Let's Go
From IAN
SENATOR KENNEDY'S electoral victory Was so generally predicted that it is easy to forget what an extraordinary achievement it was. On the four other occasions this century that the party in possession of the White House has lost —1912, 1920, 1932, 1952—it has lost because of a war or a slump. This is the first time that a united party in possession of the White House has lost it during a period of peace and pros- perity. In no other major democratic country since the war has a left-of-centre party been able to turn out a right-of-centre party at such a time. Kennedy has shown that an affluent society does not necessarily lead to the automatic return to power of the successful purveyors of you-never- had-it-so-good. In America, of course, unlike England, it is not the Left-wing party that is out of date, it is the Right-wing one. The Democrats are as superior to the Labour Party as the Repub- licans are inferior to the Conservatives. Never- theless, American party allegiances, at least on a national level, are far less fixed "thanin England; and it is only necessary to think back to what was being written a few weeks or months ago to see that a Democratic majority in the country was not expected to result in the choice of a Democratic President.
Indeed, probably no other Democrat would have beaten Nixon—certainly not Lyndon John- son or Hubert Humphrey or Stuart Symington. Even Adlai Stevenson would probably have lost. That Nixon speciality, the 'soft on Communism' smear, would—however unjustly—have been far more.effective against Stevenson than it has been against Kennedy; and it would have been far more difficult for the Democratic hordes who defected to Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 to revert to their former party allegiance in favour of a man they had already rejected twice than it was to do so for Kennedy—pirticularly as so many of the prodigals were Roman Catholics. Nor, for all his great virtues, would Stevenson— who had already been on the treadmill twice before—have been able to excite the frenzied enthusiasm and vast crowds that Kennedy drew, or wield together the disparate limbs and organs of the Democratic donkey into a moving and working animal.
Kennedy had two great obstacles in his way : President Eisenhower, and Nixon's alleged ex- perience. Eisenhower is still enormously popular and it was far from certain that he would not secure a sort of apostolic succession for Nixon. Admittedly he achieved the unlikely feat of be- having badly to both candidates. He hurt Nixon by leaving his entry into politics late in the cam- paign, and by his cursory and intermittent atten- tion to public affairs during his term of office; and he said things about Kennedy which would have come better from Nixon. It is charitable, however, to assume, in view of the extraordinary number of misreadings in his speech on Friday in Pittsbhrgh, that the text was till then un- familiar to him. Nixon used Eisenhower in an attempt to—as Lyndon Johnson called it—ride piggy-back into the White House; and he laid increasing emphasis on the part that Ike would play, if he was elected. Trying to emulate Eisen- howcr's famous 1952 '1 will go to Korea' pledge, Nixon finally proposed to send a posse of past Presidents around Russia and Eastern Europe. 'It would take a lot of hard work,' Walter Lipp- mann said, `to think out a more impossible peace plan,' and Gore Vidal, playwright and Demo- cratic Congressional candidate, suggested that Kennedy should say, 'I too will use Eisenhower if elected. I will tell him to go to Korea,' The Republican slogan 'Experience counts' Was potent, however lacking in substance. As Churchill once said, there's all the difference be- tween being number one and number two—and a Vice-President is anyway far from being num- ber two. Nixon in his speeches claimed that he and Cabot Lodge had seen decisions being made, though it is doubtful if this would have helped him make the right decisions himself, even if the Eisenhower administration had not been remark- ably reluctant to take any decisions at all. Never- theless, there was a widespread feeling that Nixon's eight years in the Government made him peculiarly fitted for the Presidency.
How, then, did Kennedy manage it? The superficial answer is: by the TV debates, Which made him nationally known and destroyed the idea that he was merely an immature young man_ in search of a job. The irony of the debate is that Nixon began his political career by doing what Kennedy has now done to him. When he was running for Congress in 1946 as a political un- known, his debates with the Democratic incum- bent, Jerry Voorhis, who had been in Congress for ten years, revealed Nixon's debating skill and made him almost as well known as his opponent. Yet although Kennedy would probably not have won without the debates, they merely revealed a remarkable political personality; they did not create it. It was Kennedy's nuclear reaction on the electorate, both in the debates and in person, that set in motion all the other forces which, it can now be seen, led to his victory. Without the personal explosive force of Kennedy, none of these secondary reactions would have been put into operation, and Nixon would have won.
'Do you remember,' Adlai Stevenson said, introducing Kennedy at a Los Angeles rally, 'that in classical times when Cicero had finished speak- ing the people said, "How well he spoke," but when Demosthenes had finished speaking the people said, "Let us march"?' Though Kennedy is not yet a great orator, the comparison is apt. Kennedy's speeches are more than words: they are action. Throughout this campaign Kennedy has been telling the truth about America, while Nixon, Lodge and Eisenhower have been trying to conceal it. As always the truth is not comfort- able, and only a man with an extraordinary ability to communicate a sense of urgency and strength would have been able to win carrying that handicap.
Earlier this year a Gallup poll showed that the majority of Americans, rather oddly, thought that the Republicans were better able to handle foreign policy, and that the Democrats were better able to handle economic affairs. Foreign policy, moreover, was meant to be the peculiar prerogative of Nixon and Lodge; yet Kennedy chose to base his campaign on that issue. NO doubt the great majority of people in this elec- tion, as in all others, voted on class or on econo- mic grounds; but it was a brave, and might well have been a fatal, decision by Kennedy to choose America's place in the world as the central issue in the campaign. Probably, as it turned out, it was also tactically wise; but it was none the less creditable for that.
Save for the lamentable and indefensible two sentences in his statement on Cuba, which were quickly abandoned and which we must hope he hadn't properly read, Kennedy kept his campaign upon a remarkably high level; and it is not sur- prising that leading columnists, not permanently committed to one side or the other—among them Reston, Alsop and Lippmann—left no doubt where they stood; or that journalists following his and Nixon's campaigns were almost unani- mously on Kennedy's side.
Kennedy has brought a panache and a sense of style that have been missing for a long time; and in this as in so much else the contrast with his opponent was total. Even those optimistic spirits who had made themselves believe in the existence of a new Nixon had their beliefs shat- tered into smithereens by Nixon's campaign during this election. As it developed, Nixon's charges and his language became increasingly extreme. Only rarely did Kennedy deign to answer them. 'In that wonderful choice of words, which distinguishes Mr. Nixon as a great leader' Kennedy told his audiences at Albuquerque last week, 'he asserted that I had told a barefaced lie' Having seen him four times close up, and made up, in this campaign 1 would never accuse Mr' Nixon of being barefaced; but I think the Ameri- can people next Tuesday can determine who i5 telling the truth.'
Kennedy and Nixon represent the best and the worst in the American system. In England Kennedy at forty-three could be old and tired. having put in many years at the Ministry of Agriculture and the Board of Trade before be- coming Prime Minister. On the other hand. it i5 difficult to believe that under our parliamentarY system Nixon would ever have become the leader of a party. Much more than in most elections. the American electorate was offered a clear choice• and it is fortunate for the non-Communist world that it made the right decision. America under a Kennedy administration is going to be an excit- ing place, and, under him, the free world should stop losing the cold war. But Europe will need monkey glands to keepup. As Kennedy said at a rally in Oakland, Cali- fornia, last week, 'Let's go.'
Previous page
