Goal: The White House
HUITT, RALPH K.
Goal: The White House by RALPH K. HUITT Tn every Presidential year since 1824 there has been at least one campaign biography, says W. Burlie Brown (The People's Choice), and usually there have...
...He thinks Kennedy voted against McCarthy when he had the chance (he was ill when McCarthy was censured) but straddled on the man himself...
...This is the central and most elusive question about political personality, and it is posed by Humphrey's story...
...His mother taught him virtue...
...Wells describes the Presidential office—how it was established and has grown, and what it is today...
...Alsop's account is much shorter, and it points up the decisions Nixon made which demonstrate his coolness under fire and his shrewd assessment of General Eisenhower's personality...
...Burns' Kennedy is a politician, tough, ambitious, resourceful...
...This is the Humphrey everybody knows and most people like...
...What worries Burns most is Kennedy's detachment—the lack of passion, of personal emotional commitment, which has been characteristic of him all his life...
...Alsop's is briefer and more analytical...
...How does this 1960 crop fit that description...
...Wellman's Symington is the classic rags-to-riches story, even to the hero's marrying the beautiful daughter of the other party's Senator...
...It is, indeed...
...He is a man of peace, but at the first sound of war he takes to arms, the citizen soldier who earned leadership by sharing the hardships of his men...
...History was his favorite subject, but he was essentially a practical man with no love of learning for its own sake...
...Undoubtedly his money has given him massive advantages, but he has pressed them with the grinding, single-minded toil without which no politician would survive a day in the jungle where the big cats hunt...
...It is some kind of tribute to Nixon, too, that he is the subject of three books which deal frankly with him as man and politician...
...Brown believes that the choice of a President is a "search for a symbol—a symbol that will represent the whole complex of ideals and beliefs that the American people have held dear...
...Costello reports the same fact, fairly, but he goes on to question Nixon's ethics and some of his assertions...
...Like the rest of his book, it is an admirable job of reporting...
...His swift-moving recital reflects his long association with such Democrats as Paul Douglas and Adlai Stevenson, but his judgments on the four occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seem dispassionate and fair...
...The book which cuts deepest into the complex human being under scrutiny is, in my opinion, Burns' profile of Kennedy...
...The monumental volume (The Politics of National Party Conventions) by David and his associates goes over part of the same trail, examining each step...
...Now it is important...
...Robert Bendiner's little book, White House Fever, tells, in a sprightly and engaging fashion, about all most people want to know about the road these men must travel to the White House...
...and explains the procedures of primaries, conventions, and elections...
...In 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Walter Johnson, a University of Chicago historian, focuses on the Presidency in the crisis-ridden years 19291959...
...The man who emerges in composite, from Brown's survey of more than a hundred biographies ranging over nearly a century and a half, is the prototype of the American success story...
...Born to wealth, Williams, without the help of the family fortune, revived the party cordially hated by his parents...
...What stands out, though, is Symington's outstanding achievements in business and government administration, in both of which he specialized in rescuing sick enterprises...
...Amrine's Humphrey is a small town druggist's boy who still pinches himself occasionally to see if it is really he who is running for President...
...This does not do justice to Brown's study, but perhaps it conveys the essential idea—the campaign biography presents an idealized version of everybody's political hero...
...They are stereotyped, and that is their appeal—"they create out of the raw material of the candidate's real life the biography of an ideal citizen of the republic...
...Bell believes that the country is in good shape when the President is in substantial control, but Congressional dominance means "reaction, stultification, and often near-disaster...
...Curiously, there is little generalization on what they and the times did to the job they held...
...He began humbly...
...Both seem to be as objective as fallible humans can make them, with the tone friendly and the result generally helpful...
...My hunch is that it will not make any of the candidates back out...
...John Wells' short book, The Voter's Presidential Handbook, is just what its title suggests: a compendium of information for the citizen-voter who wants to know what's going on in this election year...
...He believes the American people sense the need for a strong President and want one—this in the teeth of their unflagging devotion to Mr...
...In a sense, Mennen Williams has reversed the Symington story...
...But whether one agrees with him or not, Bell is always interesting...
...It must have been even more difficult for Kennedy to cooperate so fully with Burns without attaching conditions...
...Its size and cost should not scare off anybody who really wants to know where Presidents come from...
...Rockefeller, Kennedy, and Williams had the advantage not only of inherited wealth but of exceptional families who disciplined their children in industry and responsibility...
...Again, only three of the subjects— Nixon, Humphrey, and Symington— had to climb out of poverty and obscurity...
...suggests how ordinary people can participate in party politics...
...as a Washington reporter he has sat close to the seats of power for a long time and he takes the reader up there with him...
...What comes through bears faint resemblance to the glamor boy whose autograph the schoolgirls want...
...Nevertheless, his evaluation is critical and honest...
...But how does a kid in a South Dakota town know he is meant for big things...
...His biography reflects the changes in American life...
...He has served a sound apprenticeship in public life, but he is no politician (since 1840 that has been a bad word...
...None of these books is, technically, a "campaign" biography because they are all published before the convention...
...he was a dedicated "bread basket" liberal, fighting hard for social welfare measures, but not fully aware of the civil rights dimension of liberalism...
...Jack Bell (The Splendid Misery) covers the stretch most candidates never make—one block on Pennsylvania Avenue...
...Technicalities aside, at least half of the authors—Burns, Mazo, Alsop, and Costello—have written "campaign" books only in the sense that they knew when to bring their books out...
...In Ordeal of the Presidency, David Cushman Coyle presents a fascinating, if grisly, sampling of the calumny Presidents have borne, from George Washington through F.D.R...
...Some of them (and some of the worst) have been written by distinguished men— William Dean Howells (Rutherford B. Hayes), Nathaniel Hawthorne (Franklin Pierce), General Lew Wallace (Benjamin Harrison), and Franklin D. Roosevelt (Al Smith...
...Why are they written...
...And the others—Amrine, Mc-Naughton, Wellman, and Dineen— whose books are more frankly puffs for their subjects, give good factual accounts and have even raised some questions about their men...
...What each of them has is an almost appalling willingness to subordinate everything to the achievement of a goal he has set himself...
...He believes that Kennedy came late to an understanding Of the McCarthy issue...
...gives succinct biographies and pictures of nine leading candidates...
...The other, more conventional, candidate books bear out the trend toward sophistication reported by Brown...
...The nature of the symbol can be found in campaign biographies...
...Costello (who makes a point that his is an "unauthorized" biography) is careful in research and reporting, but Nixon comes out less welL A case in point is the famous TV defense of Nixon's "secret fund" in 1952...
...Responses to such a book will be varied, but in my judgment this candid appraisal is the most convincing statement of Kennedy's qualifications I have seen...
...Before 1850 his family was hardly mentioned...
...There is a Rover Boys in Politics tone to them, but they are not stereotypes...
...It is hard to think of a question which might come up in the TV room which Wells has not anticipated and answered...
...Mother has gained in intellectual stature and Dad, since the advent of Togetherness, is a pal...
...The result does credit to both...
...He is a moderate by temperament and political choice...
...He understands the American system: party is more label than organization, and the Lord is most likely to underwrite self-help...
...He valued education, frequently struggled for it, but he was no grind...
...Goal: The White House by RALPH K. HUITT Tn every Presidential year since 1824 there has been at least one campaign biography, says W. Burlie Brown (The People's Choice), and usually there have been several...
...Eisenhower...
...Burns does not dodge the hard questions...
...Burns obviously likes and admires Kennedy, and this is a crucial year for the Senator...
...Mazo's book is probably the most extensively researched of any reviewed here, and he seems to have had most time with his principal...
...It must have been hard to write...
...An exception is Johnson's effective analysis of the revolution in communication technology which permits a modern President to deal personally with the vast public that relies on him for leadership and reassurance...
...the maturing of the boy orator, to which people as diverse as Harry Byrd and Nikita Khrushchev have contributed, has not quenched the natural gregariousness (rarer in politics than most people think) which has been attracting people to him since he hopped counters in Dad Humphrey's store...
...An amateur who must be pushed into office, he is a lifelong partisan who puts principle ahead of party...
...Mazo's account is the most detailed and complete...
Vol. 24 • June 1960 • No. 6
