Inside the Great Crusade:
ROCHE, JOHN P.
Inside the Great Crusade Not to the Swift. By Tristram Coffin. Norton. 379 pp. $4.50. Reviewed by John P. Roche Morris Hillquit Professor of Politics, Brandeis University One of the...
...In a sense, the tragedy he portrays is the absence of that kind of vitality which generates knights and villains: American society wanted peace and security and got them—but at what cost...
...Indeed, American politics is inhabited by Good Sports who love to lose only slightly less than they love to win, and the compassion which is extended to the inanities of Elder Statesmen suggests that the principle de mortuis nihil nisi bunkum has been broadened to protect the living...
...it is a healthy thing which, in the words of Tammany Hall boss Carmine De Sapio, prevents the professional politician from developing "the kind of apathy and complacency which is the bane of any political organization...
...he simply took a set of private relationships and stuck them in the Washington context, leaving the reader with the (erroneous) impression that the Senate is a fraternity, the President an amoral finagler and the conduct of American politics a variation of life among the whores...
...Similarly, we know that political leaders welcome dissent...
...I would still like to know what President Christiansen decided...
...Now suddenly a bomb has been thrown into the Era of Good Manners by Tristram Coffin...
...For Not to the Swift is, in thinly disguised terms, a ferocious, acerbic attack on the Eisenhower myth and on the "New Republicanism...
...Reviewed by John P. Roche Morris Hillquit Professor of Politics, Brandeis University One of the conventions of American politics is to acclaim the "good loser," the candidate who leaves the battlefield with a gentle smile and a bouquet or two for his "distinguished and fortunate" opponent...
...And, while Coffin's personal convictions about how political decisions should be made are apparent from the outset, he offers no stage villains or shining knights...
...It is an indication of Coffin's skill that this hard-boiled reader was completely caught up in the narrative...
...he is now going to achieve notoriety in literate Republican circles...
...I hope so...
...The odds are that the former President will stick to Zane Grey, but the "New Republicans"—with the same compulsive masochism which drove them into their kind of anti-politics—will be drawn to this novel as the alcoholic is to the bottle...
...Coffin of course, is well-known to readers of The New Leader as its Washington correspondent...
...While private motives enter the picture, as inevitably they must in any political situation, the focus is public...
...This is the question we ask ourselves on the last page as President Christiansen, with the German Army marching East with atomic weapons and the Chinese mobilized on the Asian marches, finally realizes that he must decide which values the American people most cherish...
...Not to the Swift supplies the catharsis that good sportsmanship stifles...
...The contrast is striking: Allen Drury's concern was not political at all...
...as one who got the leather from the Eisenhower regulars in 1952 and '56, I felt cheated in 1960: It was almost impossible to find anyone who supported Nixon in Massachusetts and no election victory is complete without a little gloating...
...Coffin, whose book is deeply pessimistic, has written a truly political novel: Its fundamental conceptions are political, its often savage criticism of the Eisenhower-Colonel Christiansen Administration is founded on an explicit set of ideals...
...As the "inside story" of a hypothetical Crusading Administration, Coffin's book inevitably invites comparison with Advise and Consent...
Vol. 44 • April 1961 • No. 15
