A CAMPAIGN OF MANY IRONIES 'BOTH YOUR HOUSES'
A Campaign of Many Ironies NOW that the dust is settling over the election returns, we feel in the mood to express the wayward reflection that this was in many respects the weirdest campaign of our...
...The 48th, Rhode Island, is still in doubt because 11,000 absentee ballots will not be tabulated until Dec...
...and "see anyone" in efforts to achieve peace...
...The Soviet Union ignored the U.N...
...France's Premier Mollet agreed...
...And not the least of these ironies was the fact that the man who seemed to personify peace and a placid acceptance of things as they are was swept into office by an almost unprecedented majority at the very moment that his flimsy structure of peace was collapsing all around us and Americans had rarely been less certain that things would be as they had been...
...Eisenhower, but it seems equally clear the 1956 campaign was not Mr...
...Stevenson seemed to us to be so trapped by conflicting advice on strategy and tactics that he rarely seemed himself...
...It seemed clear from developments in Poland that the Kremlin was in a mood to tolerate, however reluctantly, major reforms in economic policy and political controls— provided such changes were made within the framework of Communist Party ideology and provided, too, that they left undisturbed the basic relationship of mother country and satellite...
...It is here that the United Nations will confront its greatest challenge...
...Americans like him as a person, like his wide and fetching grin, admire him as a war hero, applaud his simple ways, and feel a kinship with a leader who wmetimes murders the King's English as carelessly as one of the boys...
...Eisenhower's preference would be the happier choice...
...It was the United States that took the initiative in holding out promise of aid to Egypt for the building of the Aswan High Dam, and it was the United States, through Mr...
...Conversely, Adlai Stevenson never quite reached the hearts or minds of many Americans, while his party remained for millions of voters the friend of the "little man...
...The U.N...
...The U.N...
...Much of the appealing flavor of his 1952 candidacy seemed diluted by the decision of the political master-minds to present "a new Stevenson" who turned out on some occasions to be neither new nor old nor Stevenson...
...This loose alliance of Western colonial powers and several Middle Eastern nations was designed by Secretary of States Dulles to provide us with an additional buffer against the Soviet Union...
...They shattered the myth that the Great Powers are qualified to serve as the custodians of peace and the guardians of international morality—a myth written into the U.N...
...Moscow reacted with brutal violence, sending wave after wave of Soviet armed might to crush the Hungarian revolt...
...We hope Mr...
...The Pennsylvania story records much the same ambivalence...
...Perhaps it is an oversimplification to place so much emphasis on his personal popularity...
...And yet, to return to the ironical, a considerable number of voters cast their ballots for this man who symbolizes the virtues they most admire, and then went to the troublesome length of splitting their ticket in order to vote for candidates for other offices who avowedly represented the opposite order of things...
...The United States was not a party to Anglo-French aggression in Egypt...
...In fact, as world conflict came in the closing days of the campaign, Mr...
...Moscow seemed determined to crush the last pockets of resistance in Hungary and reestablish that unhappy nation as a cowed colony...
...Eisenhower perceptably increased his hold on the confidence of the electorate...
...But Israel's hands are far from clean...
...It seems clear enough, in retrospect, that nothing Mr...
...While giving "sympathetic" consideration to the invitation, the White House announced, Mr...
...Here the Republican candidate for U.S...
...Momentous developments in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East are shaking and reshaping the power structure of the world we have known...
...It was in the midst of this upheaval in Hungary that first Israel and then Britain and France disclosed to the world that their standards of international morality were hardly more impressive than those of the Soviet Union...
...The same trend turned up in Colorado...
...Confronted by both Soviet and Western aggression, it did not hesitate to pronounce "a plague on both your houses" and to demand an end to hostilities...
...But the Kremlin paid no heed to the U.N.'s demand for the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops...
...But it succeeded only in propelling the Soviet Union into seeking and achieving counter-alliances, which added greatly to the tension in the Middle East...
...Soon afterward Britain and France bombed Egyptian airfields and landed troops in the Suez Canal zone...
...Eisenhower had gone to extraordinary lengths to urge the reelection of Senator James H. Duff...
...The Democratic candidate was John Carroll, who had been defeated twice before in bids for a Senate seat...
...Although the United Nations was not immediately equipped to provide the police force required to guard the cease-fire in the Middle East, its staff, headed by hard-driving Secretary Dag Hammarskjold...
...They tore through the flimsy patchwork of postwar armistices and alliances that have given us, for eleven years, not peace, but an uneasy truce...
...Eisenhower's Secretary of the Interior to run against Morse at the President's request...
...But Morse captured the state—and so did Eisenhower...
...But beyond all this was a positive identification with a President who was not troublesomely raising issues that might disturb citizens in their feeling of security...
...But any objective quest for the root causes of the military explosion in the Middle East cannot fail to include the facts that the United States has pursued a vacillating course in that strategic area of the world, that it has failed, along with Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, to provide affirmative leadership in seeking an enduring settlement, and that some of our policies contributed directly to the current crisis...
...In the State of Washington, too, the voters reversed themselves at the ballot box...
...Soviet conduct in Hungary has outraged mankind...
...There have been a variety of interpretations seeking to explain the Soviet regime's ruthless reversion to suppression after a period of relative relaxation...
...Whatever else might be said of Colonel Nasser's bellicose conduct in recent months, the fact persists that he did keep the Suez Canal open to world shipping on the same basis that had prevailed under Anglo-French management of the Canal—until Anglo-French military invasion resulted in the closing of the waterway...
...on the contrary, it rightly took the lead in condemning that course before the United Nations...
...Many independents who supported him with militant enthusiasm in 1952 supported him with measured restraint in 1956...
...Stevenson's finest hour...
...charter by the Great Powers themselves...
...But he will have to be a bolder leader and a more imaginative planner, and he will have to deal more resourcefully with the leaders of his own Republican Party in Congress if he is to have a fighting chance of performing the mission assigned to him by...
...5.) In a number of states, scattered geographically and mixed economically—states like Michigan, Massachusetts, Ohio, Kansas, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado—the voters elected Democratic governors while they were contributing to the landslide triumph for President Eisenhower...
...Britain and France have shown, in their conduct in Cyprus, Algeria, and Malaya, that they still refuse to live with the dominant fact of our era—that the nationalist hunger for freedom and independence represents an irresistible force in areas of the world long exploited by the colonial powers of the West...
...A Campaign of Many Ironies NOW that the dust is settling over the election returns, we feel in the mood to express the wayward reflection that this was in many respects the weirdest campaign of our generation...
...So great was Dwight D. Eisenhower's personal popularity that a heart attack, a serious intestinal operation, advancing age, a much criticized running-mate, a mediocre record, a disinclination to discuss issues, the eleventh-hour collapse of his reliance on peace in the world, and the undisputed fact that the Democratic Party is the majority party in the nation—none of these could check the torrent of votes that poured his way...
...Only President Eisenhower indicated coolness...
...General Assembly branded Russian actions as an "intolerable attempt" to enslave the people of Hungary and as a clear-cut violation of the Charter...
...Democrats increased their control of state capitols from 26 to 28, while the Republicans emerged with only 19 governorships...
...the greatest number of Americans that ever rallied behind one man...
...It is our judgment that the world organization, given its charter and the present division of its membership, cannot hope to achieve enduring settlement so long as the Great Powers remain bitterly split...
...Israel struck against Egypt with a full-scale invasion...
...The roots of conflict in the Middle East run deep...
...Soviet Premier Bulganin accepted...
...Britain and France come before the court of world opinion with hands soiled by oil imperialism and the last remnants of a colonialism that ranges from Cyprus to Algeria and east to Singapore...
...In Michigan, the voters gave President Eisenhower a whopping 350,000 majority, and then scratched their ballots so emphatically that they gave Governor Mennen Williams, a liberal Democrat whose position on most issues is in direct conflict with the President's, an almost as whopping 300,000 majority...
...police force could move into the area...
...For example, it was American leadership, exercised by our hapless Secretary of State, that led to the development of the Bagdad Pact...
...It was recognition of this hard fact that led neutral Switzerland to propose a conference of the heads of state of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and India in a supreme effort to reach agreement on fundamentals...
...The President, for example, swept Oregon by a handsome majority, but the same voters who liked peaceful Ike reelected trouble-making Wayne Morse, who is as anti-Eisenhower a Senator as we have...
...Never before in the one hundred years that the present two parties have been opposing each other has a victorious candidate for President failed to carry at least one house of Congress along with him...
...All in all, Democratic governors today administer states with more than 70 per cent of the nation's population...
...It was more than that: he seemed to personify the very mood of America...
...During much of the campaign Mr...
...In Hungary, however, the Nagy regime which came to power in the first convulsive days of the rebellion found itself pushed by runaway forces into seeking complete independence...
...Senator, Governor Arthur Langlie, who had been keynoter at the Republican National Convention, in favor of reelecting Democratic Senator Warren Magnuson...
...The Republic of Israel has been the victim of both sullen Arab intransigence, multiplied greatly in recent months by the reckless leadership of Egypt's President Nasser, and the tragic failure of Western statemanship to seek and develop a banc overall settlement that might have enabled the countries of that crossroads area of the world to achieve a live-and-let-live relationship...
...It was that kind of campaign...
...It is still too early to count the consequences of the explosive developments of the past month, but it is not too soon to record the dismal fact that despite their countless pledges repudiating force and despite the balance of terror created by the Hell Bomb, both Soviet Russia and our major Western allies did not hesitate to turn to armed violence when their imperial interests were threatened...
...It was a campaign of many ironies...
...Morse's Republican opponent was Douglas McKay, who had resigned as Mr...
...If the Anglo-French and Israeli forces do indeed withdraw from Egyptian territory when the U.N...
...It seemed obvious that the invaders were moved less by qualms of conscience and the action of the United Nations than by the Soviet threat to rush "volunteer" military forces into the area to fight for Egypt if Israel and her Western partners persisted in pursuing their major objective— the destruction of the Nasser regime in Egypt...
...This is where the tense situation stood as this issue of The Progressive was going to press in mid-November...
...Analysis of the contests for governor disclosed a comparable picture of a nation that liked Ike greatly but mistrusted his Republican Party...
...itself would be greatly strengthened in its task of seeking specific settlements if the dominant powers could first agree on at least a few of the broad principles of not only a military cease-fire, but a cease-fire for the kind of threats and reprisals that make genuine negotiation all but impossible...
...Much the same pattern prevailed in many areas of the nation—so much so, in fact, that the Democrats achieved the remarkable feat of retaining control of both houses of Congress while a Republican President was rolling up the largest popular vote in American history...
...Her troops swept over the Sinai peninsula to the Suez Canal and occupied the Egyptian-held Gaza strip...
...She has shown a truculence of her own in refusing to negotiate some of the issues in conflict between herself and the Arab world around her, and she threw away much of her stature as a lonely, besieged republic when she took the law into her own hands by invading Egypt...
...Senator was former Governor Dan Thornton, friend and golfing companion of the President...
...Dulles, that pulled the rug from under Colonel Nasser by withdrawing that offer of aid in the crudest fashion and for the most specious reasons—a step which led instantly to Nasser's decision to nationalize the Suez Canal...
...Eisenhower swept the state by 600,000 votes—usually more than enough to assure the election of the ticket— but Duff lost to a Democratic liberal, Joseph S. Clark, Jr., who represents in many respects the antithesis of the Eisenhower devotion to things as they are...
...Eisenhower reconsiders, for surely in this time of tension no step should be overlooked that might conceivably help to build a more lasting foundation for world peace...
...who expressed their own conviction that times were good, their innermost desire to be left alone, and their longing for the kind of tranquility he seemed to bring from the moment the guns were silenced in Korea until the bombs dropped in Egypt a few days before the election...
...President Eisenhower's sincere dedication to peace and his occasional awareness of the issues and the stakes involved in the world struggle provide him with some of the equipment he will need for the decisive future...
...The people clearly trust him, but not his party...
...worked at an extraordinary pace to mobilize the necessary troops from the smaller nations and prepare them for their delicate mission in Egypt...
...Within the crippling limitations placed on its operations by the Great Powers, the United Nations has acted more forthrightly and forcefully than many would have thought possible...
...Eisenhower won the state easily, but the man for whose election he pleaded was defeated by the New Deal Democrat...
...General Assembly expressed the collective conscience of mankind when it condemned both Soviet aggression in Hungary and the Israeli and Anglo-French invasion of Egypt and called for cessation of hostilities...
...Stevenson might have said or done could have prevailed against the overriding trust that the populace placed in Mr...
...Britain's Eden announced that he was ready to "go anywhere...
...He did not reject the Swiss proposal out of hand...
...Eisenhower an impressive margin, but then turned about and repudiated his personal choice for U.S...
...But the withdrawal of the invaders will not, of course, resolve any of the fundamental issues...
...The President's coattails, as Professor Maurice Klain observed so graphically for readers of The Progressive in the November issue, were tattered beyond repair even before the campaign began...
...They gave Mr...
...The desperate people of Israel have been exposed for a long time to boycotts, blockades, and bloodshed as Arab hostility to the infant republic mounted...
...Embittered by a decade of oppressive Soviet rule, the people of Hungary seemed determined not only to break their ties with Russia, but to repudiate communism itself...
...Eisenhower preferred to settle the world crisis through the U.N...
...So did India's Nehru...
...Eisenhower traveled to Oregon during the campaign to help his friend in every way he could, and the GOP made it clear to the voters of Oregon that nothing would please the President more than the defeat of Wayne Morse...
...Both Your Houses' RUSSIAN TANKS blasting their way through the cities of Hungary and Anglo-French bombs exploding on the airfields of Egypt destroyed more than the lives and property that were their immediate targets...
...If it were possible to resolve the conflict through the U.N., certainly Mr...
...police force arrives, the United Nations will have passed a major milestone in its career, and the world will have taken a significant stride toward the faint beginnings of world authority...
...resolution applying to Hungary, but Britain, France, and Israel responded after a time to the demand for a cease-fire, insisting, however, on maintaining their military positions in Egypt at least until a U.N...
...These are not isolated phenomena...
...But the U.N...
...The President embarks on his second term next month confronted with a challenge that dwarfs most of the problems with which he sparred so ineffectually during his first term and ignored altogether during the election campaign...
Vol. 20 • December 1956 • No. 12
