Washington's 'Supermarket Politicians':
CANHAM, ERWIN D.
Washington's 'Supermarket Politicians' The New America. By Karl E. Meyer. Basic Books. 196 pp. $4.50. Reviewed by Erwin D. Canham Editor, "Christian Science Monitor" The misfortune of this...
...Supermarket politicians," Meyer calls them, and remarks that the two latest Presidential candidates, but for accident and circumstance, might have wound up in the other's party...
...Perhaps the organizational problems now arising between the White House offices and the regular governmental departments indicate one major reason why governors have hitherto been preferred as candidates for the Presidency...
...The atmosphere and prognosis have changed a good deal since, and it is reasonable to believe that for quite a long time things will not look as fresh and expectant as they did on January 20, 1961...
...Coming from the tradition of authentic Wisconsin liberalism, he is well equipped and situated to estimate the new moods of American politics...
...The "Smooth Deal" has brought in his stead the handsome young men, persuasive on television, "balanced" in their views...
...In forging different groups into a common society, Meyer feels, we have sacrificed the best values of a pluralistic society in which "unity could be rooted in a larger degree of cultural diversity...
...Instead, we have "chosen the way of a mass society...
...If Meyer had stuck to his basic theme and investigated it in greater depth he might have written a more valuable work...
...Meyer also mourns the passing of the old-time politician, the intense and rugged partisan...
...For him, the victory of ethnic assimilation constitutes a national failure...
...Meyer is most perceptive and useful in dealing with subjects close to his own experience, such as the triumph of the melting pot and the twilight of regionalism...
...As it is, the book goes on inordinately about the Texans in Washington, its section on the Washington correspondents and commentators is superficial and far inferior to other recent work, and it rambles from topic to topic...
...Meyer is an editorial writer for the Washington Post...
...In Meyer's view, the presence of four one-time Senators on the 1960 Presidential slates marked the decline of state politics...
...He has hopes that Kennedy will turn into something much better, but is not altogether confident...
...It is difficult to agree wholly with Sidney Hyman's dust-jacket encomium ("with the publication of this book, Karl Meyer has plainly established himself in the front rank of America's political anthropologists"), but one can at least agree that he is a well-informed essayist whose phrase-making does not always run away from him...
...The book was completed in the fine flush of the Kennedy victory and inauguration...
...In short, this quickly assembled volume, riding high on the wave of the new Administration, is at best a hint of the careful study of American political life of which Meyer seems capable...
...Reviewed by Erwin D. Canham Editor, "Christian Science Monitor" The misfortune of this collection of bright essays—subtitled Politics and Society in the Age of the Smooth Deal—is that so many of them are soon out of date...
Vol. 44 • August 1961 • No. 30
