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Full text of "Dialogues On Democracy
"
See other formats
aA
DIALOGUES
ON | DEMOCRACY:
a
a |
=
ns
A Western Electric Public Affairs Production
DIALOGUES ON DEMOCRACY
“Never was it more false to say, ‘what we don’t know won't hurt
us.’ What we don’t know may destroy us and our heritage of free-
di ea
as Sidney Hook
Just as America today is the sum of her history, our descendants
will inherit a nation and a world shaped in the main by what
we do or fail to do. Free choice is our heritage; informed choice
our responsibility. Democracy does not exist without free choice;
it cannot long survive without informed choice.
Informed choice follows from a dialogue about men and ideas
carried on through guaranteed freedom of speech, press and
assembly. This album is a fragment of the great American
dialogue. It is dedicated to the oldest, most vigorous political
democracy in the world, our own, and to you, the informed citizen.
Sidney Hook, Richard Neustadt and Richard Heffner are all
men of outstanding reputation. Each had a free hand in making
his contribution to this series. They were told that the purpose
of the series was in line with the traditions established by Western
Electric’s Democracy in Action course and Public Affairs Memo-
randum. They were asked to aim toward material that could be
beneficially repeated many times and could form the basis for
study groups of adults as well as high school and college students.
Dialogues on Democracy contains three sections: Conventions
and Elections, 1892-1960, Presidential Power and The Meaning
of Freedom.
CAMPAIGNS
AND ELECTIONS
1892-1960
Narrated by Richard D. Heffner
“He who ignores history, is doomed to relive it.”
Santayana
Many great issues and historic shifts of attitude are
highlighted in this record. Note, for example, the shift
of the Republican and Democratic party positions that
occurred between 1912 and 1932 on the role of Federal
government. During the early years of the Republic, Jef-
ferson and Hamilton had defined the issue—Hamilton
believed in strong central authority, Jefferson supported
the supremacy of states’ rights. From Lincoln to Theo-
dore Roosevelt, the Republicans supported strong central
government while the mainstream of Democratic thought
was based on Jefferson’s concept of states’ rights. This
contrast is especially clear in the Bryan “Cross of Gold”
speech and in Teddy Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” campaign
of 1912.
The parties gradually reversed their positions and it
was the beginning of this reversal which lay behind the
Taft-Roosevelt split in 1912. When Roosevelt bolted the
Republican party in 1912, he left it to those who opposed
strong central authority. The emergence of the Demo-
cratic position favoring stronger central government
occurred in the post-Wilson era and was enormously
influenced by two New: Yorkers, Alfred E. Smith and
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
You may wish to analyze contemporary developments
in the light of this recorded history. Does the Taft-Roose-
velt split of 1912 have a modern parallel? Bryan’s speech
contains elements of hostility and competition between
the great cities and the “broad and fertile prairies.” Does
this attitude exist today?
This record contains the actual voices of many of the
leaders of our democracy over a period of sixty-eight
years. It also contains some of the famous political sounds
and songs of the period.
Recordings by American leaders before 1932 are fairly
rare. The search for authentic recordings led to many
sources including the Library of Congress and the Na-
tional Archives in Washington. Some of the materials had
to be obtained from private collectors.
The first recording made of any major American polit-
ical leader appears to be that of Grover Cleveland in the
campaign of 1892. This recording is not entirely intelli-
gible. However, it is a short recording and is included
because of its great historical interest.
There was no recording of the original Cross of Gold
speech delivered by William Jennings Bryan at the Demo-
cratic Convention in 1896. However, because of its impact
on the convention—it secured Bryan the Democratic nom-
ination for President—Bryan subsequently recorded the
speech. This excerpt is from the later recording.
The speech made by Warren Harding in 1921 is not a
campaign or election speech. It was nevertheless included
because no other Harding talk was found and because
it was one of his better efforts.
RINE STIDEN TTA
PORE
Professor Richard E. Neustadt discusses
the Presidency with Richard D. Heffner
“there is bound to be a certain amount |
of
trouble running any country
if you are president the trouble happens
to you
but if you are a tyrant you can arrange
thing's so
that most of the trouble happens to
other people”’
Archie & Mehitabel
Don Marquis
Is a modern president likely to be a good administrator?
Are the policies of the President, once decided on, likely
to be carried out speedily and effectively? Is the scope of
Presidential power, as it exists today, spelled out in the
Constitution? Professor Neustadt’s answer to these ques-
tions is in the negative.
In this atomic age a president must have immediate
command over more information and sources of informa-
tion than ever before in our history. He must be prepared
to make decisions of the greatest magnitude and conse-
quence speedily. He can’t delegate as much as he should
and he better guess right as to what he does delegate.
The President is likely to meet an enormous amount of |
resistance in getting his wishes carried out and he must
be prepared to use persuasion, flattery, cajolery or any
other means available to him to get done what he wants
done. His most valuable preparation for the Presidency
is likely to be experience gained in politics.
Any modern president inherits an office enormously
enriched and expanded by his predecessors in office. Pro-
fessor Neustadt gives an illuminating summary of the
greatest contributions of past presidents to the office of
President.
Professor Neustadt’s discussion on this record was
entirely spontaneous. He knew only that he would be
interviewed on the subject of presidential power. Mr.
Heffner and his research assistant, Mrs. Joan McAllister,
prepared for the interview by reading much of what
Professor Neustadt had written on the Presidency.
THE MEANING
OF REEDOM
Professor Sidney Hook
“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted
with the government of himself. Can he, then, be
trusted with the government of others? Or have
we found angels in the forms of kings to govern
him? Let history answer this question.”
Jefferson
The great idea of man’s right to choose: to choose his
religion, his form of government, his way of life is the
central issue of our times and the subject of The Meaning
of Freedom. The idea of freedom is essentially a view
of man. It is based on his uniqueness, philosophically
described by the Greek thinkers, Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle and spiritually defined by the Judaeo-Christian
tradition. It is a belief in man’s potential to use his reason
and will to control his prejudices and passions.
The American Revolution did not mark the beginning
of mankind’s long search for liberty. It was a culmination
of that quest. History’s great religious leaders had won
and re-won the battle for man’s spiritual freedom in rela-
tionship to his God. The struggle for free artistic expres-
sion which surged during the Renaissance had been sub-
stantially won. Bruno, Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon and
Newton had already triumphed in the cause of free scien-
tific inquiry. And Oliver Cromwell, a century before, had
successfully contested the divine right of kings. The
meaning of the American Revolution was that it achieved
for all men those political rights and guarantees which
the Greek experiment in democracy had given to a few
men twenty centuries before.
The idea of freedom has always been at war with indi-
vidual tyrants and tyrannical systems. This century is no
exception. Fascism and Communism are indeed our era’s
expression of a lack of faith in man. If their philosophical
notions seem new, their methods of seeking and maintain-
ing power are as old as the Pharaohs of Egypt and as
harsh as the hordes of Attila.
What is new in our time is the technology for influ-
encing the mind—or for destroying man’s existence. To
cope with this threat to liberty we must, of course, prepare
to defend ourselves physically. But we must do more. We
must understand the idea of freedom and its responsibili-
ties. Tyranny often comes in the guise of freedom’s cham-
pion. Walt Whitman said, “There is no week nor day nor
hour, when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if
the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance—
tyranny may always enter—there is no charm, no bar
against it—the only bar against it is a large resolute breed
of men.”
Many people were consulted in the search for the person
equipped to prepare this study on freedom. Again and
again Dr. Hook’s name recurred as one of America’s
foremost political philosophers.
Dr. Hook was excited by the challenge of this project.
He thought it important to prepare a discussion that
would yield fresh insights on repeated playing.
It is not surprising that a subject that has occupied so
many great minds in the history of man would be complex
and demanding. What makes it more difficult is that it
often seems simple. If Dr. Hook’s talk seems simple, you
should probably listen to it again—and again. If it seems
difficult, remember—the understanding of freedom is an
imperative in the defense of freedom.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Western Electric Public Af-
fairs acknowledges with ap-
preciation the assistance of
the following persons, com-
panies and institutions in the
preparation of these records:
The Library of Congress; The
National Archives; Mrs. Yan-
na Brandt, for her work on
“Campaigns and Elections,
1892-1960”; Mrs. Joan McAI-
lister, for her work on “Presi-
dential Power’; Folkways
Records of 165 West 46th
Street, New York, and its Di-
rector, Mr. Moses Asch, for
permission to use songs from
the Folkways Albums “Amer-
ican History in Ballad and
Song,’ Volumes I and II;
“Election Songs of the United
States’; National Broadcast-
ing Company for access to
their tape library; Columbia
Broadcasting System Inc. for
permission to use a tape, “Con-
vention Fever.”
SED
Lord Acton, History of Freedom
Allen, F. L., Only Yesterday
Becker, Carl, The Declaration of Independence
Binkley, W. E., American Political Parties
Brogan, D. W., Politics in America
Burns, James M., Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox
Corwin, Edward S., The President: Office and Powers
Dewey, John, Freedom and Culture
Goldman, Eric, The Crucial Decade 1945-1955
Hand, Learned, Spirit of Liberty
Hayek, A., Constitution of Liberty
Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform, Bryan to F.D.R.
Hook, Sidney, Political Power and Personal Freedom
Hyman, Sidney, The American President
Josephson, Matthew, The Politicos
Locke, John, Second Treatise on Government
Mill, J. S., Representative Government
Morrison and Commager, Growth of the American Republic
Neustadt, Richard, Presidential Power
Santayana, George, Domination and Powers
Schlesinger, A. The Coming of the New Deal
Smith, T. V., The Democratic Way of Life
Whitman, Walt. Democratic Vistas
White, Theodore H., The Making of the President 1960
The Life and Selected Writings of Jefferson
Edited by Koch and Peden
Abraham Lincoln, Selected Speeches, Messages and Letters
Edited by T. H. Williams
|
THE TEXT OF
new jobs a week for the next 10 years
we're going to have to grow more. Gov-
ernor Rockefeller says five per cent,
Democratic platform and others say
five per cent—many say fowr-and-a-
half per cent. In the last eight years the
average growth has been about two-
and-one-half per cent. That’s why we
don’t have full employment today.”
NARRATOR:
Let us end our trip through sixty-eight
years of election campaigns with these
words from John F. Kennedy’s inaugural
address of 1961:
KENNEDY:
“For I have sworn before you and
Almighty God the same solemn oath our
forbears prescribed nearly a century
and three-quarters ago. The world is
very different now for man holds in his
mortal hands the power to abolish all
forms of human poverty and all forms
of human life. And yet, the same revo-
lutionary beliefs for which our for-
bears fought are still at issue around
the globe. The belief that the rights of
man come, not from the generosity of
the State, but from the hand of God.
We dare not forget today that we are
the heirs of that first Revolution. Let
the word go forth from this time and
place, to friend and foe alike, that the
torch has been passed to a new genera-
tion of Americans born in this century,
tempered by war, disciplined by a hard
and bitter peace, proud of our ancient
heritage and unwilling to witness or
permit the slow undoing of those hu-
man rights to which this nation has
always been committed and to which we
are committed today, at home and
around the world. Let every nation
know, whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, bear any
burden, meet any hardship, support any
friend, oppose any foe, to assure the
survival and the success of liberty. This
much we pledge, and more... . In the
long history of the world, only a few
generations have been granted the role
of defending freedom in its hour of
maximum danger. I do not shrink from
this responsibility, I welcome it. I do not
believe that any of us would exchange
places with any other people or any
other generation. The energy, the faith,
the devotion which we bring to this
endeavor will light our country and all
who serve it, and the glow from that
fire can truly light the world. And so
my fellow Americans, ask not what
your country can do for you, ask what
you can do for your country.”
*
MUSIC:
“Hail to the Chief.”
A Western Electric Public Affairs Production
Presidential
Power
This is a discussion of Presidential
power, authority and influence. I’m Rich-
ard Heffner. With me is Professor
Richard Neustadt of Columbia Univer-
sity, an authority on the Presidency and
an advisor to Presidents.
MR. HEFFNER:
Professor Neustadt, I think it might
be interesting to begin this discussion of
what essentially is Presidential power by
asking you whether President Johnson
when he took his oath of office immedi-
ately acquired the power that President
Kennedy had wielded or whether he had
to establish his own effective power.
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
He acquired, President Johnson did,
immediately upon taking the oath all of
the constitutional authority of the Presi-
dency. He became Commander-in-Chief
of the Armed Forces with all that could
mean in the way of giving orders that
launched the forces into motion. He be-
came conductor of foreign relations in a
constitutional sense, the right to sign and
veto bills in a legislative sense, the obliga-
tion to make recommendations to Con-
gress. He acquired authority, of a certain
sort, as specified in the Constitution of
the Statutes over the executive depart-
ments. All these things as matters of
authority he acquired by taking his oath
of office. Now he did not acquire at once
all the actual power in the sense of con-
crete influence over other people that Mr.
Kennedy had wielded. He had to establish
that. Mr. Kennedy had, after all, been in
office for a number of years when he died.
He was expected to remain in office for
another year and run for election and he
was expected to win, and all sorts of peo-
ple in Washington and throughout the
world and governments outside of the
American Government had built up rela-
tions with Mr. Kennedy and had expecta-
tions of Mr. Kennedy, of what he would
do and what they wanted from him and
what he might do to them. All these ex-
pectations disappeared when Mr. Ken-
nedy disappeared. Mr. Johnson inherited
the authority right away but there’s
more to power than merely authority.
There is also the notion in the minds of
people with whom the President deals as
to the uses he will make of his authority,
and these notions have to be developed by
experience by weighing and judging the
new man and how he operates so that Mr.
Johnson had at the very outset to create a
DIALOGUES ON DEMOCRACY
Text of Records
picture of himself, an expectation of who
he was and how he would use his author-
ity in the minds of Congressmen, and
executive officials and allied governments,
to say nothing of Mr. Khrushchev. He
had to establish a reputation with all the
people with whom he was going to deal
and this is an essential part of power.
MR. HEFFNER:
Have our Presidents on assuming of-
fice generally understood the distinction
you have made between authority and
influence?
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
I think that Presidents come very
quickly, particularly if they’re politicians
and have had previous political experi-
ence, to understand that authority which
comes from statutes or the Constitution
is not the same thing as actual influence,
or it rarely is the same thing; that power
in the sense of formal right to do some-
thing is not the same thing as getting it
done, provided that the doing requires
other people. Mr. Truman once said of
Mr. Eisenhower, when Mr. Truman was
sitting in office contemplating the likeli-
hood that Mr. Eisenhower would come
into office, Mr. Truman tapped the top of
his desk and said of Eisenhower, “He’ll
sit here all day and he’ll say ‘do this, do
that’ and nothing will happen. Poor Ike,”
Mr. Truman said, “it won’t be a bit like
the army. He’ll find it very frustrating.”
And this is the difference between author-
ity and influence. Oh, you can have the
right to give orders but with rather rare
exceptions, you can’t automatically count
on those orders being carried out. To get
them carried out, you have to make the
people who have the carrying out to do,
do what you want them to do and that’s a
different matter from telling them what
to do.
MR. HEFFNER:
Was President Truman’s characteriza-
tion of the situation in which President
Eisenhower would find himself accurate?
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
Oh, I think so—from all one can find
from current reports of the time and
then memoirs. Mr. Eisenhower, like all
incoming Presidents, but more than most,
was astonished I think and very much
saddened by the fact that there was so
much automatic resistance, and, finally,
I believe, got rather tranquil about it.
They took him a long time; it took Mr.
Truman a long time, too. Nobody likes
the experience of sitting in that oval office
and feeling—I am the President—order-
ing something to be done and finding
three months later that it hasn’t been
done. Yet, that’s the fate of Presidents.
MR. HEFFNER:
Why and how?
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
It depends very much what spheres or
areas of activity one is talking about.
There’s a narrow range of orders which
are virtually self-executing in the sense
that to give the order is almost the same
thing as to have it carried out. But this
range consists mostly of orders in the
military sphere. So long as we have the
kind of military tradition we do of obedi-
ence to civil authority, then an order from
the President that’s specific enough and
clear enough, will be carried out. Now,
this is a very important sphere when you
have nuclear weapons in your arsenal, so
that the President, at one extreme, has
enormous actual power. Now his order
could devastate the Northern Hemisphere.
And in this case, his authority and his
influence are almost the same thing. But
you can’t carry out most of the work of
governing a country most of the time by
using troops; there really are very few
things you can get done with the use of
troops. You can fight wars but you can’t
decide the terms of peace. You can pre-
vent riots or stop them but you can’t get
children educated in schools by the use
of troops. You can get them into school
but you can’t get them taught. There are
rather few things you can do with this
great power to use force. And in all other
spheres, whether it’s a matter of legisla-
tion or action by executive officials or
action by private groups, corporations
and trade unions—here you’re asking peo-
ple to do something which, if they don’t
want to do it, they have some capacity
not to do it. They have some independent
status or authority in their own right.
Congress, of course, is a separate branch.
Executive officials swear their own oaths
to defend the Constitution and administer
laws passed not by the President but by
Congress. Private corporations and trade
unions have the protections of the Bill of
Rights and the President’s order to them
is not nearly the same thing as an order
to troops. Therefore, beyond giving orders
you must endeavor to exercise persuasion.
You must endeavor to convince these peo-
ple that what you want them to do is what
they ought to do for their own sakes. And
you have to do that before you can count
on their doing it.
MR. HEFFNER:
Are you suggesting then that the man
who is best prepared to be President of
the United States is not one who has
given orders necessarily but one who has
©1964 Western Electric Company, Inc.
been in the business of persuasion—the
politician, for instance.
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
I think that’s very much the case. We’re
dealing with something that is essentially
a matter of bargaining. I, the President,
want you to do something whether you
want to do it or not. I have to convince
you that you ought to do it. Now, I may
be able to convince you because you are
loyal to me. I may be able to convince you
because of the sheer force and charm of
my personality, or the awe in which you
hold the Presidential office in which I sit;
I might be able to convince you by sheer
reasoning together. But suppose you think
that your duty requires you not to do
what I think you ought to do. Reasoning
won’t make the difference between us.
Then how am I to get you to do it? The
only way that I can get you to do it is
by going beyond cajolery and flattery to
a little coercion and how am I to coerce
you if you are a Congressman or the head
of a cabinet department or the head of
a trade union or the head of a business
corporation or the head of a foreign gov-
ernment? Well, the only way I can coerce
you is by making it clear to you that
there’s something I can do to you that you
want or fear as inducements for your
doing what I want. If a President is try-
ing to exert influence on Congressmen, he
will try to convince them, he will try to
flatter them, but what he may have to do
is make clear to them that if they don’t
give him the bill he wants, he will veto
the bill they want, or he won’t put-in his
budget the project they want for their
constituents, or he won’t campaign for
them next time round in their districts, or
something else of the sort, which is, in
effect, a matter of bargaining. And rela-
tions between a President and members
of Congress or departments, to say noth-
ing of people out in the private sector,
these relations are more like the bargain-
ing relations between a company and a
trade union than they are a reasoned
argument among philosopher kings. The
essence of persuasion is the matter of
convincing the other party by a combina-
tion of flattery and coercion. This is a
very political task. In this sense, nothing
serves better than a training in politics.
MR. HEFFNER:
Professor Neustadt, going back to the
transition period of 1960-1961, after the
election of John F. Kennedy, I know that
you played a very important role in that
transition period as an advisor to the
President-elect. Did he as a man who had
come up through the ranks of political
life in this country, did he understand
full well the nature of the task of persua-
sion that was to face him or did he come
assuming that there were more powers
inherent and more influence, perhaps, in-
herentin the Presidency than there were?
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
To a degree he, like most Presidents,
although he had come up through politics,
was unprepared for the limitations on a
President’s actual influence. If you sit
in the Senate looking at the Presidency
with 99 other Senators, particularly if
you’re not a senior committee chairman
but a relatively middle or junior level
member, the President looks mighty in-
deed. He has more authority in his hands
than any Senator or any other single
member of the Government. From outside
it looks as though converting that author-
ity into actual influence must be a pretty
possible and easy thing. Mr. Kennedy
found, I believe, that the authority
assured him less influence when he sat
in the White House than, perhaps, he’d
thought it from the outside. But I must
say that the first thing on his mind after
his election as best I can recall it, was the
narrowness of the election. He may have
thought that the Presidency had a great
deal of authority which he could turn into
a great deal of influence. But when he was
first elected he did not feel that he had a
solid enough election to assure him use of
the authority. The first thing he felt he
had to do was convert that narrow victory
by roughly 100,000 votes in the whole
country, convert that into a sense on the
part of the country as a whole and Con-
gress that he really was President in his
own right, that he was acting like the na-
tion’s President. He had to change his im-
age from the man who hardly won to the
man who was everybody’s President. He
felt he had to do this before he took office.
He felt that if he didn’t widen and
strengthen his image he would not be
secure in office in using the authority that
was there. So he turned somewhat grimly,
very carefully and effectively, to take
step after step after step, to make the
general public feel and members of the
Government feel that here was a man
who was acting as a President ought to
act. One of the first things he did was
call upon his defeated opponent, a gen-
erous gesture. Another thing he did was
go and spend a good deal of time with
Presicent Eisenhower, the man he was
succeeding. Then, he went into a well-
advertised and acutally well-run talent
search for senior appointees, members of
his cebinet. He appointed several men,
among them his Secretary of State, Dean
Rusk, and his Secretary of Defense, Rob-
ert McNamara, men he did not know and
in McNamara’s case, a man not of his own
party. And as he appointed them, in talk-
ing with the press, he made it perfectly
plain that he was seeking the best men
he could find. All of this helped to raise
his own stature in the eyes of members
of the public and the press and members
of Congress. By these and other means he
manazed to take office as incontestably
the President, which was scarcely his
status immediately after the election.
MR. HEFFNER:
Weill, I wonder, Professor Neustadt,
whetker any President, particularly a
President who has been a student of
American history, can look to the men
we have considered great and powerful
Presidents in the past as his guides as
he formulates the techniques of being or
becoming an effective President?
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
Only to a limited extent, I think, can a
contemporary President look back and the
best way I can explain why I think that
the past has only limited relevance to the
present is by reference to Franklin Roose-
velt’s early years. President Roosevelt
took office in the midst of the Great De-
pression, at a time when the banks were
failing and he called Congress into ses-
sion and there followed a hundred days in
which virtually everything he proposed
to Congress was enacted, sometimes very
speedily indeed. Now that early period
has been remembered ever since and in-
coming Presidents, numbers of them,
those at least who wanted to be active
Presidents, effective Presidents, have
tended to look back to Franklin Roose-
velt’s early years for a guide. I’m sure
that Mr. Kennedy’s discussions during”
the campaign of what the strong Presi-
dent should be and do were influenced in
part by references back to Roosevelt. But
consider the differences between the situa-
tion of a Roosevelt of 1933 or ’34 and the
situation of an Eisenhower in the 50’s or
a Kennedy or a Johnson in the 60’s, or for
that matter, a Truman in the later 1940’s.
In Roosevelt’s time very large numbers
of people everywhere were commonly
affected in their own private lives by the
Depression. Their private lives were
touched, and they were touched in some-
what the same way. Of course, everyone
wasn’t unemployed but the unemployed
were everywhere, and there was a real
sense of crisis widely perceived as such
and widely perceived as having a bearing
on each individual. Against that back-
ground Roosevelt comes in and his voice
is heard as a fresh voice, an appealing
voice, and a strong voice. And this brings
an enormous response from the public at
large. Moreover, the situation when he
first came in was literally critical in
terms of the state of the economy, in
terms of public confidence in our financial
system, and faced with a desperate prob-
lem, a real question whether our financial
system would survive. Congress was
anxious for leadership, anxious to be told
what to do. In a deep emergency, the re-
action of Congress is always to look to
the President; it has been so since Lin-
coln’s time. This was certainly a situation
which got people looking to the President.
So you had both Congress and the public
at large deeply aware of crisis with a
common sense of crisis seen as the same
crisis and looking to the White House to
do something. That was a marvelous back-
ground from which to exercise what we’ve
called influence here, to get people to do
what you want. In those days, for the
President to say what he wanted was to a
considerable degree to have people do it.
People were anxious to act. They were
anxious to be told what to do. And Roose-
velt told them. We had a situation some-
thing like that again in the early years of
World War II after Pearl Harbor and
Roosevelt again was the beneficiary. But
in most years since the Second World War
our circumstances have been very differ-
ent. Now we have a whole lot of domestic
situations which in earlier years would
have been considered crises. Integration
problems, for example, persistent under-
employment, the need for upgrading of
skills, of very difficult situations in educa-
tion, real problems in urban redevelop-
ment, and yet none of these affects a large
part of the population in the same way,
at the same time, over the whole country.
So none is felt as the height of the Great
Depression was felt, so deeply and in such
widespread fashion as to alert masses of
citizens from one part of the country to
another to be especially receptive or re-
sponsive to a President. Nor do any of
these current domestic situations bring
anything like unanimity in Congress
about needs and solutions. There is no
overwhelming demand for action emanat-
ing from all parts of the country and felt
by Congressmen at the same time. More-
over, we have simultaneously a great
many difficulties abroad, any one of which
would have been regarded before World
War II as a full-blown national crisis.
And now these things come all the time,
sometimes they’re more serious than
others but not a year has passed in recent
years when there have not been four or
five really difficult situations in the world
in which the prestige of the Americans
was involved, the programs of the Amer-
icans or the military power of the
Americans involved and these things now
come in such numbers that inevitably
citizen attention is diffused. What may
be perceived inside our Government as a
full-blown crisis is rarely perceived as
anything of the sort outside the Govern-
ment in the public at large unless there is
suddenly a threat of military action, of
hostilities. And that perception lasts only
so long as the threat is there. As a result,
no President is free to do what Roosevelt
did in his early years and concentrate on
domestic affairs while setting foreign
affairs aside. Nor can any President hope
to gain from either foreign affairs or
domestic situations widespread attention
for any one purpose of his, any one pro-
gram, any one measure he supports; there
are too many measures, there are too
many programs, they’re all cut in oppo-
site directions. Finally, no President in
Mr. Johnson’s situation or Mr. Kennedy’s
or Eisenhower’s or Truman’s can focus
his attention on one issue or one program
and dramatize it by the attention he gives
it, and the measures he proposes, the
actions he takes to arouse public attention.
The contemporary situation is far harder
for a President, far harder in terms of
getting practical power, real power out
of his constitutional authority than it
used to be in the sort of productive crisis
situation that Roosevelt knew in the early
19380’s.
MR. HEFFNER:
And yet, strangely enough, it would
seem that the very complexity and the suc-
cession of crises of which you speak, these
themselves demand a greater capacity on
the part of the President to exercise ef-
fective influence or power.
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
That is true. One thing that has hap-
pened to the office of President since
Roosevelt’s time partly influenced by
Roosevelt’s example is that from every
part of the Government and every part of
the society and many parts of the world
there have come heightened demands and
expectations of Presidential initiative and
Presidential judgment. All sorts of people
inside this country and outside now look
to the President to do things or stop
things and depend upon him and expect
from him judgment and action. So, more is
demanded of the person in this office than
ever before. But his capacity to produce
or at least the assurance that he can pro-
duce is much more limited than it was in’
periods we used to call crisis periods and
every President nowadays, beginning with
Truman, has lived with this terrible strain
between his responsibilities as measured
by the expectations centering on him and
his actual power to get things done.
MR. HEFFNER:
Certainly that power depends in large
part upon the information that he has and
it seems to me that it must be increasingly
difficult for the President to keep tabs on
all the events and developments and the
ideas upon which he must keep tabs if he
is to maintain effective power.
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
It’s terribly difficult now. It’s difficult
partly because communications and the
speeding up of communications has short-
ened the time for information gathering
and reflection. It’s partly because so much
information is instantaneously available
on many issues at once that one tends to
get lost in the sheer pile and welter of in-
formation. It’s partly because most issues
of foreign domestic policy have very com-
plicated aspects which require a great deal
of expert consideration. This brings all
sorts of specialists into play and they’re
constantly fighting with each other. All
their specialties are relevant but it’s diffi-
cult to mobilize specialists for quick fixes
in short time and partly, particularly in
foreign and military policy, the difficulties
arise because of secrecy itself. Going back
to Roosevelt again, most of what was
going on in his Administration, not at his
own level but below it, things he might
have to act on later, fights he might have
to get into later, troubles he might have to
take a hand in later, were telegraphed to
him in advance. He got warning in ad-
vance through the press. Now there are all
sorts of things which are confined to per-
sons with a need to know. Now the Presi-
dent, of course, is such a person but he is
not automatically assured the kind of ad-
vance warning that a press roaming
freely through his bureaucracy once gave
to Roosevelt. This means that in situations
where a President’s constitutional re-
sponsibility is most directly involved, war
and peace situations, diplomatic situa-
tions, where a President’s personal judg-
ment has to be exercised and where the
consequences of mis-judgment can be very
great, this means that a President will feel
a need to grasp for information and con-
trol over the flow of information and the
longer he stays in office usually, the deeper
he’ll feel this need, the more inclined he’ll
be to clutch at control over the flow of
issues rising to him and the information
relevant to judgment over them,
MR. HEFFNER:
Professor Neustadt, you have been
speaking of the increasing need felt by
Presidents to grasp control over informa-
tion and sources of information in making
decisions where their key constitutional
responsibilities are involved. But the same
need for immediate control felt where the
question is one of carrying out critical
decisions once they have been made?
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
Once a President’s made a judgment
particularly in diplomatic and military
areas, his need is very great to try to ex-
ercise tight control over execution. One
found with Mr. Kennedy that from his
misadventure with the Bay of Pigs in
1961, the Cuban exile invasions, Mr. Ken-
nedy saw that a decision on his part re-
sulted in 1,200 Cuban exiles going to jail,
in Castro’s jails. Now 1,200 men in jail as
the result of a decision is not a very great
thing as Presidential decisions go. But I
think it’s fair to say that this brought
home to Mr. Kennedy vividly the conse-
quences of not having tight control over
the execution of one’s own decisions and
also the consequences of not having tight
control in advance of decision over the in-
formation relevant to judgment. One can-
not understand Mr. Kennedy’s handling of
the Cuban missile crisis a year-and-a-half
later, without understanding how many
lessons he drew from the Bay of Pigs, both
on the score of getting control of infor-
mation in advance and on the score of
tightly controlling the execution of one’s
judgments once made. In October 1962,
once the Government had indisputable
evidence that the Soviets were installing
offensive missiles on Cuban territory, then
the President himself took charge of the
question of what kind of response the Gov-
ernment should make. He took charge by
assembling around him the chief respon-
sible officers of the Government and add-
ing to them certain other officers in whom
he personally had confidence and holding
them together as a group while they
thrashed out the information, the options,
the possible consequences of various
courses of action and he did not take his
decision until this group of advisors had
been forced to look very deeply into the
issues posed by their advice, the possible
consequences of advice, then he made his
decision on the initial form of response
that his Government should take, the
quarantine. Having made that decision he
proceeded during the week that the quar-
antine was in effect, or the four days that
it was in effect, to maintain the tightest
sort of control over its actual conduct. The
ships at sea were in direct communication
with Washington, and not only with Wash-
ington but with the White House, every
move of every ship commander as mer-
chantmen approached was audited, at the
White House. This is the tightest sort of
control one can imagine. This is a form of
control that is completely at variance with
our whole military tradition, Ever since
the Civil War it has been our tradition to
give the tactical commander in the field a
maximum of autonomy. What Mr. Ken-
nedy did in October ’62 was remove that
autonomy and keep the control at the cen-
ter. I think this is very symptomatic of
what will happen from here on out.
MR. HEFFNER:
And you think this is more a function of
the times than of the man and of his per-
sonality, the man who sits in the White
House.
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
I think so. One cannot, of course, be
sure. I think that the impulse to clutch,
the need to clutch, the perception of the
risks of not clutching will affect any intel-
ligent man who sits there. I think you
would find if you went into the operation
of the Lebanon landings in 1958 that Mr.
Eisenhower, even though this was a less
immediate situation in the sense of involv-
ing the Soviets, Mr. Eisenhower kept
pretty close control over that one, not as
close as Mr. Kennedy in ’62 but closer
than would have been usual some years
before. I think the situation, not the man,
is the controlling element here; but, of
course, one can’t be sure until one sees the
evidence as Presidents come along from
year to year.
MR. HEFFNER:
You talk about Presidential need to
clutch, and I wonder whether this wasn’t
just as true, let’s say of Lincoln, again a
crisis President, a wartime President, the
need to know what was going on because
major policy decisions could be made only
in terms not of final staff document but of
a sense for all the bits and pieces?
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
Lincoln is a very modern President in
these terms. In the pre-nuclear world,
Lincoln can be called the first 20th Cen-
tury President. In that sense the Civil
War did not belong in the 19th Century,
as most contemporary observers found it
hard to comprehend. It just was out of its
time. The Government was much bigger
than it had ever been, warfare on this
scale was absolutely unknown, the prob-
lems of communication and control were
more nearly like those that Roosevelt ex-
perienced in the Second World War than
like anything known to any other war in
the 19th Century. So Lincoln in a way is
a 20th Century President. And certainly
in his time he faced the same problems of
needing to get hold of information for his
own judgments and then needing to try to
keep control over the execution of his
judgments that a Kennedy faced. There
is, however, one great difference. Mr.
Lincoln was dealing most of all with criti-
cal decisions in the military sphere and in
the sphere of high policy relating to the
conduct of the war and of diplomacy. At
the pace of military operations in those
days and given the scale of Union re-
sources Mr. Lincoln had opportunities to
make mistakes and then do over again.
This is the possibility which tends to dis-
appear when one deals with military
force on such a scale in contemporary cir-
cumstances. This is a very new thing. It
only began to affect Mr. Eisenhower’s
Presidency toward the end and affected
Mr. Kennedy’s and will, I have no doubt,
affect Mr. Johnson’s. Here we have a
situation in which there is risk of hostili-
ties with the other possessor of major
nuclear forces. There is risk not only of
an irreversable development but one which
has irreparable consequences. This has be-
gun to be true ever since the Soviet de-
cision makers on their side have had
delivery systems capable of inflicting ma-
jor damage on us. But in this sense the
clutch for information and control can
be a more desperate clutch in these times
than even for Lincoln because the conse-
quences of failing to exert control, failing
to get appropriate information, can be
immeasurably more severe.
MR. HEFFNER:
Yet I know, Professor Neustadt, that
many times in private industry and even,
indeed, in Government at other levels
one’s picture of the unhappy, unfortunate
administrator is that of the man who
tries to clutch to him all bits and pieces
of knowledge, the man who tries to main-
tain in his own office authority over what-
ever goes on within his organization.
What you’re saying now is that, in our
own time, the President must do this.
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. And it will
have many unfortunate consequences.
MR. HEFFNER:
Of what kind?
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
Of the kind classically attributed to the
administrator in private industry who
doesn’t delegate enough, who tries to do
too much himself. But the administrator
in private industry, to the degree I under-
stand his situation, has some greater ease-
ment than a President does. The Presi-
dent cannot expect that the members of
the executive establishment or the mem-
bers of Congress, to say nothing of private
organization outside of Government on
whom he may depend to do something or
not do something, he cannot expect that
any of these is going to exercise delegated
power the way he would like to see it done
because none of these people are at his
position, none of them were elected by
his electorate, none of them stay in office
precisely as he does, none of them bear
his personal responsibility. And while
every President must delegate vastly, any
modern President is likely to try to clutch
to himself the decisions and the control
of operations in areas where his key con-
stitutional responsibilities are involved,
diplomacy and defense.
MR. HEFFNER:
And if I understand correctly from
what you’ve said before, you feel that the
bits and pieces of information relating to
these decisions must be at the President’s
disposal too, which widens or broadens the
need for involvement on his part in almost
everything.
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
I’m afraid that this is so, at least I see
it so. It is not the image of the clean-desk
administrator. Yet there are many things
in political government, which one cannot
entrust to subordinates with any assur-
ance that they will be done the way one
would do them. It’s interesting that early
in Mr. Johnson’s term when he saw as his
first priority an assertion of effective rela-
tions with Congress which would get
through Congress the two major leftover
measures of the Kennedy Administration,
the ones which were symbolic of success or
failure for the President in 1964, that Mr.
Johnson started office attempting to do
from the White House what he had done
as Majority Leader, attempting to control
the day to day tactics of legislative be-
havior from the White House day to day
and got himself deeply involved, an in-
volvement, I dare say, deeper than it
would have been reasonable to expect Mr.
Johnson to maintain for very long as the
need arose to involve himself deeply in
foreign operations. But one can under-
stand why Mr. Johnson would cut through
the use of subordinates and reliance on his
Senatorial and Congressional leadership
and try to do himself what he felt was of
absolute priority importance to his estab-
lishment of his own effective reputation
as President. He had to take these things
on himself directly just as Mr. Kennedy
had to take on himself directly a great
deal of the work of a Secretary of State,
a Secretary of Defense. The critical prob-
lem here is not that a President keep a
clean desk or not that he delegate to
others and simply sit in ultimate judg-
ment in an ivory tower. The White House
is not an ivory tower. The critical prob-
lem here is that he guess right about the
things to delegate, that he not take onto
himself things, which it turns out, he
didn’t have to, but that he do take onto
himself the things which turn out to be
critical, and, of course, the guessing game
on what you can afford to be inattentive
about, the guessing game on what you
can leave aside, is a very dangerous and
chancey game; it’s the hardest part of a
President’s problem.
MR. HEFFNER:
I gather you feel very strongly that the
President at mid-century and beyond, is
a very, very different man from his con-
stitutional and traditional ancestors in
office.
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
Let me be very careful in answering
this question. The contemporary Presi-
dent is in a very different operating situ-
ation than were most of his predecessors,
pre-Roosevelt, with the partial exception
of Wilson and of Lincoln. The situation
is enormously different, the operating
situation, but the contemporary President
who has to face this curious, complex set
of operating problems I’ve talked about,
this President stands on a foundation of
authority and that base was built by the
accretion of precedent under our earlier
Presidents. And every President now
owes something to George Washington’s
assertion of the dignity of the office. What
Washington did as the first President
with no precedents, what Washington did
most of all, was to occupy the office as
our first genuine, national hero. And ever
after even though the office fell into dis-
suitude from time to time, it was the place
which General Washington had occupied.
That helps to set its status as a primary
political institution. Every President
owes a great deal to Andrew Jackson’s
assertion of the independent electoral
position of the office. What Andrew Jack-
son did was to get himself nominated by
a party convention, free of Congress, and
then couple his nomination with election
of electors by popular vote in the states,
electors pledged in advance to vote for
him. In his time the Electoral College was
transformed from a council of notables,
a council of elders, to a body representa-
tive of popular votes. And at the same
time the nominating process which
brought a man within sight of those votes
was transformed from a Congressional
caucus to a convention of local political
organizations spread throughout the
country so that Andrew Jackson added to
the dignity of the office for which Wash-
ington set a precedent. His term and what
happened in his term of office, provided
the Presidency with independent national
election and status as a national elective
office with a stronger claim to represent
the country as a whole than Congress. It’s
an enormous addition to Presidential au-
thority and therefore power. What Lin-
coln did was to invent the war power to
claim that the combination of his oath of
office to preserve and defend the Constitu-
tion with the constitutional authority to
act as Commander-in-Chief, that these
things in combination, gave him a semi-
dictatorial authority drawn from the
Constitution in time of war. And this has
been enormously useful to the develop-
ment of the office under Wilson and under
Franklin Roosevelt. What Teddy Roose-
velt did was establish the office as the most
interesting source of news and entertain-
ment in the country. The first Roosevelt’s
Administration coincided, more or less,
with the maturation of a national net-
work of news. And through this early
medium of mass communication there
came the voice, postures, ideas, antics, of
a very interesting man in the White
House. The White House was established
ever after as one of the most interesting
sources of news, not only in the Govern-
ment but in the country as a whole. News
and entertainment in those days, there
was nothing much to compete with except
circuses. Wilson and the second Roosevelt
as war leaders certainly added a great
deal in which modern Presidents, later
Presidents built, and Roosevelt, as the
leader of his country in the Great Depres-
sion, initiated a transformation of the
Government of its involvement in national
life, its responsibilities in economic and
social welfare areas, that has made the
President a personification of economy in
society and concern, therefore, to a degree
unknown previously, so that any contem-
porary President starts out with the
accretion of common law added to bare
constitutional provisions. Any President
starts out with authority and a status in
the courtry that rests quite as much in
what his predecessors have done as on
what the Constitution with its careful
ambiguities provided.
MR. HEFFNER:
How would you carry on the listing of
the contributions made by more recent
Presidents?
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
Roosevelt’s first successor, Harry Tru-
man, did at least two things that added
something to the Presidency of his suc-
cessors. He presided very actively over the
full entry of the U.S. in peace time into
world responsibilities and world affairs
and was the first man who had to exercise
in modern times the authority of this
Government which, constitutionally, is
supposed to have been shared between
President and Congress, the authority to
make war. Mr. Truman took us into our
third most costly war in terms of lives
. without a declaration of war, without
sanction of Congress. In doing so he
merely demonstrated what we now have
had to zccept, that technology has modi-
fied the Constitution in this respect, that
decisions on the use of force abroad have
got to be taken by the President and can-
not be shared by Congress because of the
nature of weapons, because of secrecy,
complexity, and time. Mr. Truman set
that precedent.
MR. HEFFNER:
I know that you referred to the Korean
War in 1950 but do you feel that this is a
precedent that quite literally has been
set and accepted by the American people?
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
Well, it quite literally has been set.
It was followed in Lebanon; it was fol-
lowed, at least with the authorization of
alien forces, a rather special case in 1961
in the Bay of Pigs, and I have no doubt
there will be other instances. It has been
accepted, I think there has been no doubt
of this, in Congress. Whether it’s as yet
fully realized throughout the country, I
don’t know. But at the time of the missile
confrontation with the Soviets over Cuba
in October 1962, I noticed no editorial
comment or comment on the streets or
anything of that sort suggesting that,
suggesting any lack of recognition for
the fact that decisions of these sorts are
now in the hands of the President. Tru-
man’s precedent with Korea helped accus-
tom us to what is, I’m afraid, an unfor-
tunate and inescapable necessity. Fur-
thermore, Mr. Truman by presiding over,
launching us into our post-war foreign
policy and sticking to his guns, sticking
very firmly to decisions he had once taken
in terms of European recovery, the an-
nunciation of the Truman Doctrine and
its implementation, a whole series of
decisions that were precedent-making in
foreign affairs. Mr. Truman built a base
of foreign policy which has remained in
most respects central to the character of
our policy in all the periods since. These
were Truman’s additions.
MR. HEFFNER:
It’s strange that a man whose experi-
ences before he entered the Presidency
were limited generally to really, in a
sense, to local and state politics should
have been a man who set the kinds of
precedents that you describe now.
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
It is strange superficially. Not only had
Mr. Truman’s experience been confined
to local politics and of the Senate, but he
alone among our recent Presidents had
never had any ambition for the Presi-
dency, had never fixed his eye on it, never
expected or wanted to be there. The ex-
planation, I think, is a matter of char-
acter, character and ideas the man carried
in his own head about the office. He was
a great reader of American history, par-
ticularly of the lives of great men in
American history. He was a young wor-
shiper of Woodrow Wilson. He deeply re-
spected Franklin Roosevelt, even though
he and Roosevelt were, at times, political
enemies. Roosevelt tried to purge him
from the Senate in the primaries in 1940.
Still, he had an enormous respect, Mr.
Truman did, for the office of President, a
great sense that it was the key central
point of judgment and initiative in our
system, and a great respect for Presidents
who had used it in that fashion, and when
he took the Office, his ideas about what
was required of an incumbent there gave
him something he tried very hard to live
up to.
MR. HEFFNER:
It is strange though that he should have
made such an impact upon foreign policy,
too.
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
Well, he didn’t do this for no reason
at all. He once said to me that Joe Stalin
made our foreign policy, his foreign pol-
icy, that is, Truman’s, after the war, that
without Stalin we never would have got
the Marshall Plan through Congress, or
undertaken what has since come to be
known as a containment policy. I think
this is right. What Truman did was re-
spond to very sharp challenges which
arose for the U.S. and the world. He re-
sponded sharply and decisively to blunt
pressure placed upon us in our world situ-
ation, and the blunter the pressure, not
only the more decisive Mr. Tryman’s re-
sponse, but the more assured his support
from Congress. Now it’s one of the diffi-
culties of Mr. Eisenhower in his later
years and Mr. Kennedy and, no doubt,
Mr. Johnson in his time that the chal-
lenges are less sharp, less clear, they’re
more ambiguous, more subtle than they
were in the later 1940’s.
MR. HEFFNER:
How did this affect the course of the
Eisenhower Administration?
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
The answer is that Mr. Eisenhower in
his second term, the end of his first term
and his second term, found himself unable
to steer a sharp, simple course of action
with respect to any area of the world. If
you recall, he had come into office pledged
to liquidate the Korean War; well, the
Korean War was ended. His party was
pledged to roll back the Iron Curtain,
pledged to an active policy of freeing
Eastern Europe from Communist con-
trol; yet when there was a revolt in East
Germany in ’53, when later there was the
Hungarian revolt of ’56, Mr. EHisen-
hower’s Administration found itself in no
position to take a sharp, concrete, simple
action of the sort that Mr. Truman had
undertaken with respect to Greece in
1947. There were too many risks of rela-
tionships in other parts of the world, too
much uncertainty about Soviet response,
and about our invulnerability to the re-
sponse. Similarly, the alliance system in
Europe which was built in Truman’s time
with Mr. Eisenhower’s participation as
Commander of the Allied Forces, the alli-
ance system came under great strains in
Mr. Eisenhower’s time as Europe recov-
ered, as it developed interests separate
from American interest, and these strains
of course have grown progressively
greater in the 1960’s. Throughout the
world, Mr. Eisenhower faced a variety of
pressures which did not permit sharp,
simple answers. But it must be said for
Mr. Eisenhower that in another sense he,
too, added something which his successors
could build. Not since Washington, per-
haps, has there been in the Presidency so
genuine a national hero. His incumbency
of the Presidency has added something
further to its status and his successors
profit from sitting where this genuine
hero sat. Furthermore, in a negative way,
Mr. Eisenhower proved something about
the modern Presidency; he came into
office very much convinced according to
his public statements that the President
had a limited role in our Government, that
he shared authority with Congress, that
he must not attempt to influence Congress
in the exercise of its authority, that the
President should exercise his authority
and should translate it into power only
for limited objects with a rather tradi-
tional view of the Presidency’s position
in our political system. By the time he
left office, he in his turn, had found him-
self acting, intervening for legislative
programs, intervening against legislative
programs, acting positively in foreign
affairs, intervening in election campaigns
for Congressmen, doing all the things
that shocked traditionalists, when Frank-
lin Roosevelt did them. One of the things
that Mr. Eisenhower’s added to this office
is to suggest definitively that the modern
office can never shrink to the dimensions
it held, let us say, in the time of President
Taft or even in the time of Coolidge and
Hoover, that the office after Roosevelt will
always remain a much bigger office than
I think Mr. Eisenhower initially expected
it to be when he took it. Certainly by the
end of his time he was acting in the same
tradition as the tradition of Roosevelt
and Truman before him and Kennedy and
Johnson after him.
MR. HEFFNER:
Thank you very much, Professor Neu-
stadt.
PROFESSOR NEUSTADT:
Thank you.
The Meaning
of Freedom
Professor Sidney Hook of New York
University is one of America’s foremost
Political Philosophers. Here he discusses
the meaning of freedom. Professor Hook:
In the life of all nations there comes
a time for stock-taking and appraisal of
the national heritage. Sometimes it comes
after a great disaster like a lost war.
Sometimes it comes on the eve of a grave
decision when a people confronts fateful
alternatives of policy. In our own country,
it comes at a time when we have been
brushed by the dark wings of history. The
tragic death of President Kennedy pro-
vides an occasion for reassessment and
national self-understanding. It is a chal-
lenge to each reflective person to rethink
his commitment as a citizen of his nation
and as a member of a society which estab-
lishes obligations as well as bestowing
privileges. What does the American idea
represent today? Is America merely stale
promises decked out in holiday rhetoric?
Are American ideals still viable? Do they
represent a living reality? Or is the gap
between American ideals and American
reality so wide that the ideals themselves
are compromised? Is the American herit-
age distinctively American or does it con-
tain universal elements which can be
made the basis of an acceptable world-
order? These are some of the questions
all intelligent Americans must sooner or
later grappel with.
In human experience, the ultimate test
of men’s loyalties are not words but
actions. There are many things we act on
—love and friendship and neighborliness
—that we find difficult to articulate, to
put into the words which catch and ade-
quately convey the quality of our emo-
tions. But it is not really necessary to
find the proper words for our deepest
emotions. For the things we do express
and redeem our pledges to each other
much more than mere words. After all,
not everything can be said or need be
said. Why, then, does this not suffice with
respect to our political faith and alle-
giance? Why do we have to become aware
of our commitments, to declare them, to
reflect on them, to discuss and to debate
them? Is it not enough to know, for ex-
ample, that if all the curtains of the
world were rung up—the iron, the bam-
boo and the barbed-wire curtains which
divide the world—the movements of peo-
ples would be towards the free world and
to America its citadel? So much was
frankly admitted by those who built the
Berlin wall. For it was not erected to keep
citizens of the West out but to pen those
who lived behind that wall in! Is it neces-
‘sary, therefore, in the light of these and
similar facts, to have to spell out the
reasons, to make explicit the grounds of
our allegiance to our society?
The answer is “yes,” for in political
affairs we cannot take for granted the
general acceptance we find with respect
to basic human values like love and friend-
ship or kindness. There are individuals,
parties, entire states which believe, de-
spite the movement of individuals to-
wards the West, that the way of life of
a totalitarian society is better than, or
superior to our own, and that not all or
even most human beings know what is
for their own good and therefore need
rulers who know better than they do what
is good for them. Our democratic world—
and its legacy of ideas—are under con-
stant attack and criticism. It is being
challenged to justify itself. And to such
a challenge we cannot merely reply—
“Everyone knows it is good.”
Our world faces not only the challenge
of those who are opposed to it and who
would destroy it. It confronts the chal-
lenge which its own endemic problems
create. We must apply the ideals by which
we profess to live to a host of new prob-
lems—economic, social, political, ethnic
and racial. Unless we become aware of
what those ideals are, why and in which
way we are committed to them, we are
blind, groping in the darkness of the
future instead of illuminating it.
Now the first word which comes to our
lips when we seek to describe our political
ideal is “democracy.” Often it rises no
higher than our lips. If it reaches our
mind, the term democracy raises as many
problems as it answers. For after all
those who are determined to destroy the
American way of life call themselves
democrats, too, and the system with which
they would replace it, a “democracy.”
How do we distinguish between our de-
mocracy and theirs?—between the democ-
racy to which we give our reflective
loyalty and the “new” democracy, “or-
ganic” democracy, “guided democracy,”
“higher democracy,” “socialist”? democ-
racy with which the totalitarianisms of
the 20th century have contrasted it?
The key to the crucial difference is
found in another expression—‘‘freedom.”,
This term is only slightly less ambiguous
than “democracy” but when the\iwo are
coupled together, we have a concept which
we can fruitfully explore. No matter what
kind of system is called democratic, we are
committed to one in which human beings
retain their basic freedom.
What kind of “freedom” is this? In
what sense is it basic? My answer is that
the basic sense of freedom in our society
is freedom of choice—freedom to choose
who shall govern us and the freedom to
dismiss or replace our governors if they
do not suit us. This is what we mean by
self-government. Self-government does
not mean that all of us collectively govern
ourselves in all things. This is impossible.
It means that all of us who are qualified
as citizens through our freely elected
representatives, are both rulers and ruled.
And this is what the Declaration of Inde-
pendence implies when it limits the just
powers of any government to the freely
given consent or choice of the governed.
If we take a fresh look at the meaning
of these words, we shall discover that they
possess remarkable, even revolutionary
implications. They challenge the validity
of every elite theory of human rule—
whether it is an elite of kings or aristo-
crats, philosophers or priests, politicians
or professional reformers—a _ theory
which is continuously being revived
whenever it is advocated that we sur-
render popular sovereignty to experts.
More important, the ideal of a self-gov-
erning political community comes nearest
to expressing the principle of permanent
revolution in human affairs, for it as-
sumes that all normal or mature human
beings, who are affected by the decisions
of government, and the institutions of a
society, should have a voice and a vote
and therefore some power in determining
them—in conserving them or transform-
ing them.
If this is what freedom means, we can
more readily see what it does not mean.
Freedom is not to be equated with any
particular economic system but with the
right to choose the economic system under
which one wishes to live. The greatest
error is to assume that what basically
divides the Communist and Western
worlds is their different economic systems,
what is officially called socialism on the
other side of the Iron Curtain, and what
is traditionally called capitalism or free
enterprise on this side. What really
divides them is freedom—the freedom to
choose the kind of economy the people
want—a freedom denied to the subjects
of all Communist countries by Commu-
nist theory and still more by Communist
practice. Even under their minority one
party dictatorships with their absolutely
controlled press and radio and educational
system, the Communist rulers dare not
risk giving their workers the right to
choose.
It is this right to choose freely which
our Constitution and Declaration of In-
dependence enshrine, and what we mean
by freedom is not free enterprise or any
other economic sysetm but the proud and
precious freedom to choose to move to-
wards capitalism, socialism or a mixed
economy or away from them.
When we speak of democracy therefore
we must recognize that central to it is
this notion of freely given consent or of
freedom of choice which is both a political
and a moral concept or ideal. And it is
important to recognize this because if we
do not, we shall stumble into many pits
of misunderstanding.
Let me explicate first its political side.
When we speak of a self-governing com-
munity we presuppose freely given con-
sent. But how do we establish the exist-
ence of freely given consent? Mere voting
by itself is not enough. All the dictators
conduct elections or plebiscites in which
they report that 99 per cent or there-
abouts of the population endorses their
policy. But no one is taken in by these
farcical procedures, because it is obvious
that despite the elections no genuine
choice has been offered. Without the exist-
ence of a legally recognized opposition
party consent or choice is not free. Nor is
even the existence of an opposition party
sufficient. Such a party may be tolerated.
But unless it enjoys legally guaranteed
freedom of propaganda which entails
freedom of speech, press and assembly
those who choose remain ignorant of
possible alternatives. And an ignorant
choice—one deprived of the possibility of
learning about relevant alternatives is
not a free choice. Nor is this all. To be
free to exercise one’s choice means to be
free not only from physical coercion but
from economic coercion, the threat of
economic sanctions—for example loss of
employment—if one’s political choice
offends against the reigning orthodoxy.
All these freedoms in turn depend for
their validity on something which for
want of a better phrase we may call “the
rule of law.” On paper, a government may
recognize a great many freedoms but if it
has the power to arrest its citizens arbi-
trarily, imprison, deport or execute them
by administrative decree or juridical
frame-ups or demonstration trials, these
freedoms are nugatory. Under such con-
ditions only those who have a vocation for
heroism or martyrdom will exercise them,
and then not for long. In order for citi-
zens to practice and enjoy their freedoms,
they must not be punished for doing what
has not been previously forbidden by an
authorized agency, they must not be de-
prived of the protection of courts which
function independently of the govern-
ment. The courts in a genuinely free soci-
ety not only pass judgment on individuals
who violate the law in their relations to
other individuals but on some matters
must be able to say no! to those in power,
and prevent the government itself from
tyrannizing over all of its citizens or over
a weak minority.
This freedom of ours—government by
freely given consent—carries with it a
cluster of other freedoms integral to its
very nature—freedom of speech, press
and assembly; freedom of association;
freedom under the rule of law. Once we
grasp this we can make short shrift of the
sophisms which suggest that this is only
half the story, and by far not the most
essential half. This half is referred to as
formal political democracy. The other
half is called economic democracy, and it
is implied that the two are quite distinct.
Sometimes apologists of totalitarian re-
gimes are willing to grant that political
freedom or democracy exists in the West
but they insist that something they call
economic democracy exists in Communist
countries and piously add that some day
economic democracy will be married to
political democracy in order to achieve a
perfect social union. And this ceremony
is scheduled to take place whenever the
leaders of the Communist party benevo-
lently decide to liquidate their dictator-
ship and in this manner disprove Karl
Marx’s famous generalization that no
ruling class ever voluntarily relinquishes
its power.
But what does it mean to speak of eco-
nomic democracy? Sometimes this is a
misleading phrase for economic equality
—which is something quite different from
economic democracy, for economic equal-
ity is present both when all men are
equally starving as well as when all men
are equally fed. It may be present when
all men are equally enslaved as when
they are equally free. If economic democ-
racy has any intelligible meaning, it im-
plies that those who do the world’s work
have some power to determine the re-
wards of work, their wages, the hours of
work, and the conditions of work. If the
workers cannot participate in free-bar-
gaining with their employers, private or
public, then they run the risk of being
ruthlessly exploited, of receiving a
smaller slice of the pie that they have
baked than they deserve. Economic de-
mocracy in other words means the exist-
ence of free trade unions or it means
nothing.
If this is so, then it is utterly false
to contrast political democracy with
economic democracy. For economic democ-
racy and the practice of free trade-
unionism requires as necessary condi-
tions freedom of speech, press, assembly,
under the rule of law which defines the
essence of political democracy. Political
democracy without economic democracy
is incomplete but economic democracy
without political democracy is impossible,
a contradiction in terms.
So far I have been talking mainly
about the American idea or ideal or free-
dom. But freedom is as freedom does.
Principles do not operate by themselves.
Men must carry them out. And the organ-
ized ways in which they carry them out
constitute the institutions of a nation.
Institutions are organized habits of pro-
cedure by which we regulate the social
activities of men. And just as we ulti-
mately judge the sincerity of a man’s
words by his deeds, so we judge the ideal
professions of a country by its institu-
tional practices.
And when we turn our gaze from the
burnished abstractions about democracy
and freedom to the actual institutional
behavior in these our United States—
what do we find? We find, alas, a very
imperfect state of affairs, multiple viola-
tions of our professed ideals, disregard of
the basic human rights, not to speak of
the political rights, of our Negro fellow-
citizens, in some communities large pock-
ets of poverty and unemployment,
inadequate housing, schooling and medical
care. And as accompaniment to all this
we hear excited talk and extravagant
nonsense on all sorts of subjects by
extremists, and extravagant exaggera-
tion of the dangers of extremism.
The trwth, however, will not and cannot
be deniedi.
There zis a gap between American pro-
fessions and performance which every
honest mind must recognize. How great
is it? Amid what does it signify?
Does itt signify that it is hypocrisy to
speak of .American freedom in the face of
Americam failure to live up to its own
ideals? T!his was the charge that Goebbels,
the projpagandist-in-chief of Hitler’s
Germany’, levelled against the United
States dwring the last war. Mocking our
official cllaim that we were fighting for
the defemse of free institutions, Goebbels
called atttention to the disabilities and
outrages under which Negroes and other
minorities lived in some regions of the
country. He circulated graphic pictures of
mob vialence against Negroes, and
claimed they surpassed anything which
at the tiime the Nazis had done against
the Jews:. He described the role played by
men of wealth—plutocrats he called them
—in American society, and made invidious
comparisons between the vast systems of
social imsurance which existed in Nazi
Germany and the United States.
Goebbels was not wrong about many
of the fiacts he cited although he exag-
gerated greatly. But he was profoundly
wrong in his interpretation of the facts
and in the charges of hypocrisy which he
made. Why was he wrong? For many
reasons, but I have time to mention only
two. First, many of the sorry practices
he called attention to were actually viola-
tions of American law whereas the in-
famous Nazi practices were official prac-
tices of the totalitarian regime he repre-
sented. The chief spokesmen of American
public opinion, as well as the over-all
consensus of the country, the executive
power, the courts, the leaders of church,
school and bar all outspokenly condemned
these outrages. Secondly, with respect to
practices and conditions which were not
technical violations of the law but still
offended against basic human decencies,
Goebbels was blind to the direction in
which things were moving. At the time
he described them, conditions indeed left
a great deal to be desired. But he did. not
ask whether these deplorable conditions
were better or worse than they had been,
whether they were signs of greater and
faster improvement. And these were the
all important questions because many of
the evils in American life were a legacy
of the past which we inherited, a legacy
that could not be liquidated at once, a
legacy for which we who are alive today
are responsible for, only with respect to
what we do or fail to do with it in the
present and future. The sins of the
fathers may be visited on the heads of
their children into the third and fourth
generation but the children are not mor-
ally responsible for their fathers’ sins.
The responsibility of the children is de-
fined by what they do, by the kind of
world they bequeath to their offspring.
Today, the external or foreign criti-
cisms of the culture of free societies is
made not by the propagandists of Fas-
cism but by the much more skillful prop-
agandists of Communism. They, too,
repeat much of the indictment that Goeb-
bels made of American hypocrisy. But
their criticism is more fundamental. Even
if there were no shameful denials of
political freedom to Negroes in some
regions of the country, even if we had a
perfect score with respect to civil and
political rights, the Communists would
still declare our freedom and democracy
“a sham.” For they contend that so long
as the economy is not owned or controlled
by the government, so long as there are
owners of capital who live on their cap-
ital, and those who live by working, de-
mocracy will always be only “a democracy
of the minority.” According to Lenin, the
founder of the Soviet Union, in Western
democracies the workers who constitute
the majority of the population are perma-
nently “debarred from participating in
social and political life.”
This criticism is radically miscon-
ceived.
From the point of view of freedom or
democracy, the important thing about an
economy is not who owns what but
whether the political and human rights of
individuals are furthered by the economic
system or restricted by it, and whether
the standard of material life is increasing
for the whole society at the same time as
the inequalities in living conditions are
decreasing. Absolute equality is impos-
sible, of course, even if it were desirable.
The Communist criticism of free soci-
eties on this score falls far short of the
mark with respect to the growth of politi-
cal and human rights, and the redistribu-
tion of wealth in the economy. Without
denying in the least that in American
society different classes have different
political power, that money still talks in
places where it should not be heard, that
a great deal still remains to be done to
draw all elements of the population into
the political process, it is still true that
more Americans possess more political
rights than ever before in American his-
tory; that American workers and farmers
through their organizations play a very
active political role, and that the chief
obstacles to greater participation in the
political process by the people of this
country is their own disinterest and un-
concern—a state of affairs which is not
irremediable.
Secondly, the exercise of political de-
mocracy in the Western world and in this
country has led to profound modifications
in the economy. In every field, from medi-
cal and social services to education, a
great deal must be done, but what has
already been done through the operation
of our tax laws, free trade unionism, and
social legislation has produced greater
equality or more greatly reduced inequal-
ities than at any period in our own past.
In comparison with Communist countries,
our own mixed economy has outproduced
them in most agricultural and industrial
commodities. At the same time one can
observe greater inequality in earned in-
come between the highest and lowest
echelons of Communist industry, than is
the case in most Western countries.
Let us grant for the moment that the
violations of political and human rights in
our country are as grave as our enemies
declare them to be; let us grant that eco-
nomic inequalities and injustices still
abound. We could nonetheless acquit our-
selves of any honest indictment. For so
long as the processes of freely given con-
sent remain intact, so long as our political
heritage of freedom is a living reality, we
can by political action, legislation and
education progressively diminish these
violations, these inequalities and injus-
tices. Here again the direction of move-
ment is all important. Is it forward
towards our professed ideals or back-
wards away from them? That is the
crucial question.
The criticisms which the enemies of
freedom make of our society can easily be
met. But this is not sufficient for our pur-
poses. We have a responsibility to realize
our own professed ideals, eliminate our
own weaknesses, no matter what others
say about us. To be sure we can point out
that no matter what our failures, the
alternatives to a free society are worse,
much worse. As Winston Churchill once
put it, “Democracy,” he said, “is the worst
possible form of government except all
the cthers which have been tried.” None-
theless, we cannot rest satisfied so long
as there are grave problems which sit on
our doorstep. We must grapple with them
independently of what the situation is
elsewhere.
The life of any society consists of a
succession of problems whose solution
raises other problems without end. Man is
born to troubles as the sparks fly upward.
Only in Heaven, if anywhere, is there
surcease from problems. A free society,
however, differs from other societies in
that the succession of problems moves
towards certain ideals—which although
not completely realizable may be ap-
proached closer and closer. What are
these ideals of a free and self-governing
society? Perhaps the simplest way of
stating them is to say, drawing upon the
great documents by Jefferson and Lincoln,
that a free society aims to provide equal
opportunity for all individuals to realize
themselves as human beings or as per-
sons. To be a fully developed person is
to be someone who has achieved as far
as possible the reach of his potential
growth. A free society is one, therefore,
in which there is an equality of concern
for all citizens to achieve their maximum
growth as persons, one whose institutions
are so organized as to reflect that con-
cern.
This equality of concern for all human
beings independent of race, color, sex, re-
ligious ancestry, or national origins, to
develop themselves to their fullest is the
ethical ideal central to a free, democratic
society. Now equality of concern does not
mean mechanical equality of treatment in
every respect. It does not mean a policy
which aims at a dead and mediocre uni-
formity but, on the contrary, to recogni-
tion and appreciation of differences.
William James, the great American psy-
chologist and philosopher once said,
“There is very little difference between
any two human beings but whatever dif-
ference between them there is makes all
the difference in the world.” In this
difference is found the magic of person-
ality. Equality of concern, therefore,
recognizes the equality of differences, that
every individual human being has as
much right as every other human being
to be treated as an end-in-himself.
Here is the crucial principle which en-
ables us to distinguish between inequality
of treatment which violates the ethics of
democracy, and the inequalities of treat-
ment which fulfill the ethics of democ-
racy. If human beings are treated un-
equally because of some arbitrary,
irrational prejudice, usually sustained by
myths and errors of fact, the spirit of
democracy is violated. If, for example,
human beings are denied the exercise of
their voting privileges, even when they
have fulfilled all legal qualifications, if
they are denied opportunities for employ-
ment, even when they are qualified, if they
are denied free access to and use of public
facilities even when they are as orderly
and law-abiding as those who use them,
if they are treated as outcasts and social
pariahs in whose presence others flee, if
disdain and scorn and hate results in de
facto or legal segregation, then the prin-
ciples and ideals of democracy are being
dragged in the mire. For in these situa-
tions the inequality of treatment does not
flow from any rational consideration, it is
not related to the needs of individuals to
become fully developed persons. On the
contrary, such inequality crushes and
destroys the individuals because it blights
legitimate opportunities for development.
Inequality of treatment can be justi-
fied only when it is related to objective
differences in need or to differences in
merit. The gravely ill human-being needs
different medical treatment from that re-
quired by someone suffering from a slight
indisposition. The better endowed or more
gifted student, whether in music or math-
ematics, requires a different educational
experience to bring out the best in him
from what is required to bring out the
best in those of his fellow-students who
may be less gifted. But the inequalities of
treatment if legitimate are equally de-
signed to bring out the best in all indi-
viduals.
Lack of clarity in distinguishing be-
tween these two different senses or pol-
icies of inequality lies at the bottom of
certain rationalizations which seek to
preserve those arbitrary patterns of dis-
crimination in our society which are con-
spicuously not related to need or to
merit. It also accounts for the perversion
of the democratic ideal of equality into
policies enforcing uniformity, as if it
meant that equals and unequals must
always be treated alike. Both misinter-
pretations are roads to disaster.
As we look over the American scene in
which you and I live and move and have
our being, our task, if we believe in free-
dom, is cut out for us. That is to narrow
the gap between the ideal and reality in
every sphere of culture and never to lose
sight of the truly revolutionary principle
of the American political experience. This
principle declares that those who wear
the shoes are sufficiently mature to know,
where they pinch, and are therefore justi-
fied in changing political shoes in the light
of experience. This revolutionary prin-
ciple is denied by all totalitarians from
antiquity to the present. All of them con-
tend that most human beings are either
too stupid or too vicious or both to be
entrusted with their own destinies. To
which Thomas Jefferson made the un-
answerable retort: “Sometimes it is said
that man cannot be trusted with the gov-
ernment of himself. Can he then be
trusted with the government of others?
Or have we found angels in the form of
kings to govern him? Let history answer
this question.”
In this task of closing the gap between
ideal and reality, there are two things
particularly which we must bear in mind.
One is that democracy is not only a way
of political and social life but of personal
life too. What does it mean to say that
democracy is a way of personal life? It
means that as citizens in relation to each
other we must learn to live with our dif-
ferences and respect each other despite
these differences as they emerge in the
unending dialogue of political life. We
must learn that a political opponent is
not an enemy, and we must never lose
sight of the human being in our political
opponent. We must eschew not merely
the violence of the deed—if we do not,
we are embarked upon civil war—but the
violence of the word which bruises and
slurs and degrades and shuts the doors
of human understanding. Words are often
triggers to action and we must be con-
cerned not only with what we say but how
we say it. We must leave claims to abso-
lute truth and infallibility to others and
not merely proclaim our willingness to
learn from those with whom we may dis-
agree, we must guarantee them a hearing
until their words constitute a “clear and
present danger” to the peace of a self-
governing community.
The second thing relevant in this con-
nection is that the necessary decisions
which we must make to solve the pressing
problems of democratic life depend upon
knowledge—knowledge of fact and knowl-
edge of values, upon ability to evaluate
evidence, to sort out what is relevant from
the irrelevant, to distinguish between
empty slogans and meaningful ideals,
and to test these ideals by immersing them
in the cynical acids of analysis. To do
this we must recognize that the life of
citizenship in a free society is one of
continuous education, and self-education.
The world is changing rapidly under the
impact of science, technology, and the in-
creasing power of other nations. Jeffer-
son’s warning that no nation can long
remain free if it remains uneducated and
unenlightened has more point today than
when it was uttered. Never was it more
false to say “what we don’t know won’t
hurt us.” What we don’t know may de-
stroy us and our heritage of freedom for-
ever. There are many things we do not
know which require a technical education
to master but these, fortunately, are not
central to the important value-decisions
which we must make in our present time
of troubles. There are other things cen-
tral to these decisions which all of us can
learn more about—the structure of our
own Government, its economy, the life of
our cities, our regional sub-cultures. We
must also learn more about the cultures
of other countries, the geography of their
minds, the clash of doctrines and ideol-
ogies which inspire them and the contours
of the great maps of life drawn up in
hope and tears for human salvation.
——o0o——
Campaigns and
Elections
BRYAN:
“You shall not press down upon the
brow of labor this crown of thorns. You
shall not crucify mankind upon a cross
of gold.”
EDR.
“T see one third of a nation ill housed,
ill clad, ill nourished.”
EISENHOWER:
“You have summoned me on behalf of
millions of your fellow Americans to
lead a great crusade for freedom in
America and freedom in the world.”
J.F.K.:
“And so my fellow Americans, ask not
what your country can do for you, ask
what you can do for your country.”
NARRATOR:
History seems compellingly alive as we
hear the authentic voices of the great men
of America’s past and present.
Let us listen now to the voices and
songs, the cheers, the debated issues, the
moments of greatness and the moments
of defeat that have shaped the political
history of the United States in the 20th
Century.
Probably the first campaign speech
recorded was one made by Grover Cleve-
land, the Dmocratic candidate for Presi-
dent in 1892:
CLEVELAND:
“My friends, we shall declare ... for
reforms ... on every question without
waiting for the aid or consent of any
other nation on earth. Upon that issue
we expect to carry every single state
in this Union.”
NARRATOR:
In 1893, two months after Cleveland
became President for the second time, a
severe financial depression swept over
the country. Cleveland believed in the gold
standard. But gold was scarce and its
scarcity created a steady brake on the
nation’s economy. By 1894, prices and
wages had hit rock bottom. There seemed
to be no market for anything. There was
a massive railroad strike. And high tariffs
had brought the nation to the brink of
economic disaster. In the campaign of
1896, “gold” was a key issue. The Demo-
crats nominated William Jennings Bryan
and he campaigned on a platform of free
silver in which he demanded that the U.S.
currency be backed with silver as well as
gold. At the Democratic Convention of
1896 Bryan delivered his famous im-
passioned “Cross of Gold” speech:
BRYAN:
“T come to speak to you in the defense
of a cause as holy as the cause of
liberty—the cause of humanity. Mr.
Carlysle said in 1878 that this was a
struggle between the idle holders of idle
capital and the struggling masses who
produce the wealth and pay the taxes of
the country. They tell us that the great
cities are in favor of the gold standard.
We reply that the great cities rest upon
our broad and fertile prairies. Burn
down your cities and leave ow farms
and your cities will spring up again as
if by magic. But destroy our farms and
the grass will grow in the streets of
every city of the country.
“Tf they dare to come out in the open
fields and defend the gold standard as
a good thing, we will fight them to the
uppermost, having behind us the pro-
ducing masses of this nation and the
world supported by the commercial in-
terests, the laboring interests and the
toilers everywhere, we will answer the
demand for a gold standard by saying
to them: ‘You shall not press down
upon the brow of labor this crown of
thorns. You shall not crucify mankind
upon a cross of gold.’”
NARRATOR:
Taking a strong stand against the easy
money, free silver platform of the agrar-
ian Democrats, the Republicans ardently
supported the gold standard and nomi-
nated William McKinley for President.
McKinley promised to exercise the sever-
est economy and to avoid Government
debt.
SONG:
“For the glory that will be
When we beat old Grover C.
McKinley takes the road to Washington
What a welcome change there’ll be
We'll regain prosperity
McKinley and protection marches on
Shout, shout, shout...”
NARRATOR:
McKinley won. And a year after he took
office the country began to turn its atten-
- tion from domestic affairs to the world
outside. In 1898, the U.S. became em-
broiled in a war with Spain which ended
with the Spanish evacuation of Cuba and
the U.S. acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam
and the Philippines.
SONG:
“Our eyes have seen fair Cuba
with 400,000 slain,
We have seen our slaughtered seamen,
we have seen the stricken Maine,
And the hand that wrought the ruin
was the dastard hand of Spain
Our host is marching on.”
NARRATOR:
In the election campaigns following the
Spanish American War, imperialism was
an important issue. Stated the Democratic
platform in 1900, “The burning issues of
imperialism growing out of the Spanish
War involve the very existence of the
Republic and the destruction of our free
institutions. We regard it as the para-
mount issue of the campaign. We assert
that no nation can long endure half repub-
lie and half empire and we warn the
American people that imperialism abroad
will lead quickly and inevitably to despot-
ism at home.”
Other important issues were the tariff,
the Democrats favoring tariff reform, and
the trusts. A Democratic platform plank
flatly declared that “private monopolies
are indefensible and intolerable.”
In a campaign speech of 1908, William
Howard Taft, the Republican candidate
for President, defends the Republican
point of view on these three issues: im-
perialism, the tariff and the trusts. He
also refers to the traditional split in the
Democratic party between Southerners
and Northerners:
TART:
“Many independent Democrats in the
South agree with the Republican party
in all its main economic doctrines. The
South is today, in its cotton factory, in
its iron factory and in the sugar culture
of Louisiana more dependent for its
business prosperity on the maintenance
of a reasonable protective tariff than
any other community in the country.
The Spanish War led to the entering
of the flower of the young men of the
South into the Army of the U.S. in
order to uphold the country’s cause. This
did much to remove sectional feeling
lingering after the Civil War and serve
to unite in a common brotherhood the
Blue and the Gray. Many of the South-
ern Democrats have taken an active
interest in promoting our present Phil-
ippine policy and more are in sympathy
with it. They are opposed to the policy
of scuttling out of the Philippines. They
generally believe that we have a prob-
lem of national responsibility there of
aiding those people to stand upon their
feet and that we ought not to leave the
island until we have fully completed our
work. They rejoice in the missionary
character of what we are doing and in
the spread of Christian civilization that
we are helping on by our policy in the
Philippines. So, too, they have not the
slightest sympathy with that spirit of
the Democratic platform favoring a
destruction of certain industrial inter-
ests for the purpose of stamping out
the evil in their conduct rather than
their regulation with a view to bringing
them within the law.”
NARRATOR:
Taft won the election easily, defeating
Democrat Bryan, who was running for
the third time.
In the beginning of his Administration,
Taft tried to continue the policies of his
predecessor and friend, Teddy Roosevelt.
But within two years, he seemed to many
to have abandoned Roosevelt’s enlight-
ened views. In desperation, T.R. decided
to run against his one-time friend for the
Republican Presidential nomination in
1912. Taft commented sadly that it was a
very painful thing to see “a devoted
friendship going to pieces like a rope of
sand.” The ensuing party fight was bitter.
The battle between Taft and Roosevelt
wrecked the Republican Convention and
when Roosevelt lost, he pledged himself
to run anyway on an Independent Pro-
gressive ticket.
ROOSEVELT :
“The principles for which we stand are
the principles of fair play, and a square
deal for every man and every woman
in the U.S. A square deal politically, a
square deal in matters social and in-
dustrious.”
NARRATOR:
A madman shot at Roosevelt while he
was: delivering a campaign speech in
Milwaukee. T.R. kept right on talking.
“TI will make this speech or die,’ he an-
nounced diramatically. Fortunately the
bullet had hit his spectacle case, and he
was not setriously injured.
The fight between Taft and Roosevelt
divided thee Republicans and insured vic-
tory for thhe Democratic nominee, Gover-
nor Woodrrow Wilson of New Jersey.
In this ceampaign speech, Wilson attacks
Teddy Roosevelt and his views on labor:
WILSON ::
“To looke at the politics of the day from
the viewpoint of the laboring man as
not to ssuggest that there is one view
proper tio him, another to the employer,
another to the capitalist, another to the
professiional man, but merely that the
life of tthe country as a whole may be
looked at from various points of view
and yet ibe viewed as a whole. The whole
business: of politics is to bring parties
togethew, upon a platform of accommo-
dation and combination. In a political
campaign the voters are called upon to
choose between parties and leaders.
Parties and platforms and candidates
should ibe frankly put under examina-
tion to see what they will yield them by
way of projects. And there are a great
many questions which the working man
may legitimately ask in quest until he
gets a alefinite answer. The predictions
of the ileader of the new party are as
alarmimg as the predictions of the
various: estampida. He declares that he
is not troubled by the fact that a very
large amount of money is taken out of
the pockets of the general taxpayer
and puit into the pockets of particular
classes of protective manufacturers.
But that his concern is that so little of
this money gets into the pockets of the
laborinig man and so large a proportion
of it giets into the pockets of the em-
ployer. I have searched this program
very tihoroughly for an indication of
what hie expects to do in order to see to
it that a larger proportion of this prize
money gets into the pay envelope. And
IT have found only one suggestion. There
is a plank in the program which speaks
of establishing a minimum or a living
wage ffor women workers. And I sup-
pose that we may assume that the prin-
ciple is not in the long run meant to be
confined in its application to women
only. Perhaps we are justified in assum-
ing that the third party looks forward
to the general establishment by law of
a minimum wage. It is very likely I
take it: for granted that if a minimum
wage were established by law a great
majority of employers would take occa-
sion to bring their wage scale as nearly
as might be down to the level of that
minimum. And it would be very awk-
ward for the working man to resist that
procesis successfully. Because it would
be damgerous to fight against the au-
theory in the Federal Government.”
NARRATOR:
Roosewelt replies:
ROOSEWELT:
“We stand for the rights of the people.
We sttand for the rights of the wage
worker. We stand for his rights to a
living wage. We stand for the right and
duty of the Government to limit the
hours: of women in industry. To abolish
child labor. To shape the conditions of
life and living so that the average wage
worker shall be able so to lead his own
life, and so to support his wife and his
children, that these children shall grow
up into men and women fit for the ex-
acting duties of American citizenship.”
NARRATOR:
When Wilson began his term in 1918,
domestic issues and domestic reform took
precedence. But by 1916 and the next elec-
tion campaign, when he defeated Republi-
can Charles Evans Hughes, Wilson’s
concern was with foreign policy. At the
height of his popularity during World
War I, he later found the country divided
and indifferent to his pleas for a League
of Nations.
Wilson’s second term was to put the
mark of tragedy upon him. He cam-
paigned personally throughout the coun-
try for support for the League. But in
this, his opponents saw a chance to defeat
him and the Democratic party.
By 1920, Wilson, seriously ill, looked to
the election for vindication of his prin-
ciples. But the Presidential candidate of
his party, Governor James Cox of Ohio
and the Vice Presidential candidate, a
certain Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New
York, were easily defeated. The nation
was not in a mood for internationalism
and idealism. The people preferred the
philosophy of Gentleman Warren Hard-
ing, the Republican candidate, who prom-
ised a return to normalcy. “America’s
present need is not heroics but healing,”
he said, “not nostrums but normalcy, not
revolution but restoration.”
The main positive accomplishment of
Harding’s Administration was the “Inter-
national Conference on Limitation of
Armaments” which resulted in the cur-
tailment of ship building among the major
powers, and for more than a decade kept
the danger of an armaments race in check.
Warren Harding addresses that confer-
ence, convened in 1921, the year he became
President:
HARDING:
“Gentlemen of the conference, the
United States welcomes you with un-
selfish hands. We harbor no fears, we
have no sordid ends to serve, we suspect
no enemy, we contemplate or apprehend
no conquest. Content with what we
have, we seek nothing which is an-
other’s. We only wish to do with you
that finer, nobler thing which no nation
can do alone. We wish to sit with you
at the table of international under-
standing and good will, in good con-
science we are eager to meet you
frankly and invite and offer coopera-
tion. The world demands this sober
contemplation of the existing order and
the realization that there can be no
cure without sacrifice, not by one of
us but by all of us. I do not mean sur-
rendered rights, or narrowed freedom
or denied aspirations or ignored na-
tional necessities. Our Republic would
no more ask for these than it would
give. No pride need be humbled, no
nationality submerged, but I would
have emergence of mind committing all
of us to less preparation for war and
more enjoyment of fortunate peace.”
NARRATOR:
From then on, Harding’s Administra-
tion went slowly downhill, climaxing in
the Teapot Dome Scandal with its revela-
tions of corruption in high places and in
Harding’s mysterious death in 1928.
Harding’s Vice President, Calvin Cool-
idge took his oath of office as President
in his family’s modest Vermont farm-
house and within a short time set about
preaching and practicing economy. “Tam
for economy. After that I am for more
economy. At the time and under present
conditions, that is my conception of serv-
ing the people.” The motto of his 1924
campaign against Democrat John W.
Davis and Progressive Robert M. LaFol-
lette was “Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge.”
The President pledged a continuation of
his economic policies.
COOLIDGE:
“Our domestic problems are for the
most part economic. We have an enor-
mous debt to pay and we are paying it.
We have the high cost of Government
to diminish and we are diminishing it.
We have a heavy burden of taxation to
reduce and we are reducing it. But while
remarkable progress has been made in
these directions, the work is yet far from
accomplished. In my opinion, the Gov-
ernment can do more to remedy the
economic ills of the people by a rigid
economy in public expenditure than
through any other action. The annual
costs of our national and local govern-
ments combined now stand at a sum
close to $100 for each inhabitant of the
land. It is an ominous fact that only
the national Government is reducing its
debt. The establishment of a system of
drastic economy in public expenditures
which has enabled us to pay off about
1/5 of the national debt since 1919 and
almost cut into the national tax burden
since 1921 has been one of the main
causes in re-establishing the prosperity
which has come to include within its
benefits almost every one of our inhabi-
tants. Economy reaches everywhere.”
NARRATOR:
When Coolidge made his famous pro-
nouncement “I do not choose to run for
President in 1928,” he left the Republi-
cans in confusion. Some say Coolidge
foresaw the Great Depression, others that
he was hoping for a draft. Whatever his
reasons his statement left the Republican
Convention to nominate Herbert Hoover,
Secretary of Commerce under both Har-
ding and Coolidge. The Houston Demo-
cratic Convention which chose the
Governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith,
will have its place in history chiefly for
this famous moment in which Franklin
D. Roosevelt places the name of Smith in
nomination:
EED-R-s
“We offer one who has the will to win
—who not only deserves success but
commands it. Victory is his habit—the
happy warrior, Alfred E. Smith.”
SONG:
“East, West, North, South
Oh say can you see
Al Smith is in his glory
Neath the Presidential tree
Choice of all the people
Everybody’s old pal
Three big cheers for our leader
Everybody loves our Al”
NARRATOR:
Herbert Hoover’s candidacy inspired
this famous jingle:
SONG:
“Charles Lindberg flew his plane all the
way to France
Most of the way he flew by the seat
of his pants
Good old American know-how, that’s
the right way to be and
If he’s good enough for Lindberg he’s
good enough for me
If he’s good enough for Lindy he’s good
enough for me (3)
Herbert Hoover is the only man to be
our nation’s chief.”
NARRATOR:
Al Smith campaigned on an anti-
prohibition ticket, but with a Vice Presi-
dential candidate, Senator Joseph T.
Robinson of Arkansas who was strongly
Prohibitionist. As one wag put it, “The
Democratic donkey with a wet head and
wagging a dry tail left Houston.”
Smith lashes out at prohibition:
SMITH:
“Now let’s look at the record. Prohibi-
tion has found a new line of endeavor
for the underworld. They brought life
to the bootleggers and the bootleggers
begot the hijackers and the hijackers
begot the racketeers. My friends in the
radio audience, the only cure for the ills
of democracy is more democracy.”
NARRATOR:
Hoover won an impressive victory in
which an important factor was Al Smith’s
Catholicism. It has also been said that
Smith’s radio voice didn’t help his candi-
dacy.
When Hoover took office in 1929, the
nation was at the height of a prosperity
wave. But seven months later, the stock
market crumbled, losing billions upon
billions in value. The Great Depression
had begun.
SONG:
“Seven cent cotton and a forty cent
meat,
How in the world cana poor man eat?
Flour up high and cotton down low,
How in the world can we raise the
dough?
Clothes worn out, shoes run down,
Old slouch hat with a hole in the crown.
Back nearly broken and fingers all sore,
Cotton gone down to rise no more.”
NARRATOR:
In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then
Governor of New York, was the man for
the Democrats. Will Rogers at the Demo-
cratic Convention:
WILL ROGERS:
“T was asked to do this by one of the
Roosevelt boys. You know that nobody
ever could refuse a Roosevelt ... His
principal political handicap is that he
was educated at Harvard but I under-
stand that he has forgotten most of that
so that brings him back to earth. On ac-
count of his wealth he’s the only man
in the campaign that you can accept a
cigar from and smoke it yourself. He is
the only man in Congress who owns his
own vest suits. He is the only politician,
outside of Henry Cabot Lodge, that can
get into the front door of a 5th Avenue
home without delivering something. I
thank you.”
NARRATOR:
Roosevelt waged a vigorous campaign;
“T pledge you, I pledge myself,” said the
candidate, “to a new deal for the Ameri-
can people.”
Listen now to the voice of F.D.R. in
some of the famous election, campaign
and inaugural speeches of his career.
Roosevelt’s inaugural, March 4, 1933:
F.D.R.:
“But, first of all, let me assert my firm
belief that the only thing we have to
fear is fear itself. Nameless, unreason-
ing, unjustified terror which paralyzes
needed effort to convert retreat into
advance.”
NARRATOR:
In 1936, Roosevelt carried every state
but two, Maine and Vermont, winning all
but eight electoral votes. His Republican
opponent, Governor Alfred Landon of
Kansas:
LANDON:
“Yow ve all heard the story of the Kan-
sas tornado leaving nothing behind. The
wife came to, to find her husband
laughing and asked him ‘what are you
laughing at, you old fool.’ He replied,
‘the completeness of it.’”
SONG:
“Back again, back again
We've got Franklin D. Roosevelt back
again
Since Roosevelt’s been elected, moon-
shine liquor’s been corrected
We've got legal wine, whiskey, beer and
gin.”
“Back again, back again
We've got Franklin D. Roosevelt back
again.”
NARRATOR:
Roosevelt sounded a more somber note
in his inaugural speech in 1937:
F.D.R.:
“So let us ask again. Have we reached
the goal of our vision of that 4th day
of March, 1933? Have we found our
happy valley? I see a great nation upon
a great continent blessed with a great
wealth of national resources. Its 130
million people are at peace among them-
selves. They are making their country
a good neighbor among the nations. I
see a United States which can demon-
strate that under democratic methods
of government national wealth can be
translated into a spreading volume
of human comfort hitherto unknown
and the lowest standard of living can
be raised far above the level of mere
subsistence. But here is the challenge
to our democracy. In this nation I see
tens of millions of its citizens, a sub-
stantial part of its whole population,
who, at this very moment, are denied
the greater part of what the very low-
est standards of today call the neces-
sities of life... . I see one-third of a
nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”
NARRATOR:
In 1940, Roosevelt was a third-term
candidate, a reluctant one, but still eager
for a good old-fashioned political fight:
F.D.R. =
“T still remember, he-is one of that
great historic trio which has voted con-
sistently against every measure for the
relief of agriculture, Martin, Barton
and Fish.”
NARRATOR:
Roosevelt’s opponent, Wendell Wilkie,
was cheered to victory at the Republican
Convention by this famous ovation:
TAPE:
“We want Wilkie.” Convention noise—
NARRATOR:
Wilkie accepts the nomination:
WILKIE:
“I accept the nomination of the Repub-
lican party for President of the United
States. I accept it in the spirit in which
it was given at our convention at Phila-
delphia. The spirit of dedication. I here-
with dedicate myself with all my heart,
with all my mind, and with all my soul,
to make this nation strong. But I say
this too, in the pursuit of that goal I
shall not lead you down the easy road.
If Lam chosen the leader of this democ-
racy, as I am now of the Republican
party, I shall lead you down the road of
sacrifice and of service to your country.”
NARRATOR:
The campaign:
F.D.R. :
“IT am an old campaigner and I love a
good fight.”
WILKIE:
“At this particular crisis in their his-
tory the New Deal party captured the
Democratic Convention at Chicago. It
went through a transparent rigamarole
about drafting a candidate for Presi-
dent.”
F.D.R.:
“The overwhelming majority of Ameri-
cans will not be scared by this blitz-
krieg of verbal incendiary bombs.”
TAPE:
“We want Wilkie—We want Wilkie—
We want Wilkie.”
WILKIE:
“This is scourge of government above
the people, without the people and in
spite of the people.”
F.D.R. :
“What kind... What kind of political
shenanigans are those.”
WILKIE:
“People of Elwood. It looks to me like
it’s going to be a hot time in the old
town tonight.”
NARRATOR:
In 1944, Thomas E. Dewey, the Repub-
lican candidate makes a vigorous try for
the Presidency:
DEWEY:
“This is a campaign against an Admin-
istration which was conceived in defeat-
ism, which failed for eight straight
years to restore our domestic economy,
which has been the most wasteful, ex-
travagant and incompetent Administra-
tion in the history of the nation and
worst of all one which has lost faith in
itself and in the American people.”
NARRATOR:
F.D.R.’s sense of humor had not
dimmed:
F.D.R. ¢
“These Republican leaders have not
been content with attacks on me, or on
my wife, or on my sons. Now, not con-
tent with that—they now include my
little dog Fala (laughter). Well, of
course, I don’t resent attacks, and my
family don’t resent attacks, but Fala
does resent them.”
NARRATOR:
Thomas Dewey cannot turn the tide
that runs so strongly for the war-time
Commander-in-Chief. But five months
later, Franklin Roosevelt is dead and
Harry S. Truman becomes President of
the United States. In 1948, running for
the Presidency again, this time against
Truman, Thomas E. Dewey was more
confident of victory:
DEWEY:
“Now what is the position of America
in the world today? Instead of plowing
steadily forward toward the goal of
peace and security, our ship of State is
bobbing around like a cork on a stormy
sea. First it goes in one direction, and
then in another. Today it’s up, tomor-
row it’s down. Last year we were
scrapping our military establishment;
this year we’re building it up. Last
year our Government was busy strip-
ping Germany of its factories; this year
it claims it’s trying to stop the stripping
and repair some of the damage. It goes
on and on. Last year we ratified a treaty
taking Trieste away from Italy; now
we're trying to make amends by offer-
ing to return it. Last week we were
shipping war plane motors and machin-
ery to the Soviet Union; this week we’re
not, I hope.”
NARRATOR:
But Truman was not worried. In his
famous “give ’em hell” speech at the
Democratic Convention, he fired enthu-
siasm into the delegates with his rip-roar-
ing style and self-confidence.
TRUMAN:
“Senator Barkeley and I will win this
election and make these Republicans
like it—don’t you forget that. We'll do
that because they’re wrong and we're
right, and I’ll prove it to you in just
a few minutes.
“The Republican platform comes out
for slum clearance in low rental hous-
ing. I’ve been trying to get them to pass
that housing bill ever since they met the
first time, and it’s still resting in the
Rules Committee that bill is. The Re-
publican platform favors equality of
educational opportunity and the pro-
motion of education. I’ve been trying
to get Congress to do something about
that ever since they came there, and
that bill is at rest in the House of Rep-
resentatives. The Republican platform
urges extending and increasing Social
Security benefits. Think of that! In-
creasing Social Security benefits; and
yet, when they had the opportunity,
they took 750,000 people off the Social
Security rolls. I wonder if they think
they can fool the people of the United
States with such poppycock as that.”
NARRATOR:
During the campaign:
DEWEY:
“We agreed that this was too grave a
time for politics as usual.”
TRUMAN:
“He opened his mouth and he closed his
eyes, and he swallowed the terrible
record of that good-for-nothing 80th
Congress.”
DEWEY:
“These members of Congress are de-
scribed as predatory animals. Each has
a moss back.”
TRUMAN:
“Sounds to me like the same old phono-
graph record—but this year the record
has a crack.”
DEWEY:
“Now why do you suppose grown-up
men who would ever have used such
desperate tactics in a free election any-
way?”
TRUMAN:
“T don’t care about that. I don’t care
what they say. There’s nothing new
they can say about me. It’s all been
said.” —
NARRATOR:
The pollsters picked Dewey. It’s so
close, one newspaper even declares Dewey
the winner. But Truman proves the ex-
perts wrong.
In 1952, the Republicans, eager to get
back into power after 20 lean years, are
sharply split between the forces support-
ing Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio and
those supporting General Dwight D.
Eisenhower.
Taft in making a plea for delegates
expresses his philosophy of conservatism:
TAFT:
“Our country is a great country because
it has 165 years of freedom. That free-
dom is responsible for all our progress
in ideas, in intellectual self-reliance and
research and science and also for our
great production which has given our
people the highest standard of living in
the history of the world. Its destruction
is threatened today by the spending and
taxation, and excessive power of big
government in Washington. I have
fought that growth for 14 years. We
can only preserve our liberty by putting
into office men, and women, imbued
with the hatred of that totalitarian
philosophy of spending and power.”
NARRATOR:
But Ike’s tremendous personal popu-
larity wims over the convention and the
nomination:
IKE:
“Ladiess and gentlemen, you have swm-
moned ‘me on behalf of millions of your
fellow Americans to lead a great cru-
sade for freedom in America and free-
dom in: the world. I know something of
the sollemn responsibility of leading a
crusade. I have led one. I take up this
task, therefore, in a spirit of deep obli-
gation, mindful of its burdens, and of
its decisive importance, I accept your
summons, I will lead this crusade.”
NARRATOIR:
The Democratic Convention chooses
Adlai Stievenson, Governor of Illinois, an
extremelly reluctant candidate:
STEVENSON:
“Ladies and gentlemen of the conven-
tion, my fellow citizens, I accept your
nomination and your program. I should
have preferred to hear those words
uttered by a stronger, a wiser, a better
man tihan myself but after listening to
the Pyesident’s speech, I even feel bet-
ter about myself.
“And now my friends that you have
made your decision, I will fight to win
that office with all my heart and my
soul. And with your help, I have no
doubt that we will win.
“The ordeal of the 20th Century, the
bloodiest, most turbulent era of the
whole Christian age is far from over;
sacrifice, patience, understanding and
implacable purpose may be our lot for
years to come. Let’s face it, let’s talk
sense to the American people; let’s tell
them the truth that there are no gains
without pains; that we are now on the
eve of great decisions; not easy deci-
sions, like resistance when yowre
attacked, but a long patient costly
struggle which alone can assure tri-
umph. over the great enemies of man—
war, poverty and tyranny and the as-
saults upon human dignity which are
the most grievous. consequences of
each.”
NARRATIOR:
The campaign:
STEVENSON:
“T have tried to talk about public ques-
tions. This road has led me through
some twenty states. But strangely
enough, my friends, this road has been
a lonely road, because I never met any-
body coming the other way.”
EISEN HOWER:
“An American doesn’t twiddle his
thunubs while his garden is wrecked by
a crowd of vandals and his house in-
vaded by a gang of robbers. He goes
into action. When the same sort of
thing happens to his country an Ameri-
can goes into action by getting into
politiics—fast and hard. I’m in politics
just that way.”
STEVIENSON :
“T hear it said now and then that I ain
talkiing over the heads of the people.
Welll, if it’s a mistake to appeal to intel-
ligence and reason instead of emotion
and prejudice then I plead guilty to the
charge.”
EISENHOWER:
“T have said and will say again and
again that there is only one issue in
this campaign. That issue is the mess in
Washington.”
STEVENSON:
“Neither political party has a monop-
oly of virtue or of rascality.”
EISENHOWER:
“Why, my distinguished opponent is
using every trick in the book to get him-
self off the hook of the present Admin-
istration record.”
STEVENSON:
“Senator Taft says he prepared his
statement before he saw the General.
This must be the first time that the
vanquished dictated the peace terms to
the victor.”
EISENHOWER:
“Poor old Ike. He has been taken into
camp. He is changed. They say they
were mistaken about me. They sure
were.”
NARRATOR:
Stevenson received more votes than any
other candidate in the history of our
nation except one—the man who beat
him.
STEVENSON :
“Someone asked me as I came in down
on the street how I felt and I was re-
minded of a story that a fellow towns-
man of ours used to tell—Abraham
Lincoln—when they asked him how he
felt once after an unsuccessful election.
He said he felt like a little boy who had
stubbed his toe in the dark. That he was
too old to cry but it hurt too much to
laugh.”
NARRATOR:
Campaign, ’56:
The Democratic Convention was a free-
for-all, with rising controversy over the
civil rights plank and uncertainty over the
convention’s choice for the nomination.
Harry S. Truman supports Harriman:
TRUMAN:
“And now my friends, I’ve made up my
mind. In the light of my knowledge of
the office of President, I believe that
the man best qualified to be the next
President of the United States is
Governor Harriman of New York.”
(Cheers)
NARRATOR:
John F. Kennedy nominates Stevenson.
KENNEDY:
“Fellow delegates, I give you our next
President of the United States, Adlai
E. Stevenson!” (Cheers and music)
NARRATOR:
Adlai Stevenson accepts:
STEVENSON :
“T come here on a solemn mission. I
accept your nomination and your pro-
ee
gram. Four years ago I stood in this
same place and uttered those same words
to you. But four years ago I did not
seek the honor that you bestowed upon
me. This time, as you may have noticed,
it was not entirely unsolicited!”
NARRATOR:
The Republican Convention of 1956 was
a fairly cut-and-dried affair.
TAPE:
Music and people singing “Four More
Years.”
NARRATOR:
The campaign. Ike talks of prosperity:
EISENHOWER:
“T have seen the faces of our land—
soils, rivers and forests; their richness
and their power conserved with care,
developed with skill, by a people thank-
ful for this bounty of a generous Provi-
dence. And there are other great things
that I have had no need to see for I
know them. I mean all the rolling mills
and open hearths, the smoking factory.
stacks and flaming furnaces. Tonight,
even as we meet here, the glow of these
furnaces and the light of these fac-
tories send their bright signals to the
dark skies above. And they tell the
world that 66 million Americans know
today, more secure and rewarding work
than any people have ever known any-
where in the world any time in his-
tory!” (Cheers)
STEVENSON :
“We are told that everything is fine,
that we are enjoying unprecedented
peace and prosperity and progress.
When the richest country in the world
doesn’t have schools and_ teachers
enough for its children, when it doesn’t
have hospitals for its sick, when there
is widespread need among our older
citizens, when ugly slums deface our
cities and offend human dignity, when
millions of Americans are still denied
opportunities because of race or color.”
(Cheers)
NARRATOR:
President Eisenhower again swept to
victory over Stevenson, this time increas-
ing his margin by several million votes.
The Democratic Convention in 1960 was
almost an anticlimax to the primary cam-
paign waged by Senator John F. Kennedy.
His victories in Wisconsin and West Vir-
ginia over veteran Senator Hubert
Humphrey convinced most of the profes-
sionals that he could win in November.
Frantic efforts at the convention on the
part of Stevenson supporters were unable
to stop the bandwagon and Kennedy was
nominated on the first ballot. In a fateful
decision, Senator Kennedy chose as his
running mate Senator Lyndon B. Johnson
of Texas.
At the Republican Convention there
was no significant opposition to the nomi-
nation of Vice President Richard M.
Nixon who chose Henry Cabot Lodge of
Massachusetts as his running mate.
The campaign of 1960 will go down in
history as the first campaign in which
Presidential candidates debated face to
face before an estimated television and
radio audience of more than 70 million
Americans.
Here is one highlight from the great
debates between Senator Kennedy and
Vice President Nixon:
NIXON:
“T am never satisfied with the economic
growth of this country. I’m not satisfied
with it if there were no communism im
the world but particularly when we’re
in the kind of a race that we’re in, we
have got to see that America grows just
as fast as we can provided we grow
soundly. Because even though we have
maintained, as I pointed out in our first
debate, the absolute gap over the Soviet
Union, even though the growth in this
Administration has been twice as much
as it was in the Truman Administration,
that isn’t good enough. Because Amer-
ica must be able to grow enough not
only to take care of our needs at home
for better education and housing and
health, all these things we want. We’ve
got to grow enough to maintain the
forces that we have abroad and to wage
the non-military battle for the world.
In Asia, in Africa, in Latin America.
It’s going to cost more money and
growth will help us to win that battle.
Now what do we do about it. And here I
believe, basically, that what we have to
do is to stimulate that sector of Amer-
ica. The private enterprise sector of the
economy in which there is the greatest
possibility for expansion. So that is
why I advocate a program of tax re-
form which will stimulate more invest-
ment in our economy. In addition to that
we have to move on other areas that are
holding back growth. I refer, for ex-
ample, to distressed areas. We have to
move into those areas with programs so
that we make adequate use of the re-
sources of those areas. We also have
to see that all of the people of the U.S.,
the tremendous talents that our people
have, are used adequately. That’s why,
in this whole area of civil rights the
equality of opportunity for employ-nent
and education is not just for the benefit
of minority groups, it’s for the benefit
of the nation, so that we can get the
scientists and the engineers and all
the rest that we need. And in addition
to that we need programs particularly
in higher education which will stimu-
late scientific break-throughs which will
bring more growth.”
MODERATOR:
“Senator Kennedy.”
KENNEDY:
“The Vice President has suggested a
number of things. He suggested that we
aid distressed areas. The Administra-
tion has vetoed that bill passed by Con-
gress twice. He suggested we pass an
aid to education bill. The Administra-
tion and the Republican majority in the
Congress has opposed any realistic aid
to education and the Vice President cast
the deciding vote against Federal aid
for teachers’ salaries in the Senate
which prevented that being added. This
Administration and this country last
year had the lowest rate of economic
growth, which means jobs, of any major
industrialized society in the world in
1959. And when we have to find 25,000
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