FRESHMEN FERMENT IN AN OLD HOUSE
Meyer, Karl E.
freshmen ferment in an old house by KARL E. MEYER Eleven Democratic Congressmen —eight of them freshmen—are carving out a new political trail by putting controversy before caution and principle...
...A wise leadership ought to encourage groups like the Liberal Project and not equate dissent with revolt...
...We do know that, to date, neither side has sincerely attempted to reach a compromise...
...The paper adds: "While producing little if any military strength, the attempt at physical containment stultified the political posture of the United States...
...Nonetheless, Representative Robert W. Kastenmeier of Wisconsin, chairman of what he and his colleagues call the Liberal Project, decided to release a highly critical paper on present U.S...
...Assisting in the project was Marc Raskin, a University of Chicago law school graduate...
...Besides the thirty-six-year-old Kas-tenmeier, the other freshmen members of the group are Byron Johnson of Colorado, forty-two, an economist...
...Thus, an attempt to begin talks leading to recognition is urged...
...The McCarthy era cast a pall on rational discussion of problems such as China policy...
...William Moor-head of Pennsylvania, thirty-seven, an attorney...
...The paper concedes the necessity of maintaining sufficient armaments and of continuing foreign aid in competition with the Communists...
...What is novel is that these suggestions are openly circulating on Capitol Hill, and that eleven Congressmen have announced their general agreement with the approach, if not the details, of Warburg's thesis...
...As to Formosa, the paper suggests that the United States begin by recognizing the Red China claim to the offshore islands in exchange for an agreement to permit evacuation of Nationalist forces...
...When it is considered that most of the Congressmen expressing these views hold marginal seats and might be forgiven for prudent silence, the daring of the outspoken freshmen may be more than news...
...In the meantime, travel restrictions to Red China should be dropped and the United States should withdraw its opposition to Peking's membership in the United Nations provided that the Chinese regime reaffirms its renunciation of force which it signed at Bandung in 1955, agrees to the obligations of the U.N...
...Thus the group's present stand stems not only from private belief but from the practical conviction that its ideas—properly presented—have wider appeal than is commonly supposed...
...Leonard Wolf of Iowa, thirty-four, a retail feed dealer...
...More recently, collaboration between Democratic Congressional leaders and the White House has acted as a damper on dissent...
...This is a major aim of the Project—to rouse fruitful discussion and to help restore the crackle of ideas to the Congressional Record...
...Only Moorhead was elected by a comfortable margin (sixty-seven per cent...
...His articles have appeared in The Reporter, The Nation, and The New Republic...
...but Communism did not initiate the mid-Twentieth Century revolutions...
...foreign policy on May 22—less than a week after the Paris debacle...
...The formula favored by the paper is the unification of Germany at the price of neutralization—but not at the exclusion of membership in non-military associations such as the Common Market or Euratom...
...We are no longer facing New Deal or Fair Deal times," Meyer emphasizes...
...The United States, according to the paper, "has never yet fully defined its position with regard to total disarmament...
...Frank Thompson of New Jersey, forty-one...
...They are urging a new policy which would recognize that Cold War alliances with tyranny may be more of a liability than an asset, and that it may take more than armaments and military pacts to hold allies and influence neutrals...
...What impels them to stick out their necks in a profession where timidity is an occupational curse...
...Today, the central issues have shifted from domestic to foreign affairs, and within the Democratic Party a comparable ferment can be detected...
...nor would these revphjtions cease if the Communist dictatorships were to be overthrown...
...Clement Miller of California, forty-three, a veterans service officer and landscape consultant...
...It is surely of significance that able freshmen are so restive about official homilies that at some hazard they are speaking out for themselves...
...It appears to us that the Western powers must finally face a choice which has all along been inescapable...
...This will be followed, the group hopes, by the fall publication of a book entitled The Liberal Papers, outlining in greater detail the project's proposals and enrolling the talents of up to fifty scholars as advisers and contributors...
...Yet: "While we do not believe that universal disarmament alone will assure world peace, we are convinced that there can be no world peace without it...
...Concentration of American effort on military containment caused a woeful neglect of the political opportunities presented by almost every part of a rapidly changing world...
...It is suggested that the Polish Rapacki Plan for a denuclearized zone in Central Europe offers a point of departure for the ultimate settlement of the German question...
...Our present foreign policy, they contend, is sterile and negative, based on the unexamined dogmas of a decade ago...
...Here are men who grew up in the 1930s, were involved in World War II, and who are heirs of the Roosevelt revolution in domestic and foreign affairs...
...freshmen ferment in an old house by KARL E. MEYER Eleven Democratic Congressmen —eight of them freshmen—are carving out a new political trail by putting controversy before caution and principle before political survival...
...It seems appropriate that Robert Kastenmeier comes from a maverick state and is the first Democrat in a quarter of a century to hold a seat once graced by Robert M. La-Follette, Sr., an insurgent from another era...
...But in Meyer's case—as with others in the group— his 1958 campaign was keyed to foreign affairs as well as bread-and-butter issues...
...In addition, freshman Frank Kowalski of Connecticut, George S. McGovern of South Dakota, and Lee Metcalf of Montana are in sympathetic contact with the Project...
...When the Democratic National Convention begins this month, the group plans to provide every delegate with a statement containing platform suggestions...
...The answer may seem trite to those who have not met or heard members of the group...
...Moscow's real intention is to outflank the West in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa...
...For too long, in the eyes of many observers, an unhealthy silence has prevailed on Capitol Hill on key questions of foreign policy...
...William H. Meyer of Vermont, forty-five, a forester...
...There is a significant reason for recording their ages: the average age for the freshmen is thirty-nine, and for the eleven as a whole, less than forty-one...
...Some editorials based on distorted stories attacked the group— but this is one of the inescapable hazards of innovation...
...William H. Meyer, the first Vermont Democrat ever elected on a statewide basis to Congress, typifies the sober and doggedly straightforward attitude of the freshmen...
...Along with many of the fifty-six other new Democratic Congressmen, Kastenmeier came to Washington with the conviction that the 1958 elections offered a mandate for a more liberal policy in Congress...
...Admittedly, members of the group are predominantly young newcomers little known in national politics...
...The paper would have this country propose that Formosa and the Pescadores be placed for at least five years under U.N...
...The goal is ambitious, but there is honorable precedent for the Project...
...Three senior members round out the group: James Roosevelt of California, who at fifty-two is the patriarch of the Project...
...Red China cannot be cured of moral leprosy by permanent isolation, they argue, and there is no reason why the issues of peace and disarmament should be permanently monopolized by Nikita Khrushchev...
...Progress in politics invariably begins at the fringes and works towards the center, and for this reason the ideas of the freshmen may be of more importance for the future than the predictable pronouncements of the mighty...
...But coupled with this is the need to make clear our desire for universal disarmament under adequately enforced world law and for a world-wide development program administered through the United Nations...
...As a part of this resurgence a group of Congressmen has joined with a distinguished group of scientists, scholars, and experts to formulate new domestic and international policies applicable to the 1960s...
...This would be accomplished by a mutual withdrawal of American troops behind the Rhine and of Russian forces behind the Oder, leaving the Germans "to find their way toward reunification without outside interference of any sort...
...The existence of the Liberal Project was formally announced on April 19 in a statement deliberately cast in a low key, perhaps on the theory that a plain girl would cause less of a fuss in the starchily prim House...
...They relish debate...
...The paper's broad outlines are familiar to any relatively well-informed newspaper reader...
...diplomacy as laid down by Acheson and Dulles...
...KARL E. MEYER is an editorial writer on the Washington Post & Times Herald...
...The establishment of a Regional Development Authority, financed by both oil-producing countries and oil companies, is suggested...
...the Democratic Advisory Council and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also have been asking sharp questions about the Summit fiasco...
...To some old Congressional hands, this seemed an odd, if amiable, notion, but it struck a chord among other freshmen who in floor debate frequently found themselves on the same side...
...Roosevelt and Thompson are three-term Congressmen, while Porter is serving his second term...
...He was sharply criticized for challenging the non-recognition policy toward Red China, but nonetheless, he was elected—and in stalwart Vermont...
...Most of its proposals have long been discussed and debated in thoughtful circles...
...They are palpably honest men, troubled by what they feel is a drift to disaster in a fear-ridden world...
...Membership in the two groups overlaps, and co-existence is wholly peaceful...
...The Project grew out of these encounters and took tentative form in March, 1959...
...trusteeship on a neutralized basis and that at the end of this period the local population should be allowed to decide its own future...
...and Charles O. Porter of Oregon, forty-one...
...James O'Hara of Michigan, thirty-four, an attorney...
...and George A. Kasem of California, forty-one, an attorney...
...Meanwhile, with these ultimate objectives clearly stated, the United States needs to revise its approach to the immediate tension-points in Germany, the Middle East, and Far East...
...We are facing a time when the questions of war and peace are the major issues for liberalism...
...They hold seats in marginal districts where a Democrat must husband every vote with care...
...In essence, the paper maintains that our present policy is based on the twin error of blaming Communism for the bulk of the world's ills and then of meeting the Communist challenge in the wrong way...
...The Communists have ruthlessly and skillfully exploited revolutionary changes," the document continues...
...There is nothing of the "silent generation" in the Liberal Project...
...The party can be envigor-ated by the factions within that are seeking to restate old doctrines in the new context of a shrinking world...
...It could contain the seeds of healthy dissent that might yield a creative reevaluation of American foreign policy...
...This is peppery stuff on Capitol Hill, where the doctrines of former Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles have held leaders of both parties in bondage for more than a decade...
...The Liberal Project is not to be confused with the Democratic Study Group, another liberal bloc comprising about 120 House members...
...But in practice, the paper contends, the irony of the containment approach is that it has been most successful in the area least likely to be attacked by the Soviet Union— Western Europe...
...Having improperly diagnosed the malady, our diplomacy compounds the error by treating the Communist peril as an essentially military problem, to be met with a ring of bases, a network of alliances, and a stockpile of bombs...
...Naturally, disagreements will arise over any full-scale statement on foreign policy...
...And in these areas, the alliance with Formosa and the rearmament of Pakistan and the Arab states have had disastrous results...
...Concerning the inescapable question of Red China, the paper observes: "We cannot see how our government can hope to ease tensions or arrive at fair settlements of disputes, or above all, to achieve disarmament without establishing direct channels of communication with Peking...
...Nor is it only this handful of young Congressmen who are finding their tongues...
...A few possess urbane polish, but for the most part these are earnest, almost humorless, men who are looking for fresh answers to old problems...
...Those who have missed the sound of purposeful debate in Congress wish the spunky freshmen well...
...The 1958 elections," said Kas-tenmeier, the group's spokesman, "brought to Washington fifty-seven new Democratic Congressmen who, for the most part, were elected because the American people felt that a new kind of leadership and new ideas were desperately needed...
...We need to progress from the dead center we have reached in foreign affairs, and this is probably more of a problem for liberals than anything in the economic area...
...the rest won by margins of less than fifty-five per cent—and in five cases the margin was fifty-two per cent or less...
...To this generation, Abilene evokes no nostalgia and the New Deal no horror—and its members feel that it is high time they had a chance to speak out on the mess their elders made...
...The paper was in effect a frontal challenge to the major premises of U.S...
...We do not know whether an honorable and just compromise of this question is possible...
...According to the conventional wisdom of politics, a candidate is headed for trouble as soon as he forsakes immediate local issues for the perilous area of foreign policy...
...For nearly three decades, an informal bloc of Progressive Republicans —led by the elder LaFollette and George Norris—fed new ideas into the stream of politics...
...The chairman and founder of the Liberal Project is a lanky and good-looking attorney from Watertown, Wisconsin...
...The fall election should provide a further test of this thesis...
...The Study Group meets at irregular intervals to discuss pending legislation, and does not attempt to formulate general doctrine...
...In these circumstances, the Liberal Project's apostles command not only respect but curiosity...
...And now, the increased jitters following the collapse of the Summit conference adds heightened risk to uttering unorthodox views...
...Unhappily, press accounts garbled the report, wrenching its boldest proposals out of context for headline effect...
...The eight freshmen are akin in another respect...
...Plainly, the Berlin question is most urgent...
...In any event, the mere presence in Washington of the freshmen suggests that the voters are more receptive to new ideas, sanely and candidly stated, than many of their laggard leaders...
...The forty-four-page document was prepared for the group by James P. Warburg, the well-known foreign affairs analyst...
...But this fact cuts both ways...
...Instead, the paper finds, each has "demanded the unconditional surrender of the other...
...A month later, the group issued its first paper, an analysis of foreign policy, and it became evident that the Project would be more stimulant than soporific...
...As for the Arab-Israeli dispute, "watchful waiting" is proposed...
...Proposal after proposal put forward by the insurgents was initially scorned but subsequently adopted...
...In the Middle East, the paper advocates seeking an arms embargo on the area—with the proviso that Turkey be excluded...
...In effect, the first-term Congressmen are saying in public what many of their senior colleagues have long said only in the privacy of the cloakroom...
...Alliances with anti-democratic and unpopular governments . . . placed the United States in the invidious position of defending an outmoded status quo in various parts of the world where peoples desired radical change...
...The ferment among the freshmen may signify that after a long truce politics is returning to normal and that the opposition party is beginning to resemble just that—an opposition...
...They must decide which of two things they want most—a German military contribution to NATO or the reunification of the two German states...
...Charter, and pledges support for ultimate disarmament...
...In an old-fashioned way, they seem to feel that there is more to politics than mere electoral survival, and that a defeat based on principle may be more meaningful than a victory earned through sterile compromise...
...If the Kremlin vanished overnight, our problems would remain—so the paper argues —because they stem from a many-faceted revolution "caused largely by the West itself...
...This is an historic development in the House of Representatives, where, by musty rule, freshmen are supposed to dwell in silence...
...They cannot have both...
...I have talked with eight of the group and was struck by the almost painful sincerity that most of them evince...
Vol. 24 • September 2006 • No. 7
