A Socialist Looks at The Campaign

...A Socialist Looks at The Campaign by NORMAN THOMAS One thing stands out in this unsatisfactory campaign between two similar men: The United States is committed to a combination welfare and garrison state...

...Item—Kennedy's Democratic colleague, Senator Allen Ellender, expressed the wish that all the Latin American nations had a dictator like Trujillo, and the Democratic floor leader in the House, John McCor-mack of Massachusetts, who had been decorated by Trujillo, was largely responsible for denying to the Administration the right to withhold a bonus to the Dominican dictator out of the mismanaged sugar quota...

...There is no evidence so far in this campaign of serious intentions to change the situation...

...Both are good speakers...

...Which is one reason why Kennedy and Nixon prefer to talk about disarmament in the usual generalities without specific suggestions on the way to give drive and determination and sincerity to our efforts to achieve universal disarmament...

...His criticisms have force, but he has given the impression that his chief remedy would be to be even "tougher" with Khrushchev and Castro...

...But until then at least, neither of the opportunists had taken a really notable stand on a major issue...

...In appealing to the people both parties take the welfare-garrison state for granted...

...It is perhaps typical of our times and our political system that both parties nominated such similar, almost interchangeable men...

...Both are young, vigorous, adroit politicians, as they proved in the handling of their conventions...

...He is committed to even bigger expenditures on arms, a position emphasized far more than his generalizations on disarmament...

...Even so, neither party has had the courage and common sense to come out squarely for an American version of the socialized medicine which has been such a blessing in Britain and many other nations...

...Johnson, the majority leader, failed to produce the necessary majorities...

...Nixon's Pollyannaish optimism lends itself to caustic ridicule...

...The liberal welfare and civil rights promises of the Democrats are worth barely fifty cents on the dollar so long as the party permits men like Representative Howard Smith of Virginia and Senator James Eastland of Mississippi to remain as chairmen of powerful committees in the House and Senate...

...Part of my evidence was the number of people, by no means Socialists, who reproachfully asked me, "Why aren't you running...

...Where your treasure is there will your heart be also...

...More recently, the campaign has been warming up and the candidates are getting larger and somewhat more enthusiastic audiences...

...In Kennedy's case he has answered these questions so well that it is within his own church that some objections may be raised...

...Should the victorious party conclude that it had won the election by virtue of Southern support, it would require the most insistent pressure to prevent that party from making as bad a record on civil rights in the next Congress as both parties, but more especially the Democratic, made in the last Congress...

...But this provides only more reason why he ought to talk positively on plans for disarmament, disengagement, strengthening the United Nations, and a cooperative attack on the world's poverty...

...Kennedy and Vice Presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson and every Democratic candidate for the House and the Senate should be insistently urged, in these closing weeks of the campaign, to tell us what they would do to see that no chairman of a committee, designated by seniority, will be given his post in a Democratic Congress unless he is in accord with his party's platform on the important issues with which his committee will deal, especially civil rights...

...Do you wonder that we Socialists are crying out against a system that allows such reactionaries to hold high posts in an allegedly liberal party...

...Pressed for details on this subject on "Meet the Press" the Sunday before his nomination, Senator Kennedy could only remind his questioner that he had proposed spending several billion more on the arms race, hardly a well-spring for the economy of abundance either in goods or services...

...It will be under me...

...Moreover I have been favorably impressed by the work at the Bogota conference of President Eisenhower's Undersecretary of State, Douglas Dillon...

...We have a right to know, for example, whether or not a Quaker candidate accepts the Quaker testimony against participation in war, whether a Christian Scientist in the White House would veto all bills providing for medical service, what a Roman Catholic believes about separation of church and state, public support of church schools, and the role of the state in birth control matters...

...If an angel from heaven on Christmas Eve would proclaim effective peace on earth great would be the rejoicing...

...And great would be the panic in the stock-market the day after Christmas...

...The great issue on which our lives literally depend is foreign policy...

...The framers of the more liberal Democratic platform are Utopians...

...These documents, which reflect rather than make public opinion, are both the most liberal in their parties' histories, not only on civil rights, but on other domestic issues...

...Judd and the logic of his argument was war, not just non-recognition, and war is what we will get if we refuse even to try to get the real China into the United Nations on decent terms...

...I shall not be in utter despair whatever the outcome of the election...

...They will "welcome any evidence" of Mao's change of heart, but will do nothing to encourage it...

...I'd like to cast a protest vote...

...The failure of the liberal Democrats even to try to do something about the committee chairmanships and the rules was a public scandal...

...lition which includes the most liberal and the most reactionary of our political leaders and gives disproportionate power to the reactionaries...

...Conceivably the Democrats may succeed in making something of an issue of their plans to raise the rate of increase of our gross production which they say the Republican Administration has paralyzed...

...Both are, in short, fairly enlightened practitioners in the school of politics which believes that it is the "science of the possible...

...Their inaction helped the loose but effective Republican-Democratic coalition to defeat or water down much liberal legislation...

...But I confess to considerable disappointment at the failure of both men t6 speak out on some of the issues, as well as at certain things they have said...

...Until well after Labor Day I was saying that I couldn't remember a campaign in which there was so little enthusiasm for either candidate...

...Kennedy was somewhat handicapped because he was not able to compete in criticism of Eisenhower with Mr...

...Nixon says, "Everything has really been all right under Eisenhower...

...Trust us Democrats to set things right—but don't ask us how...

...Obviously neither Kennedy nor Nixon is satisfactory to us, but in critical times like these the difference between more and less may be of considerable importance...

...These same Democrats charged, with no mention of our long and scandalous support of Cuba's dictator Batista, that lower echelons of the State Department and some journalists were partly responsible for the rise of Fidel Castro...

...In fairness to Nixon, whose past campaign methods have deserved sharp criticism, it must be said that his conduct in this campaign, especially in relation to the religious issue, has been admirable...

...Moreover, Kennedy is under obligation to prove his zeal and intelligence in pursuit of peace by rebuking some of his Democratic colleagues who have been making a bad record since his nomination...

...It is most unforunate that the religious issue in its most bigoted form has once more intruded, especially in the South...

...They are cowed by the powerful AMA lobby and dare talk only about medical help for the aged...

...Kennedy indicated that fact by choosing the conservative Senator Lyndon Johnson as his running mate at the very convention that had adopted the most liberal platform in the party's history...

...They may even have found and discussed some issues in the nationally televised public debates which were yet to be held as I was writing...

...It is a singular fact that for the sake of political success powerful conservative forces in America have been sidetracked by both parties in their platforms and in the speeches of their candidates...

...The failure of the Southern Democrats in the convention to make more of a fight on the excellent civil rights plank was based on an expectation of revoking civil rights' promises— and to a lesser extent other liberal measures—at the legislative level, just as in former years...

...At Detroit, Kennedy indicated that a further Democratic contribution to increased production would be lower interest rates, but he has yet to reveal what, specifically, the Democrats would do to control inflation...

...If anyone doubts the range of our commitment, let him read the 1960 Democratic and Republican platforms...

...In the short and messy session neither party gained public approval...

...Johnson accepted despite all the harsh things he had said about his successful rival because, I believe, he had a vision of holding a power never before possessed by any Vice President, a power to dictate the legislation he would permit his party to pass...

...This type of prejudice, among its other evils, tends to frustrate a proper, objective inquiry into the relation of a candidate's religious belief and church affiliation to vital political issues...

...Khrushchev while the Soviet Premier was at the United Nations Assembly...

...But let's not be complacent...

...This could also be said of Presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932...

...Democrats are as determined as Judd to keep China out of the United Nations...

...Seventeen Democrats and four Republicans voted against it, thereby making it clear that they would never find any disarmament treaty satisfactory, since no future treaty is likely to provide better inspection or safer guarantees than does the Antarctica agreement...

...This year, Socialists thought it best to campaign for our platform wherever we could get a hearing, rather than for a candidate...

...And probably your votes...

...Both are personable...

...But for the main impact of the foreign policy aspects of their campaigns they depend upon two contrasting statements, neither of which is true...

...The major concern of the Democrats is to hold together the fantastic coalition which is their party—a coaNORMAN THOMAS, the nation's foremost Socialist spokesman, was six times his party's candidate for President...

...Such argument as there has been turns on how much should be spent for military security, for farmers, the aged, housing, education—and how the programs should be administered—rather than on any great underlying principle...

...On the other hand, the enthusiasm at the Republican Convention for the intransigent Congressman Walter H. Judd of Minnesota on the subject of China was frightening...

...But the conservatives are not unhappy...

...Item—The Democratic candidates were less successful than the Republican Administration in gaining Senatorial support for the ratification of the twelve-nation treaty barring the cold war and the arms race from the Antarctic continent...

...I have debated Dr...

...Socialists are realists when we tell our liberal friends that their Democratic Utopia cannot be achieved in a welfare-garrison state whose economy is so largely in the hands of great oligarchic corporations and is regulated with such deference to the two gods, Private Profit and Military Security...

...All our ills, it seems, can be solved by a change of leadership, by placing a Democrat rather than a Republican in the White House...

...They promise everybody almost every conceivable economic as well as political right, but then pledge their devotion to our miscalled free-enterprise system and ignore our drift toward a garrison state...

...For myself, I am more inclined to worry about the possible influence of his earthly father and financial angel, Joseph Kennedy, than about that of any spiritual father of the church, although so far, Joseph Kennedy has been content to sign checks without visible demands on his son...

...Kennedy says: "Just about everything is wrong under Eisenhower and will be under Nixon...

...They did nothing of the sort...

...Neither has acquired the stature of great leadership...

...they are conscious of their proved power to sabotage legislation designed to carry out the platforms...

...John W. Davis and Calvin Coolidge, the Presidential rivals in 1924, would have called it, incorrectly, "Socialist...

...And his self-perpetuated reputation for "toughness" with Khrushchev is scarcely reassurance...

...Both have shown some capacity and willingness to learn...

...He would step straight from the shoes of a successful majority leader into those of the Senate's presiding officer, and, using the new majority leader as a deputy, he might be more powerful than the President in the legislative field...

...But once more I deplore the imperfections of our democracy, the way we elect our President, and the apathy, ignorance, and prejudice of so much of the public on issues which will determine whether man will use his new-found power for more abundant life or for the suicide of his race...

...I had thought it virtually dead after Kennedy's success in the West Virginia primary, but one of the finest men I know, a Southerner, reports the growth of a most disheartening, ill-informed melange of prejudices—religious, racial, social—each bigotry somehow strengthening the other...

...Here the advantage would seem to lie with Kennedy, in foreign policy, because of the prominence of Chester Bowles and Adlai Stevenson...

...One must consider not only the candidate but the men around him...

...But the ignominious post-convention session of Congress must have marred the luster of that dream...

...But the Democrats were responsible for the session and it was important for them, especially Johnson, either to pass liberal legislation on housing, health, and education or be able to saddle the White House and the Republicans with full responsibility for their failure...

...Kennedy shows almost complete unaware-ness of how far we have drifted into the status of a garrison state with welfare trimmings, a state in which our economy and our individual freedoms are all subordinate to a false god of security...

...Both have, on occasion, preached pretty good sermons about the American purpose and have said the conventional things about peace, disarmament, and aid to underdeveloped nations...

...The Roman Catholic church has an historic record which invites inquiry into the relation of church and state and the kind of political obedience that a candidate may feel he owes the hierarchy...

...And here the candidates are doing at least as badly as I feared...

...Is it any surprise that we are demanding a meaningful political realignment...

...Kennedy's position is at least as bad as Nixon's...

...Item—Democratic Senators James Eastland and Thomas Dodd of the Judiciary Committee were responsible for the impertinence of ordering Linus Pauling to give the names of all who had helped him get the signatures of some 11,000 scientists to a petition to the United Nations for discontinuance of nuclear tests...