THEY'RE OFF
‘I'M going to vote for Ike; my son is a jet pilot and he'll keep us out of war.' So said the elderly and dogmatic lady who shared a taxi with me in Washington. But the driver, one of the amiably sagacious taximen in whom Washington is rich, commented after 'the dame' had left, 'An awful lot of Democrats are going to come back home this year.' And at this stage in the race the issue-seems to depend on how successfully the Democrats cultivate their wandering sons and daughters, who may be disgusted with Republican husks and swine for whom a fatted calf is daily cooked and. on the other side, on the success with which the Republicans put over the father image of President Eisenhower as the supremely wise, above-the-battle, national leader who has chosen the Republican party as his instrument. For it is being reluctantly admitted that there just aren't enough regular Republicans to go round. The Maine election shows that.
It is not the only blow to Republican complacency. In the State of Washington, Republican hopes were high. The 'key- noter' of the San Francisco Convention, Governor Langlie, leader of the 'new Republican' Party whose birth has been so often announced, beneficiary of a superdooper build-up in Time magazine, was very badly beaten, indeed, so badly that Time magazine treated the result with the same blithe bad memory as it had the first results of the much-applauded kick in the pants given by Mr. Dulles to Colonel Nasser. Other results are not much more comforting to the Republicans—and yet not only Gallup polls, but betting, guessing, confidential assessments still give President Eisenhower an almost certain victory in November. If he is not now 'a shoo-in,' it is not yet a 'horse race'; Mr. Stevenson is still an outsider.
How come? In the first place, what is Mr. Eisenhower's strength is his adopted party's weakness. He is dissociated in the public mind from the weaknesses, the failures of his administration; he gets all credit for its successes. It is rather like the old Russian belief that 'the Tsar is good but far away.' Mr. Eisenhower still projects this non-party issue and his first big TV show was a far more skilful job than was Mr. Stevenson's. The 'Ike' cult is still strong. 'I like Ike' is still a slogan to work miracles. To the fury and frustration of the Democrats, of the 'working press,' of some Republicans of the Taft school, Mr. Eisenhower is exempted from all the rules. Then the explosive issue of his health is in abeyance. The conviction, so widespread in July, that his real condition was being hidden from the public, that the White House official story was 'a snow job,' has died away. The President talks, looks, moves like a man in good health. He may be a bad life, but the health issue, for the moment, is a minor matter.
Why, then, are the chances of the Republican Party not better? Why is it likely that the Senate will remain Democratic and not impossible that the House will, presenting the United States and the world with the spectacle of a President elected on one party ticket and a Congress controlled by another party? Why has not more of the Eisenhowermagic rubbed off on his party?
Some of the recent primary results cast light on this mystery. It is not in the least unimportant that Governor Muskie Maine is the son of Polish immigrants. Even in that strong- hold of the old 'Yankee' stock there are enough of the lesser breeds, just recently within the law, to make the racial exclu- siveness of the Republicans intolerable. It is not at all accidental that the stronghold of the Democrats in Maine is the rather drab city of Lewiston where French is a more useful working language than English. For generations the `Canadiens,' tenacious, clannish, prolific, have been silently flooding in. It may well be, as Mr. Samuel Lubell insists, that the rapid rise in economic and educational status of the immigrant groups is automatically recruiting for the Republican Party. But the process has not gone far enough to offset the Republican handicap of being the 'snooty' party in many regions. 'God and the People hate a chesty man,' said 'Big Tim' Sullivan, and the Grand Old Party is too visibly the party of 'the Establishment' not to be resented. Then, a point that tends to be ignored by pollsters, interviewers and the like, organisation and candidates count in local elec- tions in America, despite the influence of the mass media and the preaching of 'the American consensus.' And there was a striking difference between the two parties, from this point of view, as they were exhibited at the Chicago and San Francisco conventions. There were plenty of young, energetic, forward-looking (and good-looking) young or youngish Republicans of both sexes at San Francisco. But they didn't seem to be nearly as good at getting elected to office as their equally numerous Democratic opposite numbers whom one met at Chicago. The Lodge brothers may just be what the Republican Party needs, but Massachusetts and Connecticut have retired them from elective to appointive service.
And lastly, the remaking of the Republican Party in the non-partisan image so winningly painted by Mr. Arthur Larson in his important book is incomplete at the local level. Perhaps Mr. Eisenhower has relied too much on vague exhortation. But there is another and rather neglected aspect of the problem. A very great many Republicans just don't want to be remade. They revere the memory of the late Senator Taft; some of them still think nostalgically of the great days of Cal Coolidge. The 'victory' of the Eisenhower faction in Wisconsin (owing nothing to the President's inter- vention) was barely adequate. Mr. McCarthy may be down in his own State, but he is not out. The New York Times last week contained a cri de cceur from a Republican who wants a conservative Republican Party. He cherishes the belief that there is a real conservative majority in America and that the present administration doesn't represent it. For people like this staunch defender of the old order, Ike is a pis aller. Of course, there is always Mr. Nixon. But even he. so far, is campaigning at a high level of general morality. Indeed, only Senator Kefauver is really wading in. All the same, it looks like Ike, with a heavy covering bet on a Democratic Congress.
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