Presidential Horse Race
By D. W.
THE Americans describe an uncertain future event as a 'horse race.' Never in modern American history has there been a pre-presidential campaign that has more of the air of a horse race than that which is being waged today. Of course, the nominating conventions are over a year ahead, the election nearly seventeen months ahead, but in the country and still more in Washington the smell of gunpowder is in the air. It is not only that President Eisenhower cannot, thanks to the twenty-third amendment, run again; everyone knows that he wouldn't if he could. The Administration, so the Washington tone reveals, is gently dying. The physical death of Mr. Dulles only underlined the political mortality of the Eisenhower regime. It is old, tired, in many ways marking time. True, the President's stock is higher than it was in the panicky Sputnik fall of 1957. His stand against inflation, against 'Democratic' spending, is a solid ground of appeal to the country; and, as the Recession recedes, the demand that Congress do something dwindles from a roar to a whisper. Nevertheless, in the political fever belt that is Washington, eyes, ears, hearts, heads are all adjusted to the time-scale of the election of 1960 and, as the flood of visiting statesmen that pours into California makes mani- fest, the battle is on. And here we come to the first paradox. Nothing is easier to demonstrate, on paper, than that the Republicans can't win. Dr. Gallup tells us that this is the opiniOn of a majority of Republicans, and, of course, it is the opinion of much more than a majority of the Democrats. But a lot of Democrats feel and fear that they can lose. Talk- ing to people of all types from United States Senators and local legislators to farmers, taxi- drivers, even to one or two barmen (what sacrifices science imposes), one gets no impression of Democratic over-confidence or even of confi- dence. As the editor of an important paper put it to me, all the figures point one way and yet, and yet!
There is, for instance, the historical record of Republican failure to overcome the status of minority party imposed on them by the Depres- sion and FDR. Out of the last fifteen biennial congressional elections, the Republicans have won two. Triumphantly re-electing President Eisen- hower in 1956, they failed to recapture Congress lost in 1954; and in 1958, the Democrats were swept in by a tide almost as high as that which ratified the first administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936. It is the same story in local elections, in Chicago and Baltimore, in New York and in Connecticut, in California (now the second most populous State) and in Iowa. The Republicans have all the look of a party not merely threatened but, deprived of the Eisenhower magic, doomed to as frustrating an existence as the Democrats led in the early part of this century. American political history suggests that at any given time there is less a two-party system than a two-and-a- half-party versus a one-and-a-half-party system. And the Democrats are, today, the natural majority.
Wise Republicans know this and try desperately to remake the Republican image so that the young are not naturally alienated from a party that can be made to appear to have learned nothing from the days of Herbert Hoover—or of William McKinley. But not all Republicans are wise. Many believe (I meet this type all the time) that nothing but a series of accidents prevented and prevents the right-thinking majority from rallying to the good old cause of conservative Republicanism. This nostalgia for a mythical 'legitimate' Republi- can government has found expression in the aston- ishing monument to Senator Taft that now stands outside the Capitol. If the Old Guard couldn't elect Taft, they can commemorate the man who should have been President of the United States and would have been if various slick operators masquerading as Republicans had not put over Wendell Willkie, Governor Dewey and General Eisenhower. These views seem to me to be absurd, but they are widespread among potent and rich Republicans, men who have not forgotten or for- given 'that Man' and still think and speak of FDR as good Asquithians thought (and think) of Lloyd George. These people can't win; given their head they can make a Republican defeat certain, but there they are; and they are for Mr. Nixon. He is not their ideal—no living politician of national stature is—but Mr. Nixon is the best they can get, and is endeared to them by the threat of another New York-Wall Street blitz putting over Governor Rockefeller. With things as they are at present, the regular Republicans of all stripes, the working politicians of all regions (including many in New York) prefer Mr. Nixon to Mr. Rockefeller, who is not only a newcomer, an amateur, coming into the game late and at the top, but who is, in the eyes of the faithful, no better than a New Dealer.
It looks like Mr. Nixon for the nomination at this moment, so it seems in his own State of California, where all politically minded people are either resolutely for the Vice-President or prone to compare him unfavourably with Benedict Arnold or Mr. Khrushchcv.
But if the Republican picture at this moment is plain, perhaps deceptively plain, the Democratic picture looks like the Japanese film version of Macbeth. Figures loom in the mist, in the rain; soothsayers are in incessant demand; and the augurs are too busy to smile. First of all, there is the odd fact that all the leading contenders are Senators. Nothing seemed better established than that the Senate was a bad place to run from. Only one Senator has been elected straight from the upper House in this century, and he was Warren Gamaliel Harding (absit omen). The Governor's Mansion, especially the New York Governor's Mansion, was the best launching-pad on the way to the White House. There are plenty of Demo- cratic Governors from important and populous States. California has one in Mr. 'Pat' Brown. (As is the case with Mrs. 'Pat' Nixon, the name 'Pat' is an additive, as the gasoline dealers put it!) There are Democratic Governors in Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, indeed in most' States of the Union. But all of the obvious Democratic Governors have two strikes on them. Several are Catholics, one is a Jew. Governor Mennen Williams in Michigan, with an unparalleled record as a vote-getter, is in financial trouble. None of the Governors looks a possible at this moment, not even Governor Brown.
That leaves the Senators. There is a theory that the prominence of the Senators reveals an Ameri- can concentration on foreign affairs with which Senators have a lot to do and Governors, officially, nothing. It is Mr. Walter Lippmann's belief that foreign policy will be the main issue next year. I agree with Mr. Lippmann and add that, as far as I can judge by random but wide sampling, under the Dulles ice-cap various atomic submarines were moving and will soon be surfacing. The questions of China, of atomic testing, of military aid to various marginal powers, of the simple Dulles black-and-white view of the world that is still official doctrine, are full of explosive force. But so far no candidate is officially committed to any bold views on any of these issues and, at the moment, it is a question of personalities rather than of policies.
One personality leads all the rest. On paper, Senator Kennedy is unbeatable. I have sampled reactions to his recent tours of the country, and he and his team have done a wonderful selling job (comparing well with much less successful tours d'horizon by his rivals). Senator Kennedy is young, thought to be dazzlingly attractive by vast numbers of women voters (and as Bagehot reminded us, women are half of the human race and now of the electorate). He has a brilliant war record, can talk to eggheads as well as heads straight from the beauty parlour. He has ideas on domestic and in foreign affairs—and yet . . .
He is young, too young say his enemies. He didn't come out against McCarthy, say others. He doesn't look like a President (I don't know quite what this means, but that is what they say). And—and this is the real obstacle—he is a Catho- lic. 'A vast number of people will never vote for a Catholic, but they won't say so; they'll give some other reason'—so a shrewd friend of mine put it. Professor A. M. Schlesinger, Senior, has declared, with all his great authority, that anti-Catholicism is the oldest American political tradition. Among the eggheads, the Church is suspect and unpopu- lar, whereas in Al Smith's time it was rather popular. I suspect that a widespread dislike of Cardinal Spellman (not confined to Protestants) hurts Senator Kennedy. It may be, as a Jewish friend of mine put it, that 'anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals.' But there is in the South and elsewhere a great popular distrust of Rome, almost up to the Portadown level. And the politicians don't know how the public will react. A Catholic friend of mine insists that the com- parison with Al Smith is meaningless. Millions were passionately for Al. Millions were passion- ately against him. 'Nobody is hot for or against Jack.' It was impossible to bar Al Smith in 1928; it won't, so the argument runs, be impossible to bar Senator Kennedy in 1960. If he doesn't make
'We've tried hard to break him of it.'
it in the first ballot or two he is out. So the wise money talks.
The others? Senator Symington owes most of his importance to the possible support of Mr. Truman; but Senator Symington, somehow or other, does not excite much interest. He may be right about the defence follies of the Eisenhower administration but few seem to mark him. More serious for Senator Symington is the belief that a very smart operator, Senator Lyndon Johnson, of Texas, is out for the nomination. Politicians have a superstitious awe of Senator Johnson, and are ready to believe that he can do anything, but I can't see how any Southerner can be nominated, at any rate as long as Mississippi is in the Union and can be relied on to shock those parts of the United States which still think that Lee surren- dered to Grant and not vice versa. Senator Humphrey, of Minnesota, has devoted admirers and zealous and capable workers, but it is said that he talks too much and that his support comes from the millions who are still 'mad about Adlai.'
The amount of Stevenson support that I have encountered has been the biggest surprise of my ten weeks in America. 'If he hadn't run in 1956, he'd be a natural in 1960."The Senators will knock each other out and then they'll turn to Adlai.' He's the only candidate who has people really positively for him.' Yet Mr. Stevenson has been beaten twice. 'He's not a new face,' said a veteran. And so it goes. I don't even see in a glass darkly, but I believe that Senator Kennedy would beat Mr. Nixon if nominated, but not that he will be nominated. I think that Governor Rockefeller would have a good chance of beating Senator Kennedy if he got the nomination, but probably he won't. I see no dark horse in the far or middle distance. In a deadlock, Mr. Stevenson might be turned to with relief if not excessive hope. If Mr. Nixon's visit to Moscow is a success, he will be a lot stronger with the new voters than he seems to be at the moment. Almost any Republican can beat Senator Johnson, and so it goes.
And remember these arc prophecies from a man who bet $10 on Governor Dewey late on election night, 1948, when Mr. Truman had already won.
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