A Lonely Politician's Cry
CHAPMAN, BRUCE K.
A Lonely Politician's Cry ORDER OF BATTLE: A REPUBLICAN'S CALL TO REASON By Jacob K. Javits Atheneum. 328 pp. $5.95. Reviewed by BRUCE K. CHAPMAN Sixteen years on Capitol Hill have...
...In issue after issue that concerns Javits, the GOP organization— the National Committee staff, the Policy and Campaign Committees of the party in Congress—is either bored, ineffectual or openly hostile...
...Restated for today, says Javits, the issue to which Republicans should address themselves as a party "is not whether we shall have unlimited personal freedom or none at all...
...Now, in Order of Battle, Javits turns his attention to a new task, an apologia for his political philosophy and an impassioned "call to reason" directed mostly to his own party...
...he is almost as combative as Wayne Morse, and erudite to a fault...
...It is, after all, three times the length of the Arizona Senator's snappy little Conscience of a Conservative...
...The main issue is this: Under modern conditions, how can we strike the right balance between the need to decentralize the power of decision in matters affecting our individual preferences, and the need for unity of direction in matters affecting us all as members of the American state and society...
...Here, if anywhere, was the place to raise the call for reform...
...Reviewed by BRUCE K. CHAPMAN Sixteen years on Capitol Hill have brought New York's Republican Senator Jacob K. Javits respect and acclaim from every quarter—except from his own political party...
...If not viewed as a demon in Washington, Javits is often considered a maverick...
...But more helpful, though less colorful, is Javits' close examination of the intellectual origins of the GOP in the thinking of Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt...
...But Senator Javits abandons his topic too soon...
...His book is one of the most thoughtful and well-researched arguments recently produced by a practicing politician...
...Indeed, it leaves one with the impression that the Senator is himself unaware of how to implement them...
...It is very well, for example, to cite "the failure among Republicans to make plain the fact that when they declare themselves to be opposed to labor rackets they are not opposing but favoring the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively...
...On the civil rights revolution Javits has the courage to criticize the late President Kennedy, though his criticism is made with deferential reserve...
...Applying his interpretation of the GOP purpose to specific problems of the mixed economy, metropolitan living, education, and the future of the cold war, Javits provides a deft critique of national policy...
...He is more disposed to crusade than to barter...
...The fact is that the Republican national party headquarters has only one staff member in its "Labor Division," and even he has no means or mandate for communicating about labor with labor leaders, laborers or anybody else...
...Now Goldwater is in control...
...Yet in a Senate filled with lawyers, Javits is perhaps the most consistently incisive...
...The question is whether other Republican politicians are reading this book—or, the cynical might ask, whether most of them read anything...
...Javits begins his exposition of a "progressive Republican" philosophy by describing his own early political experiences in the East Side of New York, giving us autobiographical insights into the casual ruthlessness of the old Tammany Democratic machine and tenement life 50 years before the "War on Poverty...
...Thus Senator Javits' book is, finally, the articulate cry of a lonely politician, persuasive in many of his positions but lacking the political muscle to implement them...
...Conservative Republicans in particular have wondered out loud how such a "liberal," urban-oriented man could be a member of a conservative party...
...But it would be more to the point to go on and trace the failure to the party's remarkable indifference to the labor vote...
...When James Martin, a segregationist Republican (of all things) ran for U.S...
...According to Javits, these men gave the Republican party a formula for good government: the balance of interests and powers and passions, and a "national interest" which affirms as equally valid the needs for both individual liberty and collective cooperation...
...He also produces seemingly endless suggestions for governmental reform and innovation, some of which simply come down to calls for study committees while others startle the reader with fresh and sensible concepts...
...With Goldwater's nomination for the Presidency increasing the GOP's chances of defeat in November, it takes on new interest as a poignant example of the continuing dilemma of the "progressive Republican" and the future of his party...
...Senator from Alabama in 1962 against segregationist Democrat Senator Lister Hill, he hopefully flung at his opponent the worst epithet he could imagine— that Hill was "Alabama's Jacob Javits...
...For four years the GOP national organization divorced itself from electoral reality and intellectual innovation...
...Close analysis and reasoned proposals carry little weight in the precincts unless they are backed by implementing power at a higher level...
...Senator Goldwater frequently suggests that Javits join the Democrats, and Northern Democrats admit they would like to have him...
...Southern Democrats, and even Southern Republicans, abhor him above nearly any politician anywhere, ranking him right after Bobby Kennedy in their segregationist demonology...
Vol. 47 • August 1964 • No. 15
