A Letter to the Honorable Thomas E. Dewey

VOLUME 174

NUMBER 3

SEPTEMBER, 1944

87th YEAR OF CONTINUOUS PUBLICATION

SIR: emdash;
With respect, but without apology, I ask you this question: What do you, as a Presidential candidate, offer me, as a voter, that Harding did not offer in 1920?
The question is legitimate. There is no trap in it. It comes from a common, ordinary voter who holds no political office, has never held any, and expects never to hold any; one who is not in the councils of any party and has no interest in the success of any party other than the common interest of all citizens in good government; but one who believes it to be the duty of every qualified voter to cast a ballot in November for the candidate who seems most competent to deal successfully with the very difficult and unusual problems that must confront the next President.
In this situation, the plain, ordinary voter’s interest centers on you. He hits no need to study Mr. Roosevelt. He knows all about Mr. Roosevelt. For twelve years Mr. Roosevelt has been the bestadvertised man in the world, and all the world knows both his faults and his virtues. He has been President longer than any other man in history, yet the country has survived; therefore, in a pinch, he will do.

The Republican Party offers you as its answer to this question, and fair-minded men are bound to admit that it is in many respects a good answer. You have youth, vigor, and courage. Your career as prosecuting attorney in New York furnished convincing evidence that you are able and incorruptible. Your career as Governor at Albany has demonstrated your capacity for administration. All these are qualities highly desirable in the next President; as far as the personality of its candidate is concerned, the Republican Party has chosen well.
But the party does not offer you on your own record without qualification. For reasons not apparent to the ordinary voter, it inserted a curious restriction in the platform. Your nomination was already known to be inevitable when the platform was being written and the party leaders inserted this plank: —

The acceptance of the nominations made by this convention carries with it, as a matter of private honor and public faith, an undertaking by each candidate to be true to the principles and program herein set forth.

With this plank before you, you accepted the nomination; therefore “as a matter of private honor and public faith” you are bound by it — which is to say you are bound to carry out the program set forth in the platform, whether you approve it or not. Even if events should convince you that certain provisions are unwise and hurtful, you are not at liberty to use your own judgment. The convention has seen to that. You are morally bound to accept the judgment of the Chicago convention in preference to your own.

Copyright 1944, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass. All rights reserved.

The ordinary voter, therefore, cannot base his decision solely on your record as prosecuting attorney and as Governor. You are no longer Dewey as he was. You are now Dewey as he is bound by the Chicago platform — which is to say, by the members of the platform committee, of which Senator Taft was chairman. You have promised to be true to the program set forth by that committee; hence, that program demands as careful scrutiny as your own record.

Once before within living memory we confronted a similar situation: at the end of a great war we had to choose a man to lead us through a period of reconstruction and into what we were resolved should be a lasting peace. We chose Harding, and the results were not happy.

This is not to imply that you are another Harding. Neither your temperament nor your career bears any resemblance to that of the unwise and unlucky Ohioan. But your situation is strikingly similar to that of the Republican candidate in 1920. Harding was by his own choice in the hands of the party leaders; of his own volition he made his promise to consult with the “best minds” and be guided by their advice. You are in their hands “ as a matter of private honor and public faith” by your acceptance of a nomination linked with that pledge. Left free to choose, you would presumably never include among the “best minds” a Fall, a Daugherty, a Denby. But you are not free to choose. You have the members of that platform committee as counselors, whether you like it or not; for it is so nominated in the bond.

The program as set forth by that committee is not reassuring. In fact, to plain men it seems to be an old-style political platform, designed to catch as many votes as possible by promising something to everyone, even if the promises are contradictory. For example, in one paragraph it declares:-

As soon as the war ends the present rates of taxation on individuals, or corporations, and on consumption should be reduced as far as is consistent with the normal expenditures of government in the post-war period. (Italics mine.)

Then, two paragraphs below that one, it proclaims: —

We . . . regard the payment of government debt as an obligation of honor. . . . We shall reduce that debt as soon as economic conditions make such reduction possible. (Italics again mine.)

To the plain man this looks like a promise to reduce revenues to mere running expenses and to begin paying off the debt at the same time. These two things cannot both be done; therefore the platform must, mean something else, if it makes any sense at all. But the voters in this instance cannot tell what is the program which you have bound yourself to follow.

We did not know what Harding’s program was, either. He said it was “Back to normalcy.” This platform says “Back to normal,” as far as expenditures are concerned. The phraseology is almost the same. Is the intent the same? For that matter, what is the intent?

In the case of Harding we learned by bitter experience what the ambiguous phrase meant. It led to an orgy of corruption in gov ernment and of wildcat finance in business — resulting, in the case of government, in the Teapot Dome scandals, and, in the case of business, in the panic of 1929 and the long depression afterward.

It is beyond belief that you have any such purpose in view. But what have you in view? Your party is using Harding’s words, but surely not with Harding’s meaning. What, then, is the new meaning? What do you offer that Harding did not offer?

2

STILL more disturbing is the ambiguity that clouds the party’s position on the overwhelmingly important international issue. The platform says: —

We favor responsible participation by the United States in post-war coöperative organization among sovereign nations to prevent military aggression and to attain permanent peace with organized justice in a free world. Such an organization should develop effective coöperative means to direct peace forces to prevent or repel military aggression.

Harding was clearer than this. He said at Des Moines on October 7, 1920, that he favored an “association of nations,” but one thal would put the United States under no “compulsion or restraint” and that would recognize American “ ultimate and unmortgaged freedom of action.” Since no man or nation can give any sort of pledge without thereby coming to that extent under “compulsion or restraint,” we should have known, perhaps, that Harding meant he would not pledge this country to any real effort to maintain peace. But we did not. Men whose veracity was as unimpeachable as that of William H. Taft and A. Lawrence Lowell told the country that Harding was a friend of the League of Nations mid that true supporters of the League should vote for Harding.
Well, a majority of the voters did vote for Harding, and what did they get? A world-wide depression within nine years and a second World War within nineteen.
You opened your acceptance speech with the statement that you came to the convention without having given any pledges. But if you are to carry out your ideals, you must have men in your party who will back you up. I applaud your rejection of Hamilton Fish and Gerald K. Smith. You will indeed fare better without them. But who are the strong men in your party whose support you welcome? Taft? Kemper? Schroeder? Hoover? I wonder how much help you would get from any of these men or their followers in your program for international peace.
The Republican platform of 1944 is more obscure than Harding was in 1920. What are “peace forces”? Is G.I. Joe a peace force? Or does the phrase mean prayer and moral suasion exclusively? If the platform by which you are bound, Mr. Dewey, does not mean what Harding meant in 1920, — that is to say, the abandonment of any real effort by this country to maintain the peace of the world, — what does it mean? What Harding offered led to a second holocaust. There is no reason to doubt that to repeat what Harding did would lead to another war. It is supremely important, therefore, to know what the Republican Party now offers that Harding did not offer in 1920.
We learned at Pearl Harbor that we cannot protect ourselves in this world merely by being inoffensive. Secretary Hull in the summer of 1941 did everything but crawl in his effort to avoid giving offense to the Japanese; but the bombers came on, just the same. Great Britain and France did crawl in their efforts to appease Hitler in 1938; but the German Army marched, just the same. That stuff is out. Being inoffensive is all right, but it is only half enough; what the Republican Roosevelt said was, “Speak softly and carry a big stick — and you will go far.”
On this point there is no doubt of the Democratic Roosevelt s attitude. He proposes to have international law and order — amicably, if possible, but if he has to go after it with a club, with a club he will go. This method is somewhat less than ideal, but it is a method, and up to a certain point it will work. We must have law and order because civilization cannot stand many more wars like this one. Therefore, any method that promises results is to be preferred to no method at all.
Surely the Republican Party is aware of this. Surely it does not propose to offer the country Harding’s no-method. Nevertheless, in its platform it has used exactly the same sort of language that Harding used — unless, indeed, it is even more ambiguous than the empty words of twenty-four years ago.
It is true that the meaningless phrases of 1920 paid off in votes; but I shall not insult you with even a suggestion that in the presence of the nation’s dead you would consider political profit ahead of the imperative duty of guarding against a repetition of the catastrophe. All that I, as a voter, wish to know, and all that I have a right to know, is how far, if at all, you are committed to the view of those who still believe, in spite of the appalling evidence to the contrary, that a policy of non-intercourse contributes to international peace.
The international issue cannot be subordinated to any other. After all, Mr. Roosevelt has been operating on this country for twelve years, and he has not killed it yet. His foes claim that he has damaged it, but even they have to admit that it is still going strong—ask Hitler and Tojo; they know! — and if it is a question of preventing another war, we can well afford to endure four years more of Roosevelt. A man who is to have any chance of defeating the President must, therefore, convince the country that he is capable of establishing an enduring peace. To convince the country, he must show that he is wholeheartedly interested — so interested that he will put up a desperate battle for that cause. To convince anyone that he is really going to fight, he must show that he is not under political or personal obligations to the isolationists. They will not ask the next President to join them; they will be content if he will agree only to keep hands off, for they know they can win if they encounter no strong opposition in the White House.
The rest of us know it, too. That is why, for once, we are not disposed to vote against, but intend to vote for. At a pinch, Roosevelt will do. He knows Churchill and Stalin, he knows the situation, and he is a tough and resolute fighter. You are a fighter, too, when your heart is in the fight, as the New York racketeers can testify. But the issue is too important to permit us to take any chances. We must know where your heart is; and how can we learn except by asking you?
Respectfully,
GERALD W. JOHNSON