THE PROGRESSIVE'S CHOICE
The Progressive's Choice ON THE basis of their platforms, there is precious little to choose between the Republicans and the Democrats. Both documents are masterpieces of evasion, heavy-laden with...
...Both documents are masterpieces of evasion, heavy-laden with florid verbiage calculated to conceal rather than reveal the position of the parties on the overriding issues of our troubled times...
...We confess to some disappointment with his position on some issues, mostly in the field of foreign affairs, but we are impressed with his willingness to listen, his determination to think, and his courage to move to advanced positions in the face of facts...
...Thus, for a time he seemed bemused with a position of such "moderation" in the field of civil rights that he dismayed some of his more ardent and articulate supporters in the North...
...In the four years that have followed he has shown an unusual capacity for growth...
...He will be 66 Oct...
...And in 1955 he was one of a lonely band of Senators who had the courage to stand up against the proposal to grant the President the extraordinary power to involve us in war over the coastal islands of China...
...He went to Geneva to meet with the heads of the Soviet Union despite a drum-fire of appeasement charges by the warhawks in his own party...
...In his first and reluctant bid for the Presidency four years ago, he displayed a rare honesty and humility—so rare, in fact, that a machine-minded politician like Harry Truman mistook these qualities for a lack of courage...
...If re-elected, he will be the oldest President to be inaugurated with one exception—William Henry Harrison, who died three months after taking his oath of office...
...Both shunned a forthright declaration on the need for more and more honorable negotiations with the Soviet bloc...
...He would be the first President in American history constitutionally barred from seeking reelection—as a result of the enactment of the 22nd Amendment several years ago...
...The other half of the Democratic ticket has a record of rugged independence and political progressivism almost without parallel in the recent annals of the Senate...
...Both parties seem wedded to business as usual on the critical issues of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East...
...Eisenhower's curious characteristics that he will not only appoint but publicly acclaim lieutenants who do and say things that are often in sharp contradiction to what he himself believes...
...Physically, Mr...
...But he has not only kept his silence, publicly...
...Both took the easy, and, in their judgment, the more popular course, in flatly opposing the admission of Communist China to the United Nations...
...His is still a probing, brooding mind restlessly on the hunt for creative ideas...
...Stevenson made an excellent record as governor of Illinois...
...This is old stuff, of course, this practice of writing platitudinous platforms designed to avoid controversy, evade commitment, and offend no one...
...Both parties expended many words on the urgent issues of foreign policy, but the independent voter who struggles through them comes away with the conclusion that neither is in a mood to face up to the stubborn realities of world politics...
...Eisenhower, if reelected, would be pretty much a lame-duck...
...The Democratic Party plank on civil rights is humbug...
...For all the sectional conflicts and ideological divisions which weaken them as an effective political instrument, the Democrats have put together a hopeful and appealing ticket in Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver...
...while the Democrats, just as inevitably, "viewed with alarm" foreign policy moves which they had either approved or failed to oppose when they were presented to Congress and the country by the Republican Administration...
...On the basis of their records and their qualifications, Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver seem to us far and away the more hopeful choice for voters who, like us, regard themselves as independents and progressives...
...he has posed with and urged the election of some of the very men whose conduct and poli-ices revolt him...
...On several occasions he has overruled the trigger-happy brass in the Pentagon and the firebrands in Congress when we seemed poised on the brink of war...
...His greatest contribution—negative but nonetheless significant—has been to block Old Guard Republicanism in its attempt to reverse the march of social progress in America...
...His greatest strength, in the ranks of his own party, has been his enormous personal popularity and the coattails that that popularity provided for Republican candidates who reject his views on basic issues...
...He has stood, sometimes alone, against the assaults on the Bill of Rights engineered by Senators like McCarthy, Jenner, and the late Pat McCarran...
...The Republicans, inevitably, "pointed with pride" to the policies they have pursued during the past four years, many of which they denounced when those same policies had been invoked by the Democrats...
...Eisenhower, moreover, has emerged in the past two years as the symbol of America's quest for peace...
...Eisenhower was rewriting his speeches to accommodate McCarthy...
...his soon-to-be-justified warnings that the Soviet Union was achieving a measure of economic progress that would challenge the United States as never before, and his earnest, literate way of talking to people —these were some of the ingredients of his 1952 campaign that endeared him to many independent liberals...
...Both seem content to place our country's greatest reliance on military power and military pacts at the moment in history when social, economic, and political considerations dominate the new Soviet strategy that challenges us everywhere in the world...
...Politically, Mr...
...Senator Kefauver, although representing a border state, has consistently fought for civil rights...
...Stevenson's sled-length attack on McCarthyism, at the time when Mr...
...He seems more sure of himself than he was in 1952, but the old humility happily survives...
...Eisenhower has far less vigor and stamina than he had in the decisive years of his first term...
...His attacks of coronary thrombosis and ileitis, along with advancing years, are legitimate considerations in this campaign, even if the medicine men around him insist he is as healthy as ever...
...The President's age and the state of his health vest the Republican choice for the Vice Presidency with extraordinary significance...
...Both paid tribute to the United Nations, but neither would criticize the Western Powers for by-passing the UN on the explosive issue of the Suez Canal and many other international disputes...
...The fact that his run-ning-for-President days would be over the moment he were reelected underscores the harsh fact that the Old Guard would no longer have any political use for him and would withdraw even the token, faltering support it has given him so begrudgingly during the first term...
...It seems to us painfully clear that if a first-term Eisenhower would not fight for his principles and could not bring himself to oppose those who were blocking his program, a second-term, ailing Eisenhower will be even less capable, physically and politically, to cope with the reactionary and saber-rattling clique that runs the Republican show in Congress...
...It is our conviction, as independent liberals, that on the basis of the record and their qualifications that the Democratic ticket of Adlai E. Stevenson and Senator Estes Kefauver holds out greater hope for effectuating progressive principles in domestic and foreign affairs than does the Republican ticket of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard M. Nixon...
...On other issues of domestic policy, Democratic phrasemakers held out more alluring promises to independent liberals, in the fields of social security, resource development, and farm and labor legislation, than did the Republicans, but there was nothing to indicate that the Southern Bourbons who dominate the Congressional committees would not go on throttling liberal legislation if the Democrats control the next Congress, as they do the current Congress...
...Conversely some of those who canonized him at San Francisco are on record as opposing him on many of the most important issues...
...Most of his own utterances on major issues, notably in moments of tension, have been carefully calculated to emphasize moderation...
...The unanimous selection of Nixon, under the special circumstances which prevail this year, robs the Republicans of any serious claim to the support of independent liberals...
...Of the most fateful court decisions of our lifetime the Democrats could say no more than that they have "brought consequences of vast importance...
...It is one of Mr...
...Eisenhower and his record...
...As Chief Executive, he has failed repeatedly to provide the leadership that might have yielded a far greater harvest of worthwhile legislation and a genuine reformation of the Republican Party...
...Our own feelings represent no sweeping rejection of Mr...
...his dedication to a philosophy of progressive legislation within the framework of political democracy...
...He is not our kind of President, in thought and action, but he has tried diligently to serve his country and succeeded in achieving a measure of success in several major fields...
...He has been bitter, in private, over the Old Guard and Mc-Carthyite factions of his party—so much so that, according to the officially authorized account of his Administration, he gave serious thought, several years ago, to breaking away from the GOP and founding a new party...
...But gradually his views responded to the realities of the conflict in the South until today his conviction is that the President must "do all in his power to create a climate of compliance with the law and to encourage with the immense prestige and power of his office those who are earnestly trying, often in difficult circumstances, to comply with the Court's decision...
...No one who ponders the record (See "The Trouble with Nixon" on the following page) can seriously believe that he has the capacity to unify and govern the country if death or disability removed Eisenhower from the Presidency...
...This, of course, has not been true of many of the men around the President, including such influential policymakers as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles...
...his eagerness to talk unpalatable truths to so powerful a pressure group as the American Legion...
...In 1954 he dared be the only Senator to vote against the bill introduced by his fellow Democrat, Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, to outlaw the Communist Party...
...It is on the record of the parties and the qualifications of the candidates, and not on the turgid prose of the platform-writers, that voters must sit in judgment...
...The Republicans did better, but after having proclaimed their determination to fill the "aching void" left by the Democrats, their restrained willingness to "accept" the Supreme Court decisions voiding segregation in the public schools came as a hollow anti-climax...
Vol. 20 • October 1956 • No. 10
