The Charlotte News
Tuesday, October 21, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Southern Democrats had been feuding this date with DNC chairman Paul Butler, just as the President was saying that the Democrats were a hopelessly split party offering only deadlocked government. That which had aroused the ire of the Southerners had been the statement on Sunday by Mr. Butler during a television interview that Southern Democrats ought either accept a strong civil rights plank at the 1960 national convention or leave the party. Several Southern Democrats said that Mr. Butler should leave the party, with one calling him a radical and another saying that he was pitching for "Northern radical votes and special minority interests." In Wheeling, W. Va., Mr. Butler appeared to soften his stand somewhat on Monday night, saying: "We're certainly not going to read anybody out of the party. Inevitably, there will be some people who will not go along with the party platform." He went on to say that a split in the party would hurt it in the 1960 presidential campaign. Speaking to a party rally in Los Angeles, broadcast over a regional radio-television hookup, the President, in a hard-hitting speech for Republican candidates in California, had said that the Democrats had "political schizophrenia". Without referring to the dispute between the South and Mr. Butler, the President said that the Democrats were divided into widely separated wings, one in the South and "at the other extreme … the stronger wing, dominated by political radicals." He said that in Congress, they crashed headlong into each other on every important domestic issue. "In short, our opposition can offer America only deadlocked government, government that wages war on itself."
In Little Rock, Ark., 300 white high school seniors, kept out of public schools by the closure by Governor Orval Faubus of the four Little Rock high schools, including one black high school, had attended a private, segregated school this date, their first classes in more than six weeks. They entered a leased brick building for the first day of classes conducted by the Little Rock Private School Corp. The school was placed off-limits to newsmen. As the seniors were registering the previous day, there was a legal challenge to the private school's operation being promised by the NAACP. Another 407 students of all high school grades had registered at the Second Baptist Church for classes which would start the following Monday at Baptist High School, a branch facility opened by Ouachita Baptist College, those classes to be held in educational buildings of the church and two other Baptist churches, with a tuition of $20 per month being charged. The corporation's school was free, according to its principal, who said that the corporation would have no room for 10th and 11th graders until November 1, when it would get other quarters at an undisclosed location. The senior high school was holding classes in a 32-room building formerly used by the University of Arkansas Graduate Center. An estimated 3,700 high school students, including those at the black high school, had been shut out when the Governor had closed the four high schools on September 12 to block integration, which had been ordered by the Supreme Court that date to continue, as in the previous year, at Central High School, affirming the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had reversed a U.S. District Court order allowing until the beginning of 1961 for deferral of further desegregation. A reported possibility that two black colleges would establish high school classes for the black students had been squelched. What a load to do regarding seven black students attending high school in a student body numbering 2,000. What utter fools some of these mortals be, with some dumb Trumpies still being so.
In Taipei, Formosa, Secretary of State Dulles had opened talks with President Chiang Kai-shek this date regarding the Formosa crisis, as Communist Chinese guns again pounded Quemoy hard for the second consecutive day, breaking the 15-day cease-fire previously declared by the Communists on October 5.
In Washington, Joint Chiefs chairman General Nathan Twining said this date that U.S. national policy "calls for the use of nuclear weapons in any case where such use would be advantageous to us."
In Nicosia, Cyprus, one British soldier had been killed and another seriously injured this date when their vehicle had been blown up by an electrically-detonated mine, the ambush having taken place in North Cyprus.
In Johannesburg, South Africa, police had broken up a protest march by black women this date, arresting 1,000 for "causing obstruction in public," with the women having been carted away in trucks. It sounds very much like the Trump raids on American cities which happen to be run by Democrats, on the pretext of rounding up illegal immigrants creating a serious crime problem by continuing to work at various jobs, some held for many years.
In Detroit, General Motors announced this date three additional settlements of local-level labor disputes, bringing the number of UAW employees returning to the job to 203,226 at G.M. plants. The UAW had already reached agreements with each of the Big Three automakers, but some local disputes remained, impacting some G.M. plants.
In New York, an eight-year old boy, who had confessed and then recanted his confession of stabbing fatally both of his parents, was determined by Bellevue Hospital to be suffering from "an emotional disturbance", according to a report issued this date, indicating also that there was some evidence that the disturbance had "predated the tragic occurrence". There are eight million stories in the Naked City, and this was one of them. But there are also others.
On the editorial page, "The Poppycock of a Party Chairman" supposes that national party chairmen were necessary evils but questions whether they had to be so necessarily evil as RNC chairman Meade Alcorn and DNC chairman Paul Butler when it came to Southern Democrats.
It indicates no surprise when Mr. Alcorn showed, in wooing the Dixiecrat vote, that he placed his party's vote-hunger above the need for North-South liaison in the Democratic Party. His job was to get Republican votes and he was paid to do so. But it had hoped that Mr. Butler would not try to carve up the party on sectional lines.
Yet during the prior weekend, that hope had begun to appear futile when Mr. Butler had invited Democrats who would take issue with the national civil rights plank "to take political asylum wherever they can find it, either in the Republican Party or third party." He had said in a television interview that he had Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus and Senator James Eastland of Mississippi specifically in mind, but the blanket nature of his remarks indicated that anyone who did not "want to go along on the racial problem and the whole area of human rights" would have to bow out.
It indicates that there were no panaceas for the race question or "sovereign remedies" which would suit even the most temperate of the North and South. No one would expect the Democratic national convention in 1960 to be a feast of harmony on the vague "area of human rights" which Mr. Butler had mentioned. But it finds it time for the arrogant Mr. Butler to remember that neither in history nor in the recent past had any American political party been the servant of one point of view or of one political interest, that when it had attempted to become that, as the Democrats had done before the Civil War, then driving bewildered Northern Democrats out in the name of narrow expediency, the reward had been drastic. The debacle of the Democratic Party before 1860, forcing a narrow orthodoxy on Northern Democrats which caused them to be reviled as "copperheads", had helped lead to the Civil War. It also finds it time for Mr. Butler to note that there were Southern Democrats in plenty with a taste for Senator Eastland and Governor Faubus no sweeter than his own, and for Mr. Butler to admit that behind his piety regarding "human rights" lay a demagogy as pernicious as the Faubus-Eastland variety.
It suggests that Mr. Butler would likely not deny that Northern Democratic politicians had to cater to minority views in the North, and having Messrs. Faubus and Eastland in the same political teepee was no help. There were no few members of the Northern party junta who claimed, as if by divine inspiration, a monopoly on concern for "human rights" and were constantly suggesting that no Southern Democrats were concerned about them. "That, of course, is poppycock."
It finds Mr. Butler's remarks to have been inept not only regarding content but also in the timing. They had fallen on ears which in some quarters of the party in the South savored no talk so much as talk of a reenactment of the 1948 Dixiecrat revolt. The Dixiecrat partisans had learned then, as Mr. Butler knew, that a Democratic presidential candidate could win without the South. They had ignored, however, in their rampant neo-Confederate quixotic effort, that such a bolt placed Southern-held Congressional committee chairmanships at the disposal of the national party, and that only by some broad-minded statesmanship from President Truman, whom they had repudiated, had those chairmanships been retained after the 1948 election.
It concludes that with rumblings of another revolt being abundant, it would not take much shouting to blast the Southern Democratic Party half in two, as the potential was present.
Mr. Nixon, when he would run in 1968 as the "new Nixon" yet again, would take that cue and exploit the potential to the hilt, enabling him through his "Southern strategy" to score his narrow popular vote victory over Vice-President Hubert Humphrey.
Doris Fleeson indicates that Vice-President Nixon was now embarked on an effort to avert a Republican rout in the fall midterm elections by branding Democrats the war party and Republicans the party of peace. She suggests that it was not inconceivable that the strategy might be effective, but the long-term risks were great, as he would be the slave of chants regarding the crisis in the Formosa Strait, as Communist China had already ended the temporary cease-fire which had alone made possible the effort of Mr. Nixon to portray the Quemoy-Matsu situation as a victory.
She stresses that the Vice-President and Secretary of State Dulles, who was also deeply partisan, were closer than ham and eggs, as Mr. Nixon talked with Mr. Dulles every day and telephoned him night and morning during the Vice-President's travels. The Secretary knew what was being said in the negotiations on the Formosa Strait crisis between the U.S. ambassador to Poland and the Communist Chinese spokesman, and so it could be assumed that Mr. Nixon also knew, and felt that the ground was therefore firm beneath him. Mr. Dulles naturally preferred the Nixon position, that the Dulles policy had worked and that Democratic critics were appeasers.
The Vice-President was not a warm and instinctive politician who "feels with people", but had proved that he knew how to use scare tactics, and his reverting to them ought surprise no one. Nor did it require great intuition to realize that the American people plainly did not want any part of any war in the Formosa Strait. Their resentment of the Marines being deployed to Lebanon and the involvement of the Air Force and Navy around Quemoy and Matsu had been widely noted, and it was unquestionably a reason contributing heavily to the Democratic trend in the coming elections.
Confronted with gloomy reports of Republican chances everywhere except in New York, Mr. Nixon had decided to make the issue one of Republican peace against Democratic war. Whatever may be said of his course, the old Republican rank and file would like it. They would also like his bold assumption of the leadership of the Republican Party, filling a vacuum which the President had hardly noticed. It had long been apparent that the party organization would look to Mr. Nixon, the reason his nomination for the presidency in 1960 appeared inevitable.
But the President was not going to care greatly about losing face in the party as such, provided Mr. Nixon made it easier for him by treating him with extreme personal deference. It remained to be seen how the President would react to the move by Mr. Nixon to take over the foreign policy issue for campaign purposes. He had always managed to seem not quite aware of the Vice-President campaigning and was taking the same attitude in his press conference of the prior week. But the President had to acknowledge the present contrast between their two positions.
The Democrats also had to brace themselves for the Nixon onslaught. Their natural spokesman during the midterms were House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who had given the President his winning majorities on foreign policy issues throughout the 85th Congress. With the tide flowing toward their party, both men had been taking it easy. But the Vice-President might bring them out fighting or even ridiculing his slogans.
As we have fallen behind, there will be no further notes on the front page or editorial page of this date, as the notes will be sporadic until we catch up.
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