National Reports

...Regardless of the crazy quilt of undisciplined parties, a logical pattern emerges...

...Some years ago, James MacGregor Bums pointed out that the "Presidential-year parties" and the "Congressional-year parties" each have a different face...

...Pat Brown has been a good governor, though hardly an exciting one...

...Rafferty's campaign is obviously much better financed than Richardson's, and since neither candidate is very well known the money could easily talk loud enough to elect him...

...The United States is not a parliamentary democracy, and never will be...

...For many weeks California was all baseball and very little politics...

...If they were, the election might have to be postponed for lack of a quorum...

...But despite the vast number of printed speculations about the consequences of the election, and despite the Administration's intense interest in the campaign, here in California it is strictly Dullsville...

...Thus, the campaign so far has been far from a slugfest, and hardly the kind of battle that gets voters excited and involved...

...Foreign policy is the Achilles heel of democracy...

...Dullsville California By Paul Jacobs San Francisco The loser in California's race for the governorship, be he Pat Brown or Richard Nixon, could, with some justice, blame his defeat on the New York Yankees...

...It consists of ignoring party rifts precisely when they become most painfully clear...

...There is also the "fight" for the office of lieutenant governor, with Glenn Anderson, the Democratic incumbent, who obviously does not think much of Brown, running on a slogan of "Vote for the hardest working man in the Capitol...

...And as long as the baseball fever persisted, politics was of no interest to anyone here...

...Paul Jacobs, a frequent contributor, has written for the Reporter, the Commonweal and the Economist...

...The Brown and Nixon campaigns are conservatively estimated to be running at about S1 million each...

...And it is all too obvious that, compared to Nikita Khrushchev's oligarchy, Representative Passman understands so little about the philosophy of foreign aid it is dangerous to let him make foreign policy for us...

...Political fund-raising has been even more difficult than usual, far fewer bumper stickers plugging the candidates adorn cars, and it is very difficult to get people out to neighborhood meetings...

...In some future crisis we may regret this...

...But no one should be deluded that these defeats will represent a drop in far-Right sympathies in California...

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...But if voter interest does increase, Brown's chances, which seem to have been dropping lately, may improve considerably: There are a million more registered Democrats in California than Republicans...

...And it is working harder than its opponents...

...Thomas Kuchel, the competent but colorless Republican Senator, is running against Richard Richards, a Democratic State Senator from Los Angeles...

...The mid-term elections will not solve any of the problems concerning our undisciplined parties...

...At the same time, General Eisenhower, that brave recent recruit to political life, has taken to the hustings for the Republicans, charging the Democrats with being "spenders...

...Lacking either a sense of program or a charismatic leader, a great cloud of apathy has settled over the Democrats...

...This is partly because Rockefeller is more a devotee of "welfare-state" principles than either Eisenhower, Representative Smith or Senator Barry Goldwater...

...Financially, the Republicans are much better equipped than the Democrats...

...But there are some additional dimensions to the campaign that have helped raise the "Who cares, anyway...

...Nixon is campaigning hard, yet simply is not a very likeable fellow...

...And why should anything be wrong with the house...

...it only becomes a value as an instrument of justice...

...Consider, for example, the unreality of the mid-term elections between the two major parties, both loose alliances of local interests held together-and at that only barelyby general principles and by their national organizations...

...Anderson's opponent is George Christopher, the Mayor of San Francisco, whose campaign issues are well, he must have some, I guess, but they have escaped me...

...Former President Eisenhower's visit whipped up some enthusiasm among the Republicans early this month...

...Certainly, the Republican Right has a better sense of itself and where it wants to go than can be found any place on the Democratic party spectrum...

...All of which leads one to ask, Is not political life in America wonderful...

...Then in California there is always the chance of that arch middle-ofthe-roader, Richard Nixon, carrying the state...

...The great danger for Brown is that Democrats simply will not bother to vote...

...Among the Democrats particularly, the enthusiasm that marked the last three Presidential campaigns, and even the previous gubernatorial race, is conspicuously missing in this election...

...Despite what the United Automobile Workers' leaders say, there is a possibility that he will capture the votes of the auto workers and their wives and win the governorship...

...Whether or not this is true, there is no doubt that Rafferty's views on education are less liberal than those of Richardson, who is an outstanding member of the Los Angeles school board...

...the cost of Nixon's special campaign train alone is probably beyond the reach of Brown...

...So it was that I realized I had been taken in once again by reports of a distant event, just as people reading columns of print in the national press get the impression of a vigorous election battle between Brown and Nixon...

...Brown defends his Administration's record -by and large a reasonably sound one-while Nixon tries to make issues out of crime, unemployment and high taxes...

...Are you O.K...

...So President Kennedy was out campaigning for more Democrats in the House and Senate, though it is apparent to all that members of his own party-e.g., Virginia's Howard W. Smith, Chairman of the House Rules Committee, his good friend Senator George A. Smathers from Florida and Louisiana's Otto E. Passman, Chairman of the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee-have been the real devils of the piece...

...At the moment, though, the only price that has to be paid for our curious system is a game of pretense by the Presidential campaigners in a nonPresidential year...

...Well, it's raining pretty hard,' she answered casually, "but I'm all right...

...Perhaps the surfeit of complicated amendments on the ballot-there are more than 20 at the State level plus a dozen local issues in every city-has so worn the voters down that they no longer care about any of them...

...Kuchel has a decided edge, but it does not seem to matter very much since his voting record is a pretty good one, even from the Democratic viewpoint...

...for the Republicans, between industrial and agrarian states-becomes very obvious...

...With the exception of the two victories of Eisenhower, a non-political war hero, the Republicans have had no chance of election in an industrial community as long as they strictly adhered to the traditional principles of Republicanism...

...Is the house still standing...

...Brown hauls off on Nixon with what at first looks to be a haymaker-the Hughes Tool Company loan, for example-then stops the punch in mid-air, almost apologetically...

...Goldwater may be the champion of the millionaires of Texas, the retired millionaires of California and the callow Young Americans for Freedom, but what chance has he or anyone advocating his policies to carry such states as New York, New Jersey, Michigan or Illinois...

...There is one State-wide contest, though, which has created a good deal of interest...

...But who cares...

...But the party leader must ignore the rift, bravely pretending that the only thing frustrating his policy is the opposing party...

...The trouble is that Nixon cannot really persuade anyone that Brown is either a Communist or a Communist sympathizer, and Brown is not really equipped to cope with the glib-talking, quick-to-not-answer former Vice President...

...Fighting for his political life, and desperately trying to shake off the aura of the loser which now surrounds him, Nixon has been using any tactic that comes to hand or mouth, including accusing two Democratic candidates in San Francisco of Communist sympathies...

...Stanley Mosk will undoubtedly be re-elected attorney general...

...And there are not very many issues about which Californians can get exercised...

...Nixon dares Brown to challenge him on the issue of personal morality but seems very relieved that the challenge is not accepted...

...Figures for the Congressional and other races are very difficult to compute, but the total must surely be a staggering one...

...This, ultimately, is why every "strong" President must use a combination of political chicanery and a high-minded appeal over the heads of Congress to the voters to get anywhere with his program in both Houses...

...Although they retain strong anti-Nixon feelings, the California Democratic clubs are comparatively quiet...

...I asked my wife...

...I was on a brief working visit to balmy Hawaii when the storm broke, and it was three days before I learned of the heavy rains pelting San Francisco...

...And the pattern spells out that the freedom about which the ultra-Republicans speak is not a value in itself...

...The cancellation of Kennedy's West Coast trip is a blow to Democratic spirits, which were sure to rise with the President's visit...

...Some of the apathy is natural, of course, since this is an off-year election...

...this despite the fact that perhaps the chief charge which might be leveled at the young President is his failure to solve the problems of an increasingly automated industry experiencing mounting unemployment because he has not rigorously enough adopted Keynesian policies...

...The results of this election may have very important national consequences, but clearly the California electorate-with the notable exception of the near and far Right-is not very concerned about local consequences...

...In the midterm elections the rift within both parties-for the Democrats, between North and South...

...This was immediately followed by the seemingly interminable World Series, drawn out by a sudden storm which hit northern California...

...But since he is not only in the middle of the road on every significant policy, but inclined to criss-cross every moral principle, it is probably safe to assume that the Californians will return him to private life and a well-deserved retirement...

...The John Birchers are actively engaged in two Congressional campaigns, both in southern California, where the hot sun seems to bake the brain pans of the population to the hardness of marble...

...On second thought, complacency about our system is really not justified...

...One other element is striking about this election: its cost...

...Apathy about the governorship is duplicated in the other State contests and Congressional races...

...But he has discovered that it is a lot easier to get the country worked up over Cuba than Californians over a complicated water program...

...First the playoff between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants for the National League pennant engrossed everybody's attention...

...I hurriedly called home, holding in my hands a Hawaiian newspaper with screaming headlines about the storm...

...In Michigan one can expect another Republican victory by George Romney, who first revealed his heresy to traditional Republicanism in his policies as President of the burgeoning American Motors Company...

...Because the Democratic State Legislature gerrymandered the two districts where Edgar Hiestand and John Rousselot, the John Birch candidates, are running, it seems probable that they will both lose...

...Evidence of lethargy and apathy is everywhere...

...The rumors are that Rafferty is being supported by the John Birch Society and some wealthy, reactionary oil companies in southern California...

...That is the fight between Ralph Richardson and Max Rafferty for the post of State superintendent of schools...

...Now that the baseball season is finally over, and people have almost stopped speculating about whether Matty Alou could have scored the tying run in the seventh game of the series if he had not been held up at third, perhaps Californians will begin to get really interested in the campaign...

...It has been almost impossible, for instance, to generate interest in defeating a proposed amendment to the State Constitution which would, among other things, allow grand juries to declare organizations or individuals Communist...

...As for gubernatorial elections, the chances are that Governor Nelson Rockefeller will win a smashing victory in New York over a political unknown...

...For one thing is certain in this election: The far Right is much better organized and financed than any other group in the State...

...Fortunately, the election will be held on a Tuesday, when neither the Los Angeles Rams nor the San Francisco Forty-Niners will be playing football...

...Brown, very conscious of the election's national importance, has tried hard to pierce Nixon with his lances...