THE MESS IN WASHINGTON
PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" The Mess in HPhe month's headlines have been -*- dominated, in large measure, by the sensational disclosures of Assistant...
...Utterly unable to translate his decent instincts into effective policy, the President has virtually delegated all power in the field of foreign policy to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, in much the same way that he has made Sherman Adams his Acting President in domestic affairs...
...When the report of the shocking execution of former Hungarian Premier Imre Nagy and his associates was announced to the world, Dulles sounded positively jubilant in saying that this, of course, was a serious setback to summit negotiations...
...The central fact of national life today is that we have no leadership...
...Eisenhower replied: "I think it makes no difference whether or not I endorse it...
...The official figures show that unemployment rose in June to 5,437,000, the highest level since August 1941...
...The proportion of the labor force out of work has now stood at five per cent since last December, the longest and deepest unemployment period since the war...
...Consider the plight of the nation's economy...
...We are not suggesting the Adams-Goldfine case is unimportant...
...Eisenhower could salvage some measure of respect for his Administration by firing both Adams and Dulles...
...To permit him to continue in his high office would be equivalent to pronouncing official sanction for unethical conduct in public office...
...The result has been a negative, inflexible approach that has cost us dearly around the world...
...All of the grave problems that were with us before the Adams-Goldfine affair broke in the headlines are still exactly where they were—untouched by an Administration which seems wedded to a policy of inaction...
...The result has been to obscure from public sight the shocking inadequacies of the Eisenhower Administration in far more critical areas of foreign and domestic affairs...
...Our bumbling policy toward the crisis in the Middle East is only the most recent example...
...The shrewd operators in the Kremlin have seen and accepted the fact that their only hope of prevailing in a world of nuclear weapons is through economic, political, and psychological weapons...
...Eisenhower's refusal to dismiss him would gravely weaken the moral position of an Administration which has already shown itself to be pitifully feeble on just about every other front...
...Yes, the mess in Washington ranges far beyond vicuna coats, free hotel rooms, oriental rugs, pilfered papers, and hidden microphones...
...As Senator Paul H. Douglas, Illinois Democrat, pointed out recently, "since the Supreme Court's decision in 1954, the President of the United States has not to my knowledge taken a single step—other than the one to which he was inevitably forced at Little Rock due in large measure to his own previous inaction—to use his great office in order to promote the desegregation of public schools for the benefit of those 10,000,000 school children who are now being denied their constitutional rights...
...Given this attitude of neutrality, it is not surprising that the Administration has fallen back on its non-policy of do-nothing in so vital an area of our national life...
...The record is studded with statements by the President and Adams that they have cleaned up the mess in Washington, that they have wiped out "government by crony," and that influence peddling is now at an end...
...Eisenhower, a good soldier yesterday and a good citizen today, is completely unequipped for the high office of President...
...Judge Lemley's decision suspending school integration in Little Rock for two and a half years was a tragic setback and an open invitation to further lawlessness in the South, but the origins of that decision are rooted in the Eisenhower Administration's total failure to invoke its moral, political, and legal energies to enforce the law and the Constitution...
...Far more significant, for the long run, is Dulles' prolonged resistance to a summit conference, which has played into the hands of the most truculent elements in the Soviet Union...
...It is...
...Despite Adams' sentimental tale of many years of exchanging gifts with the Goldfines, the ugly fact persists that Goldfine swore on his federal tax returns that the gifts to Adams were deductible as legitimate business expenses...
...It is the Administration's frequent and flagrant posing with a halo round its head that has compounded the shock and revulsion experienced by countless Americans as the sordid story has unfolded before the House investigating committee...
...The Administration's behavior in the field of civil rights has been even more depressing...
...But however great may be the President's need of Adams, Mr...
...Equally destructive in the Dulles-Eisenhower approach to foreign affairs has been the failure to recognize the revolutionary rise of nationalism and the hunger for higher standards of living in the vast underdeveloped areas of the world...
...The revelations are all the more shocking because of the Eisenhower Administration's pious claim to have established a new standard of ethics in government service...
...Sherman Adams and John Foster Dulles are, in fact, the Acting Presidents of the United States, each in his own field...
...To this sorry showing the Administration's response was another cheery prediction that conditions would improve "soon".—a prediction voiced with dismal regularity each month since March...
...As tax officials told the New York Times, to claim such a deduction "a man must prove that he expects a return for his money...
...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" The Mess in HPhe month's headlines have been -*- dominated, in large measure, by the sensational disclosures of Assistant President Sherman Adams' curious relationship with Bernard Gold-fine, the Boston textile tycoon...
...Washington Adams should be fired...
...The Dulles-Eisenhower response has been to call for more bombs and bases...
...As a result, the law enforcement arm of our government, the Department of Justice, has done precisely nothing to enforce the law of the land...
...For more than eight months unemployment has been a critical problem, but Administration officials have done virtually nothing to meet the challenge—except to issue periodic statements assuring the nation that conditions are about to improve...
...Far more important than the headline disclosures of the House investigators is the Administration's failure in the field of foreign affairs...
...The facts are undisputed in the record that 1) Adams, who is in most significant respects the acting President of the United States, received expensive gifts from Goldfine, and that 2) in his official capacity Adams interceded for his generous friend in cases pending before federal regulatory agencies...
...The President's poignant lament, "I need him," is understandable enough, since he has relied so much on Adams to conduct just about all but the ceremonial and foreign policy functions of the Presidency...
...On September 5, 1956, the President was asked at a news conference whether he endorsed the findings of the Supreme Court on desegregation...
Vol. 22 • August 1958 • No. 8
