REFLECTIONS AFTER THE U.S. PARTY CONVENTIONS

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28089, 3 October 1956, Page 12

REFLECTIONS AFTER THE U.S. PARTY CONVENTIONS

“TWO HANDLES TO TOMORROW”

[By

HENRY BRANDON,

Washington representative of the “Sunday Times"]

(Reprinted by Arrangement)

Now tl.e noisy, gay, tumultuous, exciting Democratic, and the sober, busi-ness-like. well-rehearsed Republican Conventions are history. But they are encouraging history. They were proof that both parties, especially the Republican Party, which needed it badly have travelled a long way since 1952. What a slugging match that was! Then the Republicans were desperately in opposition, and the Democrats desperately on the defensive. Then the whole country was emotionally in turmoil; but in the last fortnight you could hardly hear a single faint echo of that unhappy period. All the talk was about the “New America,’’ as Mr Stevenson called it, the “new era’’ as Mr Eisenhower riposted, trumping him by painting something close to Utopia. Republican Confidence

The Democrats, never good at discipline, made their Convention a stage for a bitter inner party struggle; the Republicans used theirs as a demonstration of power <and a public dramatisation of Mr Eisenhower’s recovery from illness. The President’s phenomenal reception was not just for a political leader, but for a beloved hero and father. It surpassed any acclaim any Democrat got in Chicago, and al! this has made Republicans feel supremely confident. When Mr Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defence, known for his intrepid faith in General Motors, was asked whether in his view the Republicans or the Democrats had produced the better policy platform, he simply replied, “When at General Motors we sold Cadillacs we never mentioned the other guy’s goods.” The firm belief among Republicans that they have better “goods” to offer pervaded everything in San Francisco.

President’s “Flamboyant Fitness” Only the eagerness, mixed with uneasiness, with which Republican delegates questioned reporters after the President’s press conference here, and before his triumphant apparance before the Convention—“ How does he look?”—betrayed J he thing that worried them—the President’s health. The biggest news of the Convention, therefore, has been the President’s flamboyant fitness. In his confident, forceful acceptance speech there was no polemic, no expression of anxieties about the world situation, not even one mention of the word “Democrat.” It exuded supreme self-assurance and faith in his own success. He did not seek to explain the great problems of the moment, but simply made people feel they had nothing to worry about under his leadership. The Democrats want to debate great foreign policy issues in concrete terms; the Republicans feel they have no need to. Their policy is simply, as Mr Thomas Dewey put it, “to make every American sleep better at night," to stand on their record and rely on the nation’s unquestioning faith in Mr Eisenhower. "Never before, in my 30 years of covering American politics,” one of my most experienced colleagues said, “has an American Presidential candidate been deified in the way Eisenhower has been. Never before has one been raised to the same exalted level as Lincoln, or called the greatest of all American Presidents.” Need for New Policies It is to the President’s great credit that he has cleansed the atmosphere of McCarthyism, that he has consolidated the great social and economic gains of the last 20 years under the Democrats and made them acceptable to a majority of Republicans, and that he has restored the nation’s emotional balance, which it lost during the United States’ intervention in the Korean war.

In normal times this would have been a considerable accomplishment for any Administration during its first term. But today, in one of the crucial transitional periods in history, and at a time of new Russian challenge to the West, fresh creative ideas are necessary. And so far they have been lacking.

There are many influential officials within the Administration who have become impatient with its inability to develop new policies. They feel that N.A.T.O. in its present form has become obsolete, that the Atlantic community must be given a new content and meaning, that the Administration has been unable to agree on a disarmament policy, and that in the Far East it has shied away from developing a new China policy, though Mr Eisenhower for two vears now has been saying privatelv to his aides that the Peking Government should be given some sort of recognition. Equally, it has been unable to come to grips with a Middle Eastern policy. World Responsibilities Accented Mr Eisenhower has modified the traditional Republican reluctance to accent international commitments, but his tendency, or that of his Adminis-

tration. has been to limit rather than broaden them. This suits the present temper of the American people. Mr Eisenhower has instinctively shown a tendency to trim his policies to this mood, rather than his mood to any given situation. Some observers even question to what extent a nation enjoying the kind of stability it has never enjoyed before will accept a more dynamic leadership such as Mr Stevenson is likely to offer, especially in foreign affairs. The Conventions showed, indeed, how limited is the interest in foreign affairs still in this country. The Suez Canal crisis was never mentioned, despite the seeds of war it contains. Only Senator Kefauver took the position that Britain and France should be given "very positive backing” in their insistence on effective international agreement to preserve freedom of navigation. Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the election stage-setting has been the extent to which the two parties, and Eisenhower and Stevenson, agree on the broad fundamentals of American world responsibilities. Their differences are more of style than principle. Mr Eisenhower follows, rather than guides, developments: Mr Stevenson promises fresh creative imagination. Perhaps one trouble is that in Mr Eisenhower the Republicans have a single string; they are short of young talent, with which the Democrats abound. Young Republicans tend to exude conformity and act like bankers. Yet Mr Nixon, the Vice-President, is an exception among Renublicans. He is claimed alike by the Rightwingers, who gave him his start in politics, and by the Eisenhower liberals, who are convinced he has become a disciple of the President. And some of his recent remarks, such as “Democrats are also loyal Americans.” indicate that Mr Nixon is in a hurry to rise above a chequered past and turn himself into an elder statesman. For Americans nowadays like their leaders not to behave like politicians. Common Cause Both parties agree on the fundamentals of American policy; both look to a visionary future; both proclaim they have answers to the great and perplexing problems of our time. The nation’s choice is complicated because Mr Eisenhower’s illnesses have lent great importance to the VicePresidency. Yet, as the President himself put it. “Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.” Mr Eisenhower’s optimism and faith in his own leadership are reflected not only in his readiness to serve again, but also in his claim that his party is the progressive party of the future, though in Congress it has time and again rejected his liberal philosophy. And despite his towering popularity he has seldom staked it to impose his own ideas upon his party. Mr Stevenson’s intuitive reaction to the problems of leadership—though his party is largely in tune with his vision of the future —is grave: he grasps the first handle of anxiety, not out of fear or uncertainty, but out of modesty and a habit of contemplation. That, fundamentally, is the difference between the two candidates' approach.

The President’s greatest achievement—to have unified the nation and healed the deep wounds of the era of suspicion, wrought by a Republican Party maddened by 20 years of opposition—has been achieved largely by giving Americans a feeling of wellbeing and peace; by playing down the external political dangers of a shifting world balance of power to the detriment of the West, from the Far East to North Africa; and by telling Americans, as he did in his acceptance speech, that they can afford and look forward to a new era of “good life, good will, and good hope.” Mr Stevenson, instead, warned of the dangers of the materialism of yearning for more cars and longer mortgage payments. His is a world of darkness and light: Mr Eisenhower likes to retouch or erase its shades and wrinkles.