Kennedy for President

...The times, he asserted, "demand invention, innovation, imagination and decision...

...On every one of these issues he is prepared to yield, for political reasons, only what he regards as absolutely necessary to forestall the enactment of a genuinely progressive program...

...I do not think," he said, "that it serves the cause of peace or freedom to talk about America's weaknesses militarily, to talk about America's falling behind economically, to indicate that America is losing the battle of ideas throughout the world, and that our prestige is falling throughout the world...

...He expounds endlessly on peripheral approaches but we have searched in vain for a clear-cut affirmation that he not only approves the Supreme Court decisions on desegregation but is prepared to use the full power of the Presidency to enforce them unreservedly...

...Even in the field of foreign policy Kennedy's record is vastly superior to Nixon's—and a considerable improvement over his own position as a Presidential candidate...

...That is the choice the nation must make," Kennedy said, "a choice that lies not merely between two men or two parties, but between the public interest and private comfort, between national greatness, and national decline, between the fresh air of progress, and the stale, dank atmosphere of 'normalcy,' between determined dedication and creeping mediocrity...

...It is a tragic fact that, six years after the Supreme Court decision on school segregation, the President of the United States has not yet seen fit to endorse that decision...

...The old era is ending...

...We do not go with clean hands to the United Nations or to any part of the world as long as we do not fully guarantee the equality of every American...

...In the light of today's worldwide struggle for freedom, it is an absolutely imperative goal...

...The next Democratic Administration will present legislative recommendations to complete the job, but even more importantly, we will use the tools now given us by the Constitution itself and the laws already passed to make the American promise come true for all its citizens...

...He seems to feel that we are doing well enough, or if anything is needed, it is more of the same...

...Nixon's conservatism, like almost everything else about the man, is hard to pin down...

...In last month's issue of The Progressive, two articles, "The Case Against Nixon" and "Kennedy's Liberalism," explored the records of the two candidates in detail...

...he would like to see Negroes have a better chance than they have...

...At a moment in history when the world is boiling with political change and social upheaval, Kennedy continues to give top priority to an expanded military budget...

...Donald Grant, United Nations correspondent for the St...

...We stand, said Kennedy, at "a turning point in history...

...The Vice President, for example, seems content to drift along with our present foreign aid program, but Kennedy has been emphasizing the need for a basic overhauling...

...I fully back the Supreme Court decision and will do everything in my power to have it implemented...

...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" Kennedy for President The Progressive's choice for the Presidency is the Democratic nominee, Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts...

...The Democratic candidate, for example, was one of the few men in the Senate to fight for a more creative foreign economic aid program and one of the leaders in the struggle to provide genuine, long-run assistance to India despite her refusal to become our ally in the cold war...

...One of the most dedicated conservatives we know reacted scornfully to the Vice President's performance in his first debate with Kennedy by dismissing Nixon as a "leap-year liberal...

...It is in this area of the campaign that those who insist there is no meaningful choice between Kennedy and Nixon make their most telling point...

...Nixon, in contrast, shared in the costly mistakes of the Eisenhower Administration against which Kennedy warned, and in his Latin American travels succeeded mostly in exposing to the world the personality described by the late Senator Robert A. Taft as one tending to "radiate tension and conflict...

...Louis Post-Dispatch who writes for The Progressive occasionally, reported that President Eisenhower's refusal to meet with Khrushchev and the methods employed by the American delegation to strangle the resolution of the five...

...Kennedy, conversely, has an almost unbroken record of support for progressive legislation, and he is affirmatively committed in this campaign to a program of national growth and social legislation through government action that sharply separates his position from Nixon's...

...On more than one occasion he has implied that it is somehow unpatriotic to criticize the Eisenhower Administration...

...They have been subordinated to narrow, expedient ends...

...Three years ago, Kennedy incurred wrathful rebuke from French imperialists and the Dulles-Acheson crowd in this country, when he dared condemn France's policies in Algeria...

...The Republican pledge "is a pledge to the status quo—and today there can be no status quo...

...What we like most about Kennedy is that he is not satisfied with things as they are and that the areas of his greatest discontent coincide with some of our own frequently expressed concerns on the domestic front...

...His approach is essentially decent...

...The central issue in this campaign —the issue that provides Americans with a clear-cut choice—is to be found in the clashing concepts of the two candidates—and their parties—over the role government should play in promoting the general welfare...

...I am not satisfied when the United States had last year the lowest rate of economic growth of any major industrial society in the world...

...Affirmatively, however, our choice of Kennedy is accompanied by a nagging doubt born of deep disappointment in the way he has responded to the challenge in the critical field of foreign policy...

...Sometimes he appears obsessed with the notion that our retreat in world affairs stems exclusively from our failure to appropriate a couple of billion dollars more for missiles and rockets...

...But as in just about everything else about his stand on basic problems, his position is heavily laden with ambiguities...

...These are healthy dissatisfactions...

...In contrast, when the explosion came in Indo-China, Nixon thought the answer was to "put our boys in"—although, characteristically, he later praised the Eisenhower Administration for keeping our boys out...

...In thus attempting to rule out discussion of many of the major issues, Nixon was colliding with a position he had expressed earlier this year, February 23, when he said: "Glossing over weaknesses which we have, denying that they exist, is not only naive, but it really is dangerous in today's world, in view of the challenges we confront...

...He is shrewd enough to sense that as a candidate for the Presidency he must respond to the mounting demand for welfare planning, but he is at heart, or through personal or political accident, too conservative to propose more than the bare bones of what needed to be done yesterday...

...Occasionally he seems to sense the peril of this oversimplified approach, but next day he is back on his armaments kick...

...On the issues on the home front, where there is a fundamental difference, Kennedy's militant commitment to a program of social planning for the general welfare stamps him as the clear-cut choice of those who share The Progressive's objectives for a more progressive America...

...Our present foreign aid programs," he has been saying, "have neglected the great visionary partnership principles of the Marshall Plan and the Point Four program...

...It is time to get moving again," Kennedy has said...

...I am particularly proud of the civil rights plank in our Democratic platform...

...There have been no answers to questions we raised two months ago: how can increasing our store of military hardware unsnarl the mess in Cuban-American relations, or enhance our stature with the new neutrals, or cope with the crisis in the Congo, or regain our position in Japan, or bring Laos back to the fold...

...It is the striking contrast between the two candidates on domestic issues of this character that provides independent liberals with a significant choice in this election campaign, however much they may complain— and rightly so—that they have been robbed of an opportunity to express their decision on many of the vital issues of foreign policy...

...I am not satisfied when we are building 200,000 homes fewer than we should each year, when there are 1,800,000 children who go to school part-time, when many Americans are denied equal opportunity because of their race or color...

...Even now, when there is often little to choose in the field of foreign policy, Kennedy succeeds in striking a more affirmative note than does Nixon...

...Correspondent, observed that Khrushchev is the "dominant figure" at the United Nations and "it is the Americans who are on the defensive...

...Still, Nixon's record and speeches make it clear that when he isn't tiptoeing toward liberal "goals" in a campaign year, he is what he claims to be—an "economic conservative...

...The old ways will not do...

...We have read almost everything Nixon has had to say on the subject...

...This kind of criticism annoys Nixon...

...A year later, in 1958, Kennedy rose in the Senate to call for fundamental change in our attitude toward Latin America, and, specifically, to warn that "any vacuum we leave" in Cuba "will be swiftly filled by the Soviet Union...

...a program that is planned to meet the welfare of the people of the individual countries—their welfare as they see it, not as seen by some individual in Washington, unaware of even the cultural background of the nation involved...

...One searches in vain for the solid substance and the consistent pattern that mark the records of such conservatives of integrity as the late Senator Robert A. Taft or his heir apparent, Senator Barry Goldwater...

...If this were the only issue, we would be sorely tempted to pronounce a plague on both their houses and cast a write-in vote for Adlai Stevenson...

...This shows up in his eager efforts to identify himself with the struggle for Federal aid to education, medical assistance for the aged, slum clearance and public housing, civil rights for Negroes, and related problems...

...I am not satisfied with having fifty per cent of our steel capacity unused...

...They express the mood of a man who knows, as Walter Lippmann said, that "something very big is at stake and much that is very important needs to be done...

...Kennedy's position, on the other hand, is unequivocal: "There is one domestic issue," he has said, "which is really a worldwide issue—the problem of securing once and for all full equality for all our people...

...Nixon has identified himself as an "economic conservative...

...Kennedy, as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., reminds us, in his newly published book, Kennedy or Nixon?, was "an early voice calling attention to the gathering crisis in Indo-China and urging independence for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—a policy which France eventually followed, almost too late to do any good...

...They stand out in sharp contrast to Nixon's ambivalence in defending the status quo while seeking with a pitiful, almost painful desperation to identify himself with Kennedy's "goals"—to the withering disgust of sincere conservatives...

...They do not admit it, of course, but they are...

...Negatively, our decision was an easy one, for the Republican candidate, Vice President Richard Milhaus Nixon, represents just about everything in American political life that a magazine calling itself The Progressive lives to oppose...

...What we need is a program of long-range commitments...

...See Stevenson's "The Issue Is Peace' on Page Eight of this issue...

...The contrast between the two candidates shows up most strikingly on the domestic issues we regard as topmost among our unsolved problems —the issue of civil rights and race relations...

...Kennedy is an avowed "liberal...

...The conclusions tended to confirm each candidate's estimate of his own position...

...If there were no international problems, full civil rights for all Americans would still be a major goal because it is morally right...

...But there are other issues and other considerations, and in weighing all of them, the case for Kennedy becomes overwhelmingly clear...