Divided , Responsibility BY RICHARD H. ROVERE New York T HE Democrats
control both Houses of Congress, and if Mr. Eisenhower serves out the eight years the sovereign people have commanded him to serve, he will have had an opposition Congress for half that period and, in all probability, for three-fourths of it. Having captured the House and Senate this year, with the President heading the ticket and winning by nine million votes, the Democrats should hold their control and enlarge their majorities in 1958. Divided responsibility is becoming institutionalised in this country—not because anyone thinks divided responsibility a good idea but because the party system is breaking down. Party loyalties are feeble everywhere. Southerners can vote Republican without anguish, and the people of Maine can vote Democratic and lightly surrender what once seemed their most prized distinction, that of being the most Republican State in the nation. But the important thing is that fewer and fewer people are voting either Republican or Democratic; they are voting what we call 'split tickets,' and the commonest boast of anyone who wishes to be thought of as sensible or intelligent and emancipated is that he votes for the man and not for the party. This is at present the ideal of discrimination : to disregard a candidate's party affiliation and examine the man himself.
The ideal makes divided government very nearly inevitable, not merely because each party has good and bad candidates but because the voter determined not to be taken in by party labels is under a powerful compulsion to balance a vote for one party with a vote for the other. Thus, when a candidate of Mr. Eisenhower's strength heads the ticket, the dyed-in- the-wool independent is obliged to show his independence by voting Democratic for Congressional or gubernatorial can- didates. It would be going too far to say that this is what accounts for the extraordinary business of a President win- ning by nine million and failing to carry Congress. (Nothing quite like this has happened in over a century. Though with increasing frequency Presidents have been losing control of Congress at some point during their administrations, Mr. Eisenhower is the first since Zachary Taylor in 1848 to lose Congress at the start of a term.) There were any number of other elements involved in the events of last week—the most important among them being the fact that to the extent that party loyalties still do exist, the Democrats benefit more by them than the Republicans do. But the trend is toward com- pulsive ticket-splitting, and it will have deep and lasting effects on our institutions.
By and large, this was an election that confirmed the judge- ment of the experts. The public-opinion polls had all along shown the President a heavy winner, and it was widely pre- dicted that the Democrats would hold their, majorities in Con- gress. The nine-million majority for Mr. Eisenhower, though, was something of a surprise, and it is generally credited to the anxieties over Europe and the Middle Eist that dominated the last two weeks of the campaign. Mr. Stevenson had tried to capitalise on these by arguing that the blunders of admini- stration diplomacy had brought the Western Powers to the sorry pass in which they found themselves. His short, cam- paigner's version of recent Middle Eastern history was rather unhappily reminiscent of the version of Asian history advanced by the Republicans a few years ago, with Mr. Dulles playing the role of Dean Acheson and Colonel Nasser that of Mao Tse-tung. The Republicans, of course, tried to capitalise on the anxieties by playing up the President's military expertness and what they described as his knowledge of international affairs and his diplomatic adroitness. It was plain to see that if the people were going to be impressed by either argument, it would be the Republican one. Mr. Stevenson. was offering an analysis; Mr. Eisenhower was offering a record as a vic- torious soldier and a peacemaking President. The people's regard for the President has never had anything to do with ideology or the analysis of events and issues; they simply `trust' him as a human being, either because he merits their trust or because he has been presented so often to them as a wise and dedicated and incorruptible man. Though it was certainly clear that the events of recent weeks signalled a failure of American policy (the difference one could have with Mr. Stevenson's line was whether it was, as he insisted, an avoidable failure), people in large numbers felt that security and peace could best be served by him. The Democrats found it ironic that failure could be turned to good account and made to produce political success, and some went so far as to assert that the President owed his re-election to the crisis. This seems unlikely. In all probability Mr. Eisenhower's majority would have been somewhat smaller if the election bad been held before the troubles in Egypt and Hungary, but it scarcely seems likely that these events changed five million votes.
As for the immediate future, it gives every promise of resembling the immediate past. The President has stood on his record and been confirmed. The next Congress will be of almost precisely the same composition as the last. Perhaps the most significant difference between this month and lust is that Mr. Eisenhower has been elected to what must, under the Constitution as amended in 1951, be his final term. This deprives him of a certain amount of influence in his own party —his opponents need no longer reckon with his influence on their own future. On the other hand, he has already exerted so much influence in the party that his opponents are far fewer in number now than they were even a few days ago. A number of them were eliminated at the polls. The fact that this is his last term may embolden the Democrats to offer more resistance to him. However, it is hard to see precisely where they will resist. He and they see eye to eye on most things.
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