The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn America and a Conservative Party THIS IS not a political article in favor of either political party and against the other. It is being written on the last...
...of course, he was adamant in defending sound money...
...For whichever candidate does go to the White House this year, our country will have an Administration in which there will be a great deal more action than we have had for the past eight years...
...Tense modern life demands a strong power—liberal or conservative...
...I can remember our parties back to Grover Cleveland's first term...
...Neither should be crazily radical or stupidly stationary...
...After Wilson came Harding and Coolidge, perfect representatives of the same type, but Hoover did not belong in it and there isn't sufficient space to comment on him...
...When I now read the columns I wrote then I feel sorry for myself...
...In some respects it is a rather tacky and badly strung-together outfit...
...Whichever man wins...
...and in all the times I have seen him since, he has seemed radiant with the best qualities of American manhood...
...They gave the Democratic party its modern quality and meaning...
...I believe we shall have a fairly good President, one at least as satisfactory as Coolidge or Truman...
...He wasn't afraid of anyone and from the beginning set out to keep everyone in line...
...Here, I thought, we shall have a chance to try out a genuinely conservative regime...
...Along with Theodore Roosevelt they worked mightily to create our modern world...
...What we need is a new kind of a party and we need it even more than a good five-cent cigar or a less expensive automobile or less advertising in our television programs...
...Harry Truman's Administration is...
...Wilson began our first modern labor and economic legislation...
...But with all his shining qualities, he just settled down there in Washington and, though there seemed to be plenty of light, there was little power...
...We need much more than a new President or a different party in control...
...There should be another word for him and his kind— the statics, the vegetators, the stick-in-the-muds...
...But I do think it is time for a change in this country...
...What this country—or any democratic country—needs is one party which holds things steady and a second which shoves things along...
...The second Roosevelt did much to adapt the state to the humanitarian purposes of the modern industrial world...
...He was the best conservative in our time and he should have been a Republican...
...We shall still have to wait, however, for that genuine conservative party...
...To my great regret, instead of a conservative Administration, we have had a static, vegetative one...
...of course, to be taken as an extension of Roosevelt's...
...We can have sound money, lower tariffs, reduced debts and settled foreign relations—in short, the whole business can run on a steady, reliable basis...
...If they understand each other's language and are moderately patient about each other's ways they can go on for years — even generations — supplementing each other's efforts as British Conservatives and Liberals used to do...
...The Northern wing of the Democratic party does fairly well as the progres-sive or labor party—or whatever you want to call the party which tries to keep the legislation of the country more or less up-to-date...
...After Cleveland came Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley, charming gentlemen happy to occupy the White House and preside gracefully at public banquets, changing as little as possible...
...He was, emphatically, one of those who cannot stand leaving things as they are, who must shove the world along on its track...
...When Eisenhower came to power in 1953 I had high hopes...
...Dwight Eisenhower has been a charming President...
...We come to Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt...
...Then, with the help of a maniac's gun, in came Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican progressive who throws all our terminology out of whack...
...In part, he used politics to fight the Depression...
...Sometimes the Southern section threatens to fall clean out of circulation, but in the end it usually does just about what is expected...
...At any rate, at the end of his 12 years in office we had a different sort of country from what we had had at the beginning...
...Industry and labor he tried to keep pulling in a team: he put down strikes and also reduced tariffs...
...He was especially successful in cold-shouldering politicians...
...It is being written on the last Wednesday before the first Tuesday after the first Monday, and I haven't the least idea who is going to win this election...
...The first time I saw him...
...With this picture of the ideal twin parties in mind, look at our rambunctiously performing creations...
...The real necessity for this campaign-battered country is a genuine, blown-in-the-bottle conservative party...
...A lot of people think that the Republican party has been filling that bill for years, but I do not agree...
...I have a preference, but I shall not tell you a word about it...
...Next came Taft, and he was not a conservative...
Vol. 43 • November 1960 • No. 44
