battling against my treatment of disillusioned believers, whom he calls searchers for faith, in a bad sense, eternally preferring ideals over reality, which in his view certainly represents a basis for new and dangerous "re-illusion-ment...
...Not only was it untrue, but it added nothing except to convict the author of what he was criticizing—the "our gang" resisting "your gang" form of political bigotry...
...He spoke for the Supreme Court-packing bill...
...The Republican battle-cry—"Have you had enough...
...A theologian hurling "anathemas not factually verifiable" may not show "eschatological irresponsibility" but he does show political irresponsibility...
...Joseph Guffey lost in Pennsylvania...
...523, page 357, said, "Republicans scored a series of unexpected victories in Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial elections...
...Voorhis was one of the Socialists who became Democrats with Upton Sinclair when the latter captured the Democratic primaries in 1934 in his "EPIC campaign...
...The voters of his district had had ample time to have viewed him in action, to have read the Voorhis book and to have considered carefully Nixon's conduct in the 1946 election...
...Nixon did not "claw his way to victory" in 1950...
...Miami, Fla...
...We talked for more than an hour and parted, I hope and believe, as personal friends...
...Nixon and Voorhis each won his party's nomination...
...Democrat Senate leader Scott Lucas was defeated by Everett Dirkson...
...Facts on File, vol...
...As long as he gets into Nikita Khrushchev's mind and explains what was in it, all is well, but when he deliberately distorts what I have written that is something else again...
...102...
...He attended a meeting of Congressional "Young Turks" and naively gave a reporter a list of those present...
...He lost more by his attack on the Bank of America (p...
...Voorhis' record in Congress made many enemies...
...In 1936, Voorhis was elected to Congress—when Roosevelt carried even- state except Maine and Vermont—and Democrats elected 47 to the California Assembly, the largest number since 1882...
...76-78...
...This speech antagonized more voters...
...For the crowds mainly consisted of convinced supporters of one or the other of us— people who came with their minds already made up and to cheer for the candidate they had already decided to vote for...
...342...
...With this record and with no FDR heading the ticket, Voorhis faced a difficult election in a conservative agricultural district whose largest city had a population of less than 52,000...
...X, no...
...They had been put into a false light, and it was my fault...
...the Congressional voting records of the two candidates...
...Incidentally, it may interest you to know that to verify my own observations I had rejected nearly all evidence supplied by responsible members of the international press and used material exclusively submitted to me by RFE...
...Voorhis concedes that Nixon told the truth when he said that Voorhis had been recommended for endorsement by a committee of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Council for Political Action Committee, and that it contained Communists...
...This phenomenon might prompt religious people . . . to recognize how easily [religious loyalty] may degenerate into bigotry...
...Surely Niebuhr does not contend that Nixon "clawed" Eisenhower's way into the White House in 1952 and 1956...
...John Bricker won in Ohio, Harley Kilgore in West Virginia...
...In 1946, the Case Bill sought to prohibit jurisdictional strikes, provided for suits against unions that broke contracts and prohibited political contributions by unions and corporations...
...He voted against the Draft Extension Bill (p...
...199...
...The next step up the Nixon political ladder was the 1948 elections...
...Niebuhr speaks from hearsay compounded and unfounded...
...This recommendation was adopted by the "convention...
...Many Progressives had lost confidence in his judgment...
...But let Voorhis testify: "At every one of these debates my opponent and I spoke to packed houses...
...Voorhis was re-elected four times...
...Was Nixon responsible for these Republican victories...
...The venom of the Hiss friends started the false stories about Nixon which, unfortunately, some distinguished men have blindly accepted and repeated...
...But is it not a bit frivolous to assign one of the defendants to review the evidence against themselves...
...This infuriated some "liberals," although they approved such tactics when they used them...
...He must have read this someplace else because over and over again the book insists that the revolt was prompted by a moral revulsion and not by outside influences...
...to require all banks to have 100 per cent cash behind all deposits, etc...
...He was still in the Navy and had taken no previous part in politics...
...the antipathy of some Southern Californians to glamorous women in legislatures...
...But I doubt that they changed any appreciable number of votes one way or the other" (p...
...For instance: "Bain vacillates between his well-documented claim that disillusioned Hungarian Communist leaders and intellectuals planned and sparked the uprising and his insistence that the West, particularly such propaganda agencies as Radio Free Europe, incited it...
...Douglas...
...Nixon will be a Republican Congressman...
...He won both Republican and Democratic nominations and had no opposition in the final elections...
...This result was not isolated, but, as Voorhis suggested, was part of the 1946 desire of the American voters for a change...
...James Duff defeated Senate whip Francis J. Myers...
...They voted for middle-of-the-road "Pat" Brown for Attorney General, hut for Warren, Nixon and the rest of the Republican state-wide ticket (other than Brown) because they felt the latter were better than Jimmy Roosevelt, Helen Douglas and their ticket...
...NIEBUHR AND NIXON Reinhold Niebuhr's article, "Catholics and the Presidency" (NL, May 9), called the West Virginia primary "a manifestation of 'our gang' resisting 'your gang...
...They were blind to the Republican victories nationally and in California, and convinced themselves by rationalization that, since the 680,000 majority couldn't have been the fair decision of the voters, it must have been the fault of Nixon...
...Nixon has run five times for political office...
...Unquestionably in the light of history my vote was wrong" (p...
...161-182...
...In California (despite a 3-to-2 Democratic advantage in registration) , Republicans captured every state-wide office except Attorney General...
...Nixon had uncovered the facts that lead to the expose of Alger Hiss and the latter's conviction for perjury...
...Again, referring to the peasants, he invents the tale that I had blamed the nonparticipation of the peasants on their fear of American-supported landowners...
...The "liberals" have not accused Kennedy or Humphrey of "clawing...
...And I know I appreciated his coming to see me very sincerely indeed" (p...
...The first was against Jerry Voorhis in 1946...
...Several . . . members were very angry...
...That statement is untrue...
...One mistake in judgment on my part . . . had blocked the possibility of an effective organization of progressives in that Congress" (p...
...Anyhow, I am guilty: I certainly prefer people who are constantly searching for new ideals over realists, both East and West, who have brought us near extinction and who are determined to carry their realism to the bitter end...
...316, page 357...
...He was considered by thousands of California Democrats more "politically respectable" than Mrs...
...This antagonized many Democrats in his district...
...Kellen, the reviewer, was identified as "Staff Member, Radio Free Europe" and therefore it is not surprising to read in his review: "The bitter charges leveled by Bain against Radio Free Europe and other Western radios for having misled the Hungarian people during the Revolt are unconvincingly documented...
...I believe he will be a conscientious one...
...Vote Republican for a change"—had appealed to the voters, just as a similar battle-cry had won for the Democrats in 1932...
...The most important single factor in the campaign of 1946 was the difference in general attitude between the 'outs' and the 'ins' (p...
...lack of leadership among California Democrats, who were torn with internal strife...
...The factors involved (not in relationship to importance) included: dissatisfaction with the national administration...
...Five debates were held...
...No claim was ever made that Nixon had "clawed his way to victory" until after the Hiss affair...
...When Voorhis was first elected, the District had 4 assembly districts, one with a 5-to-l Democratic registration, but it had been removed by 1941, leaving three districts, each represented by a Republican...
...This hurt him among the veterans...
...One day when I came back from lunch he was standing there in the outer office...
...After election, Voorhis wrote to Nixon offering help (p...
...349...
...This was an important campaign issue...
...14 out of 23 Congressmen and 48 to the State Assembly as compared to 33 in 1936...
...The District was plastered with posters telling the people to 'vote for Nixon for a change,' asking them if they 'had enough'" (p...
...Wallace F. Bennett beat Elbert D. Thomas and Herman Welker beat Glen Taylor...
...Not the polemics in which Kellen indulges but the fact that he argues with himself on contrived premises...
...Henry Cabot Lodge defeated David I. Walsh in Massachusetts...
...I would be the last to deny that this trend was a major factor in my success" (p...
Vol. 43 • July 1960 • No. 29
