AN UNCERTAIN TRUMPET
WADE, RICHARD C.
Percy of Illinois An Uncertain Trumpet by RICHARD C. WADE FORTHE PAST six years no figure has been so much a part of the political landscape in Illinois as Charles H. Percy. A successful...
...A war on poverty is a cooperative partnership goal in which the Federal government may definitely play a role...
...In a move designed to discourage the kind of primary fight which bitterly divided the GOP two years before, a Party "conference," comprised of county leaders and major figures, was called to designate an offical slate for the state ticket...
...This spring the Chicago Daily News asked him if he thought there was any need for additional civil rights legislation...
...It is a problem not only filled with ambiguities and imponderables for policy-makers but with political uncertainties for candidates...
...His charges are the usual ones: It is poorly administered, it is extravagant, it puts patronage concerns over the needs of the poor...
...U Thant had repeatedly indicated that the United Nations was not equipped for such a role, and Peking and Hanoi had already turned down similar overtures...
...It is hard to think of a more fundamental issue in American politics...
...As uncertain and shifting as Percy's positions are on domestic affairs, they are models of clarity compared to his views on foreign policy...
...Yet when the Chicago Daily News asked him what should be done about "small wars" in the future, he replied that "our policy must not be rigid...
...Truthfully, I am much more qualified by inclination and past experience to be in Washington than in Springfield...
...It is sad that this should be so, for the Republican Party in Illinois needs a strong and intelligent moderate voice...
...Because both Page and Rowe were dedicated Goldwater enthusiasts in 1964, this has raised an issue which Percy would like to forget...
...Civic groups, church leaders, the state House of Representatives, Governor Kerner, and Senator Douglas have all supported "open occupancy" legislation as an indispensable step in breaking up the ghettos...
...The proposal was astonishing because Percy had been devoting so much time on the stump to warning against the menace of Communist China...
...In the past two years, however, Percy has been inching over to the other side...
...It's a tough, dirty war, but we have no alternative...
...Few Democratic candidates can count on the old overwhelming Negro majorities...
...Even a mediocre showing against Governor Otto Kerner in 1964 did little to dim the interest...
...Nor were they perfunctory...
...But how long must we wait until the Administration tells the truth about our objectives, our progress, and the outlook for our men who are fighting there...
...Now the candidate seems irritated when the issue is raised at all...
...The United States must "press forward and use whatever means necessary to bring our adversaries to the conference table," he told the Couples' Club in Evanston at the beginning of this year...
...His formulation of the problem at this time looked much like that of Dean Rusk...
...At the outset Percy endorsed the Administration's course without serious reservation...
...Indeed his decision was not made any easier by the fact that just three years earlier he had said that his business background suited him for administrative rather than legislative office and that "the reason I'm not running for the Senate is that you can't build the state of Illinois from Washington...
...Nonetheless, Percy's headquarters went ahead lining up support...
...Louis Post-Dispatch in March: "In the controversy between hawks and doves I would say that I am an American eagle—somewhere in between...
...Though he has been running for some thing for almost a decade, Percy is still associated with no major idea, no clear position, and no public achievement...
...This evaluation is not permanent, however, because on August 8 he told the Moline Register that if he failed against Senator Douglas in the fall he would run for governor in 1968...
...This statement neatly embodies the Percy strategy...
...on foreign policy he alternates between being a hawk and a dove...
...Yet when asked what he would do if Dirksen introduced the amendment again, Percy could only reply limply that "I will study it with an open mind...
...As a delegate to the national con vention in San Francisco, Percy not only voted for Goldwater but he did nothing to tone down the Arizonan's platform when Governors George Rom ney and Nelson Rockefeller offered moderate amendments from the floor...
...Wars are seldom popular and the Vietnam struggle is no exception...
...After the announcement that he would oppose Douglas, the shape of Percy's candidacy became immediately clear...
...We allowed North Vietnam to go much too far before we retaliated," he contended on February 16, 1965...
...Popular parlance has divided attitudes between hawks and doves...
...But Goldwater supporters are bolder than his wife and insist on getting an answer...
...Complete withdrawal at this time, I would tend to think, would force the Russians to move into Berlin," he predicted...
...Then on August 13, two Washington correspondents ran favorable stories about the suggested conference on the same day, though noting its impracticability at the moment...
...If I were governor, I would veto an open occu pancy bill...
...Moreover, once the campaign got un der way, he delivered, by his own ac count to the Chicago Tribune, "forty two speeches on behalf of Goldwater...
...We need somebody to say we can't do everything at once...
...he has been hostile to open occupancy in one election and em braced it in the next...
...Not only has he vacillated between the Old Guard and the "moderate" wing of the GOP, but he also has avoided a firm commitment on any of the large questions agitating American politics today...
...But the voters may prove difficult to convince...
...he says nice things about the war on poverty in theory, and spends most of his time criticizing it in practice...
...between those who wish a more aggressive policy and those who seek a way of withdrawal from the engagement...
...But despite his early promise and attractive credentials, Charles Percy has turned out to be just another politician, more anxious to win office than earn it...
...Thus he has been on every side of every contentious issue in Illinois politics...
...But these are not ordinary times...
...Some thought they saw even the White House in the crystal ball...
...When asked about the ef fect of his position on colored voters, he responded that "the Republican Party does not have much of a Negro vote to begin with...
...In ordinary times, a race between a Douglas and a Percy would be no contest...
...I would make a better Senator than a governor...
...When in Washington he conveys to the press the idea that he favors reapportionment (indeed, as he told Paul Hope of the Washington Evening Star, "strongly") and that he finds Senator Dirksen's bitter-end opposition somewhat awkward...
...With characteristic audacity Percy stated his position to the St...
...The "all-Asian" conference proposal might not have brightened the prospects for peace in the Far East, but it is certain to heat up the Senatorial war in Illinois...
...As a result, the Senatorial race is now extremely close...
...We've made commitments that we won't let what happened in Eastern Europe happen to Southeast Asia...
...and the war has produced a kind of Rube Goldberg politics on the Left where people are encouraged to vote against a liberal like Douglas in Illinois to hit President Johnson in Washington...
...The fighting in Vietnam and the civil rights revolution have brought new uncertainties to American politics...
...What he probably seeks is a foreign policy modeled on the Eisenhower-Dulles years: "In eight years of Republicanism," he is fond of saying, "not a single American was shot at and not a single inch of territory [was] taken by Peking or Moscow in the free world"—an interpretation, incidentally, which almost transforms the Castro regime in Cuba into a triumph of American foreign policy...
...The same uncertainty appears in his views on civil rights...
...The Republican Party must meet the challenge of the civil rights movement constructively and progressively," he wrote to the Republican Governors' Conference...
...When one asked Percy about it in Springfield recently, he replied, "This question never ceases to amaze me...
...Early this year he broke the suspense...
...One "team" member, Ray Page, seeking reelection as superintendent of public instruction, has been smudged, if not blackened, by scandals in his office...
...They want to know what to expect from their spokesmen in Washington...
...The New Illinois Committee has, in fact, reached perhaps a few thousand families in the past two years, but it has scarcely scratched any of Chicago's big problems...
...The buildup for this decision was carefully managed...
...Senator Thruston Morton, Kentucky Republican, made some kind comments on the plan and placed Percy's speech in the Congressional Record...
...He announced that he would challenge Senator Paul H. Douglas instead of waiting for another crack at the governorship in 1968...
...Questions about his intentions were coyly parried throughout the winter: It depended on the party...
...The first requirement, however, was to clear the field of other Republican aspirants...
...While running for governor in 1964, Percy was quite blunt on this issue: "I will make it unmistakably clear in a calm and responsible way that I will vote against open occupancy legislation...
...The Vietnam issue is, of course, the central question...
...Now he started faulting the Administration for lack of prudence...
...Indeed, he thought Johnson had not been aggressive enough...
...but it is also impossible to discover Percy's position on it...
...The attack on Douglas and the Administration was often offered in a non-partisan disguise...
...polls were determining whether the demand was really there...
...As the summer wore on the Republican candidates in the three principal contests hit the trail together in what press releases called "a team," reminiscent of the old Eisenhower days...
...They'd probably start right down the Asian peninsula [sic], too...
...For despite his frenetic energy and incomparable public relations, he has not identified himself clearly with any major public issue...
...He sometimes seems determined to become the Harold Stassen of Illinois...
...It is, however, fruitless to predict where Percy will stand on any issue in the future since he has been on all sides of most of them in the past...
...Any announcement was certain to get wide circulation...
...Other Republican candidates began to sidle up to the idea...
...It also enables a candidate to take the offensive with a proposal and the implication that the Administration is not pushing hard enough for peace—while still maintaining a properly militant stance on the conduct of the war...
...But so far as the Illinois Senate race is concerned, I intend for politics to stop 'at the water's edge.' " The change in his position reached 180 degrees on July 2 when he proposed that U Thant call an "all-Asian" peace conference to end the war...
...If Percy should win, the people of Illinois will have sent to the Senate an unpredictable politician with a bewildering record of embracing every side of just about every major issue...
...Because "it permits a candidate to urge that Asians handle Asia's problems—a prospect not unattractive to voters at election time, as the casualty lists from Vietnam mount...
...In Decatur he attacked Douglas for saying that "the people are tired of cow-dominated legislatures" on the ground that it shows the Senator's "contempt of the mass of people in rural Illinois...
...every press conference was heavily covered...
...In the election of 1964 he saw the consequences of this miscalculation, and as early as December of the same year began to move to the other side...
...Why...
...The sly courting of the opponents of the war is, however, a recent tactic...
...Reapportionment is a convenient illustration...
...It is not a reassuring prospect...
...So we might lose Berlin— which is certainly the last hope of freedom for Eastern Europe—and we would probably lose Thailand very quickly...
...He flirts with the disaffected of the Left while at the same time maintaining his ties with the official hard line of the GOP...
...Indeed, by March 18 candidate Percy was a giant step ahead of Secretary Rusk on the "domino theory" of the consequences of pulling out...
...His own policy is bound up in the New Illinois Committee, a private organization he established after losing the election for governor...
...In May, 1965, the conver sion became complete...
...on the other he criticizes its implementation...
...A successful businessman, a protege of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a midwestern anchor of "modern" Republicanism, he seemed to have a uniquely bright future...
...To meet this additional dimension the program would have to encompass 21,766,000 more people at an almost incalculable expense...
...I just can't see where they seem to get the idea that I didn't support Goldwater...
...There are so many unanswered questions about Vietnam that the Administration should answer," he complained to the Chicago Tribune on May 2. A little later he was demanding from Senator Douglas "reasonable answers to reasonable questions," and he posed five queries as starters...
...As Negro frustrations spilled over into riots and marches in Chicago, he could see the question not in its agony but rather in its political opportunity...
...When an Evanston resident wrote to him asking support for the one-man, one vote principle, he replied that "this I cannot do and I am surprised that you would ask for such an extreme proposal...
...And throughout this period, Percy enjoyed an unprecedentedly attentive press...
...Our retaliation should be as costly as possible for the Vietcong, and the targets that were picked for retaliatory action were good ones...
...He has favored Goldwater and opposed him...
...When a Washington Evening Star columnist recently asked Percy whether he had, in fact, voted for Goldwater in 1964, "Percy's face flushed," the columnist wrote, "and he said that not even his wife dared ask him that question...
...The Republican party is basking in the warmth of unity," Percy told a partisan crowd in Lewiston with obvious satisfaction...
...Percy's embarrassment over his Goldwater record is not simply an historical question...
...The conclusion is inescapable: Percy's attitude on civil rights stems from shifting political considerations rather than from personal commitment...
...What is lacking," he said in the spring, "is a grand design for peace, based on a priority of goals and realistic commitments...
...This was a clear invitation to endorse open occupancy, but Percy replied he was more "concerned with achieving more effective enforcement of the legislation already enacted...
...Two years ago, when running for governor, he had tried desperately to straddle the Goldwater question and find a formula which would win the votes of both the supporters of the Arizona Senator and his detractors...
...Yet even this modest and presumably disinterested enterprise is baldly tied to political advantage...
...one hand he supports the poverty war...
...When the U.S...
...Even though the tempo of fighting increased, he counselled no let-up in the American effort...
...Financed by Chicago business men, it has set up facilities to receive and process complaints about slum housing, give help to pre-school children, and run a free dental and medical clinic for a few hours a week in one west side ward...
...But Charles Nicodemus of the Chicago Daily News put the proposal in its proper perspective by analyzing it as an electioneering device...
...This seemed to call for precise, long range planning...
...In the midst of the gubernatorial campaign of 1964 Percy not only "enthusiastically" endorsed Senator Everett Dirksen's proposed amendment to nullify the Supreme Court's decisions on reapportionment but invited Governor Kerner to issue a statement of joint support...
...In late spring and early summer, as President Johnson's popularity slipped in the opinion polls, Percy stepped up his attack on the Administration...
...Two months later, however, he was downstate complaining that "left outside the war on poverty, and most harshly treated, are the veterans and dependents of past wars living on pensions...
...While Paul Douglas was testifying for the President's broad civil rights bill in Washington, and Senator Dirksen was attempting to narrow it, Percy confined his activity to endorsing both the first bill and the amendments to reduce its scope...
...Thus nearly every pronouncement comes out on both sides...
...Early this year he cautioned others to "criticize constructively and point out specific ways to improve" the programs, but his own attack has seldom been precise—or even consistent...
...To his Illinois supporters the only question seemed to be: Should he be Governor Percy or Senator Percy before seeking the Republican nomination for the Presidency...
...The deepening American commitment, the fear of a wider war, and the ominous availability of The Bomb have contributed to sharp differences over the Administration's position...
...But when he gets out in the countryside he is back at the old stand...
...Open occupancy law is bad law —ineffective, misleading, and dangerous to the constitutional liberties of all citizens...
...In the process he probably succeeded in satisfying the Right, but he clearly compromised his credentials as a moderate...
...He accepts the bombing of the Hanoi oil depots but calls for an escalated peace offensive...
...He has also latched on to the cliche that "we cannot police the entire world," but in April he had attacked President Johnson for not assuring our allies that "the United States is prepared to defend freedom when it is threatened anywhere in the world...
...Two months later he told the National Young Republicans of the need to "take this party away from be ing a sort of Anglo-Saxon, white Prot estant party...
...he is even uncer tain about which he is more suited for —the governorship or the Senate...
...Percy contends that this experience shows "conclusively that ordinary citizens can make effective contributions to the attack on poverty" and that no one need be paid what he thinks are the outrageously high salaries of Sargent Shriver's operation...
...But it should be used as the last resort, not the first...
...Supreme Court announced its one-man, one vote rule, Percy declared it "an erroneous and simple-minded view...
...Negro marches and demonstrations," he told the Peoria Journal Star, "are protests against the Democratic rule of big cities and Southern states...
...Percy of Illinois An Uncertain Trumpet by RICHARD C. WADE FORTHE PAST six years no figure has been so much a part of the political landscape in Illinois as Charles H. Percy...
...Notions of this sort have been wandering around for some time but what was astonishing about Percy's formulation was that at his proposed conference table the Communist Chinese would be present but the United States would be excluded...
...We must make an independent judgment on each crisis as it arises...
...The new strategy was to ask questions rather than give answers...
...Invariably his statements disclose a careful calculation of political advantage rather than deep conviction...
...But his main thrust was to appeal to the opponents of the war by concentrating on the fear of Chinese intervention: "The battle is becoming more and more our war...
...he would have to consult his family (though this ploy had one jarring moment when his twelve-year-old daughter replied to the question of whether he should run for Senator or governor by asking, "Daddy, why don't you run for mayor of Kenilworth...
...But Percy's basic reservation is that the Johnson Administration's approach is too heavily a governmental rather than a private effort...
...He also explained why in characteristic Percy terms—"if we are to go forward to victory in the future...
...Percy now acts as though he had never heard of Barry Goldwater, but the record is worth reviewing because it reveals so much about the man and explains so much about the present campaign...
...Despite rumbling, the device worked, and no serious challenge developed...
...He hopes to avoid identification with either side of the dispute, yet to appeal to both...
...national magazines and columnists joined the speculation about his prospects...
...Instead of his somewhat independent campaign of 1964, Percy would run as a regular Republican, close to the party and its other officeseekers...
...The central question in Illinois, as in some other Northern states, has been the growth of the Negro ghetto with all its compounded evils...
...But by March of this year, his analysis was quite different...
...A June 2 press release, embodying both support and criticism of the war, is perhaps typical: "We are in Vietnam today and Americans have no intention of turning their backs and running...
...Like every American, I'm concerned about Vietnam," Percy said in Winnetka...
...This has turned out to be something less than a bargain...
...On April 19 he told the Chicago Tribune that Sargent Shriver, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, was attempting to do too much...
...But as the war became more costly and more frustrating and more unpopular, Percy began to move in the other direction...
...After the earthquake of November, 1964, Percy supporters quickly blamed his defeat on Barry Goldwater and revived the notion that Percy had never really supported the national ticket in the first place...
...The rationale was political, not moral...
...Initially, the idea looked like a harmless trial balloon, hoisted into the treacherous currents of this election year...
...He would now favor open occupancy legislation in Springfield because "I have reluctantly concluded that a majority of persons engaged in the sale or rental of hous ing are either unable or unwilling to adopt an effective state housing code...
...He is rather a man of convenience whose views on the important issues are governed by political calculation rather than by personal commitment...
...On the...
...He added: "I have con sistently held this position...
...Yet his alternatives are fuzzy and contradictory...
...Former President Eisenhower was asked for an endorsement and he responded with customary decisiveness by calling it "worthy of serious consideration...
...At a Kankakee county fair in 1964 he went further and asserted that the decision "denies the fact that, in addition to the fundamental principle of majority rule, there are other considerations which contribute to equitable representation of the people...
...If Goldwater had been President/' he told an audience in downstate Illinois, "the police state in Cuba, the launching pad for subversion, would not have been permitted to exist...
...he has attacked reapportionment at one time only to modify his view the next...
...The other, Harris Rowe, running against Adlai E. Stevenson III for state treasurer, distinguished himself in the state legislature by sponsoring an amendment to the Federal Constitution that sought to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, which authorizes the income tax...
...Indeed we are moving to a major land war with Red China...
...It's still too early to tell what impact the Percy gambit will have on voters," he wrote, "but its potential is politically promising...
...it is symptomatic of a deeper problem...
...Instead of advocating "whatever means necessary" to bring the Vietcong to the conference table, he talked of limiting the prosecution of the war and warned about possible Red Chinese intervention...
...Yet the cost of unity was high...
...He criticized it for obscuring and distorting the news from Vietnam, for not cracking down on allies who still traded with Hanoi, and for permitting ammunition shortages to develop in campaign theaters...
...Percy has thus sought to capitalize on the growing uneasiness about American foreign policy, and he has picked up some of the rhetoric, if not the substance, of sophisticated critics...
...When a reporter doubted his conviction on the Presidential race, Percy shot back, "I say the same thing—that I'm for Goldwater straight and solidly—whether I am talking to a group of Goldwater supporters or detractors...
...Percy has shown the same ambiva lence toward the Federal poverty program, the most ambitious effort to get at the curse of the ghetto...
...Not only did it require jettisoning the open primary, but it also meant that Percy was willing to be associated with the views and careers of his two running mates...
...Or as he put it elegantly on May 3: "When you overlook a market of 22,000,000 [Negro] people, you're pretty dead...
...Percy claims that there is too much politics in the poverty programs, but when the unwary slum dweller calls the New Illinois Committee's housing office, he is greeted with a recorded voice which says, "This is Call for Action, Chuck Percy speaking...
...To be sure, they expect political leaders to change their views from time to time on a few issues, but they also expect a hard core of con viction on the most important ones...
...the Senator would be reelected handily...
...But seldom has a conversion been sounded with such an uncertain trumpet...
Vol. 30 • October 1966 • No. 10
