The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

FOR the most part, General Eisenhower has been running against President Truman, while Governor Stevenson has substituted Senator Taft for Herbert Hoover as his favorite whipping boy. The General drew by far the bigger crowds. Stevenson had large, attentive, and appreciative audiences, but the people poured out by the thousands to view the beloved hero of World War II. The significance of these throngs was not easily assessed. General MacArthur had drawn the masses out to see and hear him — and had faded away. President Roosevelt drew big crowds, and always won. Bryan and Al Smith — and even Dewey—had attracted curious and enthusiastic audiences, and had lost.

Certainly it was plain that the name and the fame of Eisenhower, and a friendly feeling for him as a man and a hero, extended into every nook and cranny of the nation. Those who knew Stevenson, and those who met and heard him, came away admiring him, respecting his gifts and his character, but he was still a somewhat remote and unknown quantity to ihe great mass of the voters.

Governor Stevenson’s campaign was markedly different from anything to which the American electorate had become accustomed in a generation of stridency, name-calling, and rough infighting. His speeches, unghosted, bore the stamp of a highly personal literary talent — free from the ear-tickling cant so commonly turned out by the hucksters in the speech-writing trade.

Stevenson’s wit

Stevenson’s style is almost elegant in its classic perfection. There were many who hoped and some who feared that it was too rare a meat to feed the hungry populace. Some, even if only a few, Presidential candidates in past years have been gifted with unusual powers of clear statement and chaste expression. But only Lincoln can be said to have possessed — and dared to use — such a fund of humor as Stevenson showed. Stevenson, unlike Lincoln, whose wit was homely as his face, carried a stiletto up his sleeve.

Eisenhower and his advisers proved sensitive to Stevenson’s jibes. The General said that the Governor might be funny, but that the issues were not; and Republican speakers began to refer to Stevenson as “The Little Joker.” Stevenson went blandly on his way, making no effort to remake himself or his style, feeling quite correctly that, for good or ill, he was stuck with himself, and that the worst of all possible Stevensons would be a synthetic one.

Eisenhower’s charm

Some observers felt that a similar realization might improve General Eisenhower’s quality as a campaigner. In the prepared addresses, which still bore the signs of multiple collaboration though perhaps not, as the Governor charged, multiple ownership, Eisenhower struck no dazzling sparks.

It was in his shorter, unbriefed rear platform appearances that the General became Ike. Here, meeting the crowds more intimately, Eisenhower showed the kindly, thawing qualities which have made him one of the best-loved Americans of his day. Though the reporters on his train might sneer about “crossing the 38th platitude” — and indeed there was little that was either original or specific in the content of these little sermons—Ike had the undeniable capacity to make ordinary folk feel that they faced a man who cared deeply about them as he had cared about their boys.

The riddle was whether caring was enough and whether the friendly atmosphere of Main Street could hold up against the grand manner of one who was bringing an eighteenth-century aura into twentieth-century politics.

The Stevenson jokes and jibes were, while authentic, by no means unconsidered. Stevenson’s greatest handicap was his dimness, and his biggest task was to bring himself into the people’s intimate consciousness where his opponent had lingered for a decade. No better or less offensive method of genteel self-advertisement could have been contrived than a series of quips so apt, and so inoffensive, as to mark their author a flavorful “character” with a pleasant tang.

Polls, reporters, pundits, and prophets are, as 1948 showed, but fallible guides in the labyrinths of political prediction. So far as they could be trusted, there seemed agreement, skittishly stated as this issue goes to press, that Eisenhower was in the lead, and that his margin was largely the margin of his name and his fame. Whether this margin could be overcome, as Democrats have in the stretch overcome early Republican leads before, was the question on which hung the outcome of the election.

Communism in government

Senator Joseph McCarthy’s renomination by a landslide majority over his Republican primary opponents hit both parties like a ton of bricks. McCarthy’s renomination had been expected, but the dimensions of his victory were stunning. His vote exceeded the combined total of all other candidates in both Democratic and Republican primaries.

McCarthy’s principal Republican rival, Leonard Schmitt , had campaigned vigorously, utilizing with seeming effectiveness the radio “talkathon" — which bid fair to become 1952’s oddest political innovation. Schmitt, a longtime active Republican of impeccable German Catholic origins, did not seem likely to unhorse McCarthy. But most observers had predicted a close finish, especially in view of the fact that Wisconsin Democrats were free to cross over into the Republican primaries. Indeed, many crossed over, but numbers of them apparently did so in order to vote for McCarthy.

The effect upon General Eisenhower’s campaign, was immediate. At a press conference late in August Eisenhower had, without specifically mentioning either Jenner or McCarthy, rebuked them both for what he termed “un-American tactics,”especially the savage attacks made by both upon General Marshall. But alter McCarthy’s victory, Eisenhower endorsed Jenner for re-election, in a statement deemed by Jenner’s campaign manager to be “not daring enough.”And one of Eisenhower’s chief aides, Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas, announced that McCarthy would be asked to stump the nation for Eisenhower, with special emphasis upon the issue of communism in government. Apparently the Republican high command, fortified with the Wisconsin returns, had convinced the General that “communism in government" was not only a winning issue but an indispensable one, and that partial acquiescence in McCarthy’s methods was the only sure-fire way to cash in on it.

Meanwhile Governor Stevenson hammered away at McCarthyism, daring even to beard the American Legion at its national convention in New York. From the beginning, Stevenson and his advisers had acted on the assumption that Jenner and McCarthy were among Eisenhower’s political liabilities. Almost the first statement which the Illinois Governor made as his campaign got under way was to point out the alleged incongruity of the participation of Jenner and McCarthy in the General’s crusade.

The Wisconsin primary raised in some minds a question whether Stevenson’s decision, which won wide acclaim in the press, had been politically wise. However, the Democratic candidate gave no sign of backing down. Indeed, he had little choice, He issued a Constitution Day statement reaffirming his original stand against irresponsible character-daubing; conferred with Thomas E. Fairchild, McCarthy’s Democratic opponent; and prepared to speak against McCarthy in Wisconsin itself.

Byrd and McCarran

Governor Stevenson himself was hardly free of party troubles. The Governor had denounced Eisenhower for failing to denounce Jenner and McCarthy, and he had blazed away at the Taft-Eisenhower peace pact.

But there was the problem of Senators Byrd and McCarran in the Democratic ranks. Byrd was comparable to Taft rather than McCarthy. Whether Stevenson supported him for re-election was not very important, since he had no opposition. But whether Byrd supported Stevenson might well determine the outcome in Virginia. Byrd has opposed every important domestic measure sponsored from the Democratic leadership in twenty years, and often voted with Taft on matters of foreign policy. Stevenson wiggled a bit: he thought Byrd a fine, decent fellow, an able man, and a sincere economizer.

McCarran, the powerful Nevada counterpart of McCarthy, was something else. He had written Stevenson a brusque letter about left-wing influences in the Springfield headquarters, but was satisfied with a soft epistolary answer. Though not up for re-election in 1952, McCarran was to civil libertarians a symbol of Democratic McCarthyism.

Once more Stevenson, when asked his views on McCarranism, squirmed. He endorsed the young newspaperman who had just trounced McCarran’s law partner in the Nevada Senatorial primary; but he had never met McCarran face to face and needed more time to study his views.

The 83rd Congress

Stevenson bore down harder and harder on the possible domination of an Eisenhower administration by Senator Taft and his political allies. There had been deep, wide differences between Eisenhower and Taft on fundamental issues of foreign policy, though on domestic affairs they had never been so far apart as their respective partisans would have wished. These differences could not be obscured by the soupy phrases of a harmony declaration, Stevenson pointed out that the Taftites who were seeking re-election to the Senate and House on Eisenhower’s ticket might well hold a balance of power in a Republican Congress.

Could Eisenhower persuade or would Taft cajole these reluctant dragons into a sharp reversal of form? At times the feat seemed almost superhuman, especially if one reviewed the prospective committee chairmanships in a Republican 83rd Congress.

Control of most key committees in Senate and House alike would fall into the hands of chairmen who follow Taft. In the Senate, Wiley of Wisconsin would head the Foreign Relations Committee; Bridges of New Hampshire (Henry Grunewald crony), Appropriations; Millikin of Colorado, Finance; and Joe McCarthy, Executive Expenditures.

In the House, Dewey Short of Missouri would head up the Armed Services Committee; Chiperfield of Illinois (a McCormick protégé), Foreign Affairs; Hoffman of Michigan, Executive Expenditures; Reed of New York (a high-tariff zealot), Ways and Means; and Allen of Illinois (another Chicago Tribune favorite), the all-powerful Rules Committee. Such a prospect would not bode well for Congressional acceptance of an Eisenhower-DeweyLodge foreign policy.

Stevenson had a corresponding problem in connection with some of his domestic policies, which would be tossed to the not so tender mercies of senior Southerners in Senate and House. However, on foreign policy at least, the Democrats were almost one body, and to many thoughtful independents the possibility of conservative Democrats blocking health insurance was less ominous than the prospect of goit-alone Republicans playing ducks and drakes with the destiny of an atom-smashing world.

Even to this there was another side. A new ly elected President has great power to influence the views of (he Congress. Patronage is a nasty word but it still works wonders with a recalcitrant committee chairman. In addition, much of the irresponsibility which may have characterized Republican Congressional leadership is a possible function of a ton-long separation from the responsibilities as well as the delights of power.

Subsidies for public servants

The ultimate impact of the Nixon incident would remain incalculable until election day and perhaps ever afterward. Nixon himself took a bold course in his highly dramatized television appearance. He claimed complete justification for the fund and pleaded for the sympathy of the electorate.

The immediate response to Nixon’s speech was favorable; General Eisenhower pronounced it a complete vindication, but the cold judgment of history might not be so generous.

The Democrats were hardly in a position to capitalize on the Nixon episode. Senator Sparkman’s wife had been serving as his secretary for ten years. This is widespread Congressional practice and, although considered less than fastidious, did not involve any question of improper influence.

Governor Stevenson had been raising a fund from wealthy Illinois citizens to supplement the salaries of state officials and hold them in the public service. This too is a practice subject to abuse, but it involved no personal benefit for Stevenson. It was plain to all that special funds and subsidies would not be necessary if we paid our government officials enough.