The Last Rounds
From IAN
PAR1LY because of an understandable nostalgia k Adlai Stevenson, partly because a lot of ;Publicans have a sneaking feeling that their fat es no good and try to conceal this by saying cui neither candidate is much good, partly be- ocaukse of his being relatively unknown (partly ruaPs because of his father being too well r11) and partly because of a conscious xItish effort to be superior to American politics, entledy is vastly underrated in England. He is .411811ing this election on a level far higher than ItiY, known in Britain, at least for many years. Am- concentration on the crucial Issue of 80",.ericas proper role and place in the world has si;`celY been equalled in a popular campaign th.e..e Gladstone in the eighteen-seventies routed d; Lurks in Midlothian. Kennedy, unlike Nixon, hodesi,n°t pretend to his audience that his wife telly dog are going to be president too. Admit- deon' at Puerto Rican rally in Harlem his very sh-slatiVe wife made four-sentence speeches in eirriai,nish arid Italian, attractively delivered and ed:Lislastically received, but he does not try. to ke"veY that he is running as a team with his wife. on 11,11eclY sometimes has an almost nuclear effect app-rn, wds—though, unfortunately for him, his vo a' iS Particularly devastating to girls of pre- hog age. ihKentledY makes few concessions to the crowd. ne e 1 Is nothing folksy about him. His speeches as11,,suallY short, and he leaves his audiences just son'leY are approaching ecstasy. When he says appliet nhi(1ng Popular and the audience begins to speech.,,,Ite often drowns it by continuing his
ne does not talk about the great Amen-
cean Mother. When he addressed the National 4.11-ricl of Women he talked to them about dtt;ica. The Republican Vice-Presidential candi- io ‘se,' The Cabot Lodge ('the man who stood up sarhe tne Communists in the UN'), addressing the t"Itional
.andience later in the day pursued a more
of course: know the noble motives or Yonr groups,' he informed them, 'I know you. r eaganIsation can inculcate a sense of urgency in which out the national -purpose of America to is the dignity of man.' (He probably meant osaY woMan,) n the saluting base on Fifth Avenue, New lork, at the Columbus Day parade—a shambles
by any standards—Governor Nelson Rockefeller stood in the front row carrying on at least two simultaneous conversations with important local dignitaries, at the same time dispensing charm without any hint of vulgarity to everybody within range and never forgetting to wave to and greet each passing procession (Nixon as party leader with Rockefeller as a supporter is comparable to Wilson leading the Labour Party with Gaitskell in the rank and file). While Rockefeller was giving a masterly display of top-level together- ness and genuine crowd appeal, Kennedy, three rows back, was talking to his wife and friends and had to be jogged into giving an occasional (and rather dismissive) smile and wave to the sweating and refreshingly ill-drilled marchers- ill-drilled even though there were a number of priests who, on the mara, took the position and evidently filled the role of sergeants. For some, no doubt very good, reason Christopher Colum- bus has been the subject of a highly successful take-over bid by the Roman Catholics; Columbus Day seems to be an almost exclusively Catholic festival.
Kennedy's impressive determination to behave like a national leader, his refusal to lower him- self into the sentimental gutter, and his near- disdain of the crowds who turn out to see him seem to appeal to their masochistic instincts, their enthusiasm being, if anything, increased by the restraint and withdrawnness of their candi- date. In Harlem—after an effective if embar- rassing and-earsplitting introduction by the Negro religious leader, Congressman the Reverend Clayton Powell, who recently had a difference with the Government over his income tax re- turns—Kennedy's fifteen-minute address to his Afro-American audience was not only a brilliant piece of mob oratory, it was a respectable intel-
lectual argument on the connection between America's treatment of its under-privileged people at home and her relations with the under- developed countries in Africa and Asia. There is the same emphasis on external affairs in practi- cally all his speeches.
This is not to say that Kennedy's campaign, admirable though it is, is above criticism. He has certainly not adopted an outstandingly enlight- ened attitude to Castro and Cuba, and he has accepted, all too gratefully, Secretary of State Herter's foot-in-mouth comment that Nkrumah has moved into the Soviet camp. Nevertheless, there is an important difference between him and his opponent. With few exceptions Kennedy has treated issues not merely as things to get him elected, but has taken into consideration how he will have to deal with them if and when he is elected. For Nixon, to judge from TV and from the newspapers, there is a dissociation in these things. Issues are there to be exploited and he has no objection to exploiting them in such a way as to cause himself difficulties if elected. To be elected is all. If Nixon wins he will be quite unable to bring any pressure to bear on Chiang Kai-shek to evacuate Quemoy and Matsu. If Kennedy wins he will be able to do so without any loss of American face. Up to a fortnight ago everything seemed to be going Kennedy's way. He had broken through the apathetic barrier; in practically every State he appeared to be gaining. On the issues of the pocket book and American prestige he had the field almost to himself. Nixon was fighting the election not on issues but on his image, which the first TV debate drastically blurred, and on per- sonality, where Kennedy was palpably more appealing. Then Kennedy made a major issue out of Quemoy and Matsu not being worth a war. Many competent observers think that in raising the question of the offshore islands Kennedy has taken the peace issue away from the Republicans.
But in doing so he has certainly given Nixon a smear issue of the kind with which he has long been at home. So far the attempt to pin the label of 'soft on Communism' or `appeasement' on Ken- nedy has noticeably failed, but even remember- ing that Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Formosa have always in this country been a politician's rather than a popular cause, it will be a creditable contrast to European jingoism if a majority of the American electorate resist Nixon's denunciation of 'surrender' of the offshore islands and his bogus comparison with Chamberlain at Munich.
Senator Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic candidate for Vice-President, has an effective set passage on the foreign policy issue. The Republi- cans tell us, he says, that Nixon is the man to stand up to Khrushchev. But Nixon went into a midnight conference with Governor Rockefeller and came out without his convictions or at least with them drastically altered. If Rockefeller can do this to him in a few hours, demands Johnson, what would Khrushchev do to him in a whole day?
Previous page
