GRADUALISM OR MODERATION
BY RICHARD H. ROVERE New York IN San Francisco. during the recent Republican Convention, there was an engaging young comedian in a place of entertainment called The Hungry Eye who characterised the 1956 presidential campaign in this fashion : 'Eisenhower stands for gradualism. Stevenson stands for moderation. Between these extremes, we the people must choose.'
He was right. There is no issue on which the candidates stand any considerable distance apart. Of course, it is seldom that we have any fundamental conflict of principle in our campaigns. The voter in the middle is almost always the man the candidates want to reach, and in the course of appealing to the moderates and gradualists, the rivals move closer and closer together on questions of principle, even as they become more and more intemperate in what they say about each other. But not since the early Twenties has there been a time when the candidates could find so little of significance to differ about. The men who ran against Roosevelt and Truman differed sub- stantially from those presidents on the amount of government intervention that was desirable. They attacked the theory and the practice of the New Deal and the Fair Deal. When General Eisenhower ran against Adlai Stevenson in 1952 there was a real confrontation of what we in this country know as the conservative and the liberal viewpoints on economic affairs.
But this year there can be nothing of the sort. The Republican rhetoric is liberal. The President's speeches are being written by a man named Arthur Larson who in a recent book has advanced the astonishing proposition that the job of the Right in American politics is to hold to the gains the Left has made. (The proposition is astonishing only because a Republican has advanced it in 1956—only, that is, because it is unexpected. No doubt one could say at any given time that the true con- servative seeks to hold to what true liberalism has accom- plished. Nevertheless, in our context, it is astonishing.) The Democratic rhetoric is also liberal. If any honour or dishonour attaches to reversing one's field, though, it all goes to the Republicans; the Democrats stand on the ground they have occupied for twenty-five years, and they are playing host to the Republicans.
On domestic policies, the differences are hard to perceive. On foreign policy, they are almost wholly imperceptible. The parties differ wildly, to be sure, in their estimates of our present position. The Republicans hold that peace is about as secure today as anyone could reasonably expect it to be. The Democrats hold that the peace is terribly insecure—more so with each passing day. In Democratic doctrine, Egypt seems likely to occupy the place recently occupied by China in Republican doctrine. The Republicans accused the Democrats of losing China. The Democrats are now accusing the Republicans of losing Egypt. Sober men seem to believe that China couldn't have been saved by Americans of any party and that if things go to pieces in the Middle East this will have happened not because of, but in spite of, our poor efforts, but the office-seekers cannot have it that way. Nevertheless, it is quite impossible for anyone who doesn't happen to be seeking office to discover what the Democrats think the Republicans are failing to do and ought to be doing, save in the single field of military appropriations, where the Demo- crats, in a general way, stand for a more nearly equitable division in the Services and the Republicans, in a general way, favour concentration on nuclear weapons.
It would be easy to deplore the prospect of a campaign that will provide no debate, and it would be easy for us to con- gratulate ourselves on having attained so impressive a degree of national unity. There are causes for both regret and gratifica- tion in our present position. But the fact that there will be no serious conflict of principle does not mean that the campaign will be incapable of generating interest or that there is nothing of importance at stake in it. In a speech a few evenings ago, Adlai Stevenson pretty clearly acknowledged the absence of concrete issues of policy, but pointed out that after all there will be a contest between two political parties that differ considerably in the type and quality of leadership they offer. The lack of issues provides the voters with an unexampled opportunity to decide what sort of people they wish to have in charge of things and what accents they favour in those who will speak for the national interest.
It may well be, one must concede, that before the campaign is over the electorate will be talked into seeing deep cleavages where none in fact exist. Or it may be—as seems more likely now—that all the talk will serve only to generate vast quanti- ties of apathy. But there remains the chance that thevoters will see through the rhetoric, recognise it for what it is, and make an almost aesthetic and philosophic choice. This would at least be novel.
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