The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

THE year 1956 may produce a result unique in American political history — the election of a President of one parly and of a Congress in the control of the other party. Since the advent of the direct election of Senators in 1913, three Presidents have lost party control of both Senate and House at mid-term: Wilson in 1918, Truman in 1946, Eisenhower in 1954. Yet, despite the loose American party ties, the pulling power of the man who won the White House has always been enough in presidential election years to give his party a majority in Congress. (The partial exception was the disputed Hayes election of 1876 when his party won the Senate but not the House. But that is the only exception since Lincoln’s day, when the current two-party system came into being.)

Election cycles, of course, reflect, the changing attitude of the voters toward what they expect of their federal government. Since the end of World War I there have been two clear cycles, but a third — embracing the period in which we now live — has yet to emerge.

The twelve years of Republican rule under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover reflected the general desire for “normalcy” despite the many unresolved problems of that period. When they exploded into the Great Depression, the voters turned to the Democrats and began the 20-year cycle of Roosevelt and Truman. That cycle was prolonged by World War II, and its final years were marked by apathy.

Each of these cycles tended to run down, like a watch spring, as time went on. A glance at the division of the Senate over the years beginning with the 1920 election will demonstrate this. Harding’s victory that year brought 59 Republicans and only 37 Democrats to the Senate. In the succeeding years the GOP Senate total slipped from that 59 to 51, 56, 49, 56, and 48. In the 20 years of Democratic White House occupancy, the Senate figures for the Democratic Party totaled 60, 69, 76, 69, 66, 58, 56, 45, 54, 49, with 49 necessary to control in a body of 96 unless the Vice President; breaks a 48-48 tie.

Historically, Presidents running for re-election do less well than they did when they first sought office. The single exception in our history was the Roosevelt landslide over Landon in 1936, a victory which produced the most lopsided Congress in American history: a Senate of 76 Democrats to only 16 Republicans and four others, and a House of a massive 331 Democrats to a bare 89 Republicans and 13 others, plus two vacancies. The New Deal was then flowing at high tide, of course, and the normal decline from initial victory did not set in until the following election.

The campaign

The 1956 campaign gives every evidence of being in the traditional mold; the Eisenhower Crusade enthusiasm of 1952 has not been duplicated in 1956, and Eisenhower’s party lost in ihe usual fashion in the mid-term election in 1954. Hence by every evidence of the cyclical trends of our political life, Eisenhower can be expected to lose GOP seats in Congress this year even though he wins a second term in the White House. But he does not have the usual congressional seals to spare.

The spectacular run of Democratic victories at the city, county, slate, and congressional levels in 1953, 1954, 1955, and so far in 1956, including the September vote in Maine, is certainly hard evidence that the Democratic Party, as a party, is the more popular with the voters, it is this fact which Adlai Stevenson’s campaign manager, the astute political expert James A. Finnegan, has been drumming into the ears of party workers across the nation in order to destroy what he terms the Eisenhower “invincibility myth.”

An uncertain electorate

The victories are recorded fact; the reason is arguable. The Democrats contend that the voters have found that Democrats in office give them the kind of government services which they demand; that Republican incumbents have been turned out of office because the voters found they failed to provide that kind of governmental service. It is the Democratic contention this year that a whole new crop of problems is now facing the electorate, from how to get more schools to how to get a foreign policy fit for a nuclear world, A Democratic victory of major proportions on November 6 would demonstrate this thesis to be correct.

But it also may be argued that in the years since the end of World War II the national election returns demonstrate only an uncertain electorate. The division of the Senate seats after the biennial elections of 1946 — 54 has given the majority party (three times the Democrats, twice the Republicans) a total of only 51, 54, 49, 48, and 48, which is about as close to a dead heat as it is possible to come.

The House division has not been so close, but it has been infinitely closer than in the heyday of Coolidge or of Roosevelt. The result, since World War II, has been the rule of Congress by a conservative coalition of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats, whether the President was Democratic (Truman) or Republican (Eisenhower).

Ike’s New Republicanism

The GOP slogan this year, “Peace and Prosperity,” is essentially a stand pat cry despite the effort to add “progress” to it and despite President Eisenhower’s attempts to give it dynamism. The Republicans running for Congress count on the President’s popularity to carry them into office; the President, frustrated by his own party when he came into office, at first considered forming a third party, then abandoned the idea in favor of remaking his own party. The result has been the theme of New Republicanism by the President and the pledges of faith to the New Republicanism by many whose record belies their conversion.

Political parties, like all forms of life, must adjust to changing environments or die. That the Republicans, after 20 years out of the White House, have changed is indisputable — there has not been a single New Deal-Fair Deal law repealed on the home front, and the Roosevelt-Truman internationalist foreign policies have been carried forward in principle, at least. But Dwight D. Eisenhower himself has far more than any other man been responsible for getting his party to make the adjustment. Perhaps as good an argument as any for another term for Eisenhower is that he needs eight years to complete the conversion and make it stick after he leaves the White House.

But how does a President go about remaking his party? FDR once tried a purge of anti-New Dealers with almost disastrous results. Eisenhower, a far less aggressive politician, has leaned over backwards to avoid taking sides in GOP primaries. His failure to give Senator Wiley a hand in the Wisconsin primary certainly dismayed many Eisenhower followers. But he has encouraged men in whom he believes to seek seats in Congress, especially in the Senate. Among them this year are Cooper and Morton in Kentucky, Langlie in Washington, Thornton in Colorado, all men who could be expected to swell the ranks of Eisenhower Republicans in Washington if elected. McKay in Oregon at least approaches this category, and he was certainly urged to run for the Senate.

Yet in 1956 as in 1952 the President faces the unhappy fact that to get a GOP Congress he must help elect or re-elect men who have little belief in the New Republicanism — Welker in Idaho, Dirksen in Illinois, Capehart in Indiana, Butler in Maryland, Bender in Ohio, and former Senator Revercomb in West Virginia. A Republican sweep this year would mean a Senate GOP majority for the old-line GOP, though some of the group would doubtless go along with President Eisenhower on some issues.

The young Democrats

On the other hand the Democrats, if they are to win control of the Senate next year, must re-elect men with little or no belief in Stevenson’s New America — Thurmond and Johnston in South Carolina, Bible in Nevada — and they must elect others with similar beliefs — Mahoney in Maryland and Lausche in Ohio. Yet the Democrats also have begun to produce a whole new crop of faces, men with only a history book acquaintance with the New Deal simply because of their youth. These arc from the new generation of Democrats brought forth by the political victories on the lower rungs of government, and if they can win this year they would form, with the holdover liberals like Wagner of New York and Clark of Pennsylvania, the nucleus of Stevenson’s New America. Among them art 32-yearold Church of Idaho, 40-year-old Richards of California, and 41-yearold Stengel of Illinois.

It is evident from these facts about the Senate races this fall (and the House contests produce a similar picture) that neither Stevenson nor Eisenhower will reach the White House with a solid backing in Congress of men who think as he does. Coalition government, in fact if not in name, will again be the probability through an alliance of the Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats.

How many will vote?

This year, as in 1952, there has been a major get-out-the-vote campaign. A good many harsh words are said here and abroad every four years about the slothfulness of Americans who fail to exercise the franchise. Unhappy comparisons are made with the percentage of eligibles who vote in other lands. Usually, these comparisons do not take into account (a) the vast movement of Americans across state lines and within states, moves which legally deprive them of the right to vote until they have settled down a while in their new homes; (b) the lack of spirited two-party contests generally in the South and in some sections of the North, which foreordains which party will get the state’s electoral votes for President and its seats in Congress. To these two groups should be added a third: the disenfranchised voters with legal residence in the District of Columbia.

In presidential election years since the introduction of women’s suffrage there has been a curve of total votes cast which was consistent from 1920 through 1940. The war year 1944 saw a smaller vote than in 1940, but this may be explained by the fact that millions of men of voting age were in military service and millions of civilians had shifted residence to take war jobs. The 1948 total was barely larger than that of 1944 and can only be explained by a “plague on both of your houses” attitude in the TrumanDewey campaign toward both candidates on the part of millions of persons.

In 1952 the voting total shot up to an all-time high of 61.5 million, with Eisenhower’s lead over Stevenson of 6.6 million approaching but not reaching the vote margins of Harding in 1920, Hoover in 1928, and Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936. Roosevelt’s margin of 10.8 million in 1936 was 1ho largest in our history.

Mood of Capital

At one point in the Suez crisis, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was asked whether American policy on Suez had been affected by the fact that this was an election year and that the Administration naturally wants to stress its peace policy. In rather fervent tones he told the press: —

“I can say this with all sincerity and honesty; I am not conscious that the slightest political motivation has entered into our thinking on this matter whatsoever. And, as far as I can judge, we would have taken precisely the same action we have taken if this issue had arisen a year ago, two years ago, or three years ago.”

Those who have followed the Suez crisis through the torturous months since Egypt nationalized the old canal company are generally willing to accept Dulles’s statement. There has, however, been a strong feeling in Washington that the British, especially, have tried to play upon the GOP peace theme to bring the United States closer to the Anglo-French will. Yet the degree of success probably has been due less to American politics than to Dulles’s belief that the Atlantic Alliance is the rock of our foreign policy and must not be sacrificed.

But if politics has been absent from the Suez issue it certainly has slowed up the Administration on other fronts, after the custom of most presidential election years, regardless of party. New risks are put off, new policies get further study and restudy, lower level bureaucrats are more cautious lest they imperil the party in power by some avoidable step.

Hence the outcome on November 6 will come as a relief to Washington, regardless of who wins. If it is to be another term for Eisenhower, then affairs now in a state of suspended animation will come alive again. If it is to be Stevenson, the lapse will inevitably be longer until the new Administration is sworn in, takes a look around, and decides how to proceed.