The Charlotte News
Monday, August 20, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that White House press secretary James Hagerty had said this
date that the question of whether the President would send a list of
"acceptable" vice-presidential running mates to aides at
the Republican national convention
In San Francisco, California Governor Goodwin Knight welcomed the Republican convention to the city this date and hailed the President as "the leading statesman of our times." His prepared speech pledged that California Republicans and "independent-minded Democrats" would see to it that the President got the state's 32 electoral votes in November. He made no mention of fellow Californian, Vice-President Nixon, and about the strongest endorsement the Governor had ever given to Mr. Nixon during the year was that he would support him if the President asked him to be his running mate again. In a television interview the previous day, Governor Knight had said that he was not "anti-Nixon", but wanted to be sure that Mr. Nixon was still "the President's choice." He praised the President as having "instituted an era of mutual understanding and respect in our domestic and international affairs." He praised him for the forthright manner in which he had brought peace to Korea, his policy in dealing with the Chinese Communists over the question of Formosa, and his equally determined actions in other spheres. In another television interview the previous day, Governor Knight had been critical of the manner in which Democrats had selected Senator Estes Kefauver as the vice-presidential running mate to Adlai Stevenson, calling it a "deal", indicating that the Republicans would not make any such deal.
The President was reliably reported to be ready to give Vice-President Nixon a clear track for renomination at the convention, in the face of a campaign by Harold Stassen to dump Mr. Nixon from the ticket in favor of Governor Christian Herter of Massachusetts. The Vice-President's associates said that they had received assurances that the President would submit neither publicly nor privately any list of men he regarded to be qualified and acceptable to him as a running mate. Governor Herter had asked Representative Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, the convention's permanent chairman, to withdraw his name if it were offered in nomination for the second spot on the ticket. In the absence of any indication from the President that others were acceptable, the renomination of Mr. Nixon appeared to everybody as a fait accompli by acclamation, scheduled for Wednesday. The President had said that he would be delighted to have Mr. Nixon on the ticket with him again, but had also said that both he and Mr. Nixon wanted an "open" convention, and the President had not publicly foreclosed the possibility of other candidates being put forward.
The schedule for the convention this
date is printed, with welcoming addresses by San Francisco Mayor
George Christopher and Governor Knight to be followed by a roll call on
election of temporary officers and committee appointments, after
which would be a series of addresses by various persons in leadership
positions within the party. The keynote speech
Saul Pett of the Associated Press reports that everywhere one turned in San Francisco, one saw Eisenhower-Nixon buttons and signs, such as "Click with Ike and Dick". Everyone agreed that the ultimate outcome of the convention would be an Eisenhower-Nixon ticket, and that Mr. Stassen's efforts to derail Mr. Nixon would be futile. Mr. Stassen's headquarters at the St. Francis Hotel—across the street from which in September, 1975, Sara Jane Moore would take a shot at President Ford, with her hand being knocked away by a good Samaritan at the last moment—was receiving few important visitors. Pictures of the President and Vice-President were the only ones hanging in the convention hall, in the lobbies and corridors of the old hotels atop Nob Hill and along the slopes of Powell Street. He indicates that pictures of other candidates were harder to find than an empty hotel room. A rumor had passed through the Fairmont Hotel the previous night that one key delegation was badly split over where to have dinner, but it had quickly passed. He finds that it would take a Harry Truman to stir up the convention, that the delegates did not argue candidates, but rather talked about riding the cable cars, touring Fisherman's Wharf or waiting in line at the "Top o' the Mark" for a look at the city from the heights of the Mark Hopkins Hotel.
In London, the 22-nation Suez Canal conference had reached a showdown this date, with Egypt and the West still far apart, but some delegates said that the danger of a shooting war was fading. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had seized the canal for Egypt on July 26. India's V. K. Krishna Menon had drawn up a climactic compromise bid with the hope of bringing the West and President Nasser together. Secretary of State Dulles had met this date with Soviet Foreign Minister Dmitri Shepilov, presumably to fill him in on the West's firm stand for an international authority to operate the canal, a position Egypt had already rejected. It appeared that a majority of the delegates would support the latter plan.
In Springfield, Ill., Orville Hodge, ousted State auditor, had testified this date during his sentencing hearing after a plea of guilty that he had tapped the Illinois Treasury for more than a million dollars for "investments" and "political purposes". He said that his expenses had been heavy. He was already under a sentence of ten years, and possibly 20, after his plea of guilty to Federal charges stemming from the faked state check cashing swindle. The prosecution was seeking a stiff State sentence and sought to have the defendant explain his motives for the scandal, to which Mr. Hodge had responded that he believed there had been checks drawn upon certain companies and that they were cashed and money was given to him or placed in a bank, that he had decided on the plan, but had no idea how much he intended to steal from the State of Illinois.
In Lansing, Mich., a policeman, blinded in one eye and partially paralyzed by a gunman's bullets, had shot and killed one of his assailants the previous night in a pistol fight during a burglary investigation. The 22-year old patrolman had fired with his left hand because his right hand was crippled by a wound, his shot having killed a youth of 20. The officer had undergone an emergency operation early this date, having his left eye removed, but doctors had said they thought he would live. Two youths were taken into custody for investigation following the shooting, with an officer indicating that one of them had admitted taking part in the fight, while State police had picked up the other.
Emery Wister of The News reports of an "unauthorized walkout" at the Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co. exchange this date in Charlotte having been short-lived when Western Electric installation men had removed the picket lines and had gone back to work. The district commercial supervisor for Southern Bell had said that the pickets were removed in the morning about 4 1/2 hours after they had taken up their positions, with the workers having struck apparently because they had no contract, though negotiations for same had been ongoing for some time.
On the editorial page, "Should the Conventions Be Abolished?" finds that many Americans were wondering whether political conventions ought be abolished. Russell Baker of the New York Times had referred to them as "the circus, New Year's Eve, the fight for the heavyweight championship of the world, Saturday afternoon at the horse opera, the night before the big game and a weekend with the Marx Brothers all in one…"
It indicates that conventions had pretty much been the same since Andrew Jackson had invented them in 1832, and the question always recurred as to whether anything good came out of the bedlam, parades, intrigue, heat, brass bands, hard liquor, ambition, funny hats, sectional rivalry, horse-trading, jealousy, publicity stunts, frayed nerves, bad temper and worse oratory.
It suggests, however, that the convention was the best of all possible devices, and that considering the absurdities it provoked, it had performed well in producing candidates who not only typified majority opinion of the parties but who were capable of administering the offices they sought.
There had been exceptions, such as Warren G. Harding, the successful Republican nominee in 1920, and that some would argue that the case of Senator Robert Taft had been proof that conventions failed to choose the best qualified candidate, indicating that the Senator had been qualified but that no one would argue that the people would have chosen him in primaries over the warm and winning ways of either Wendell Willkie in 1940 or Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.
The 2,000 delegates and alternates to a convention had reached a meeting of minds which generally reflected the popular will. Former Governor Thomas Dewey, who had carried Republican conventions in 1944 and 1948, and President Eisenhower, had made a compelling case for conventions in a series of lectures at Princeton University, from which it quotes.
It concludes that the only alternative to conventions which had been advanced was that party primaries be held in each of the 48 states, with the results binding on the delegates, and that when a candidate could not win a majority, the convention would revert to the trade and compromise it now used to select candidates, with the smoke-filled room then assuming greater importance than ever. But it finds it prohibitive by physical and financial strength for candidates to be forced to run even in 24 primaries, let alone 48, without wrecking health or compromising integrity when placed at the mercy of more political bosses than had ever been assembled at a single national convention. Thus it finds the convention would remain and that the people would survive them as long as it was possible to turn off television and nonchalantly go to bed "while some orator was doing his utmost to hit the highest note on the old theme of cliché and contradiction."
"Nixon & Stassen: It's Not the Record" finds that the effort to tell voters to look at the record of a candidate rather than paying attention to what they said was misleading, as personality and what a politician said were equally important to his voting record. It suggests that a case in point was taking place in San Francisco, where the difference between Vice-President Nixon having assurance and having certainty of being renominated was not based on how he had voted but rather what he had said.
Harold Stassen had put forward Massachusetts Governor Christian Herter as a man who could draw millions more votes than Mr. Nixon to the ticket. The piece suggests that if it were true, it would not be because of the legislative records of the two men, which did not differ much, having opposed one another on only four of 30 significant roll call votes between 1947 and 1950 when they had both served in the House. Mr. Nixon had opposed while Mr. Herter had favored authorizing 60 million dollars in 1950 to help build up South Korea. Mr. Herter had opposed while Mr. Nixon favored an amendment weakening the Fair Employment Practice Commission. Mr. Herter had been in favor of a motion to prevent the 81st Congress from writing excess profits tax legislation, while Mr. Nixon had opposed it, and Mr. Nixon had opposed restoration of previously curtailed postal deliveries, while Mr. Herter had favored it. They had agreed in 1949 to recommit the Trade Agreements Extension Act, to delete low-rent public housing provisions from the National Housing Act, to extend existing rigid farm price supports rather than trying the Brannan plan, had agreed to prohibit poll taxes as a requirement for voting in national elections, and to exempt natural gas producers from Federal regulation. In 1948, they had agreed to restore wartime curbs on installment buying and raise Federal Reserve Bank requirements, to extend the draft act, and to reduce income taxes. In 1947, both had voted for the Taft-Hartley Act, and in 1950, had opposed extension of Federal rent controls.
It finds nothing in the record to justify Mr. Stassen's attempt to oust Mr. Nixon from the ticket, suggests that he never would have sought to do so without knowledge of a reservoir of resentment against Mr. Nixon's personality and harsh utterances. Mr. Stassen had not been looking at their voting records, but rather considering people who said that they just did not trust Mr. Nixon, not because of how he had voted, but because of how he had acted.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Pastel-Bulbs and Party Clothes", indicates that two of the largest manufacturers of light bulbs had introduced pastel-tinted bulbs of several shades as a means of beautifying people and furnishings, the colors being pink, aqua, candlelight yellow, sun gold, dawn pink, spring green and sky blue.
It suggests that women would choose the bulbs to complement their dress in entertaining at home, that the bulbs might challenge Parisian and American fashion designers, as the bulbs would alter the colors of the dresses. "Will 'Dawn Pink Bulbs' go on the cards along with RSVP?"
It speculates further on what the bulbs might do and concludes: "And just where is all this going to leave the poor male, somberly clad in tails with probably even the white tie barred because it would pick up a gaudy purple or something even more incongruous?"
Drew Pearson, in San Francisco, indicates that the biggest question mark in the mind of every delegate to the Republican convention was whether the President, who would be nominated by acclamation, wanted Mr. Nixon as his running mate again. They were puzzled by the fact that the President had praised Mr. Nixon while at the same time never definitely endorsing him, that he appeared to like him and yet had given the green light to a member of his official family, Harold Stassen, to work against him. Mr. Pearson suggests that the answer to the mystery probably went back to the general similarity between the public relations strategy of Mr. Eisenhower and the man who had first made him a general, FDR.
Though different in their goals and in making international decisions, their public relations techniques were nearly identical. When the Republicans had been meeting in 1940, FDR had thrown them into a tizzy by appointing two top Republicans, Henry Stimson as Secretary of War and Frank Knox as Secretary of the Navy, taking the publicity spotlight away from the Republicans. When the Democrats had been meeting in Chicago the previous week, the President did somewhat the same thing by demanding the return to Washington of the Democratic leaders to confer over the Suez Canal crisis. Also like FDR, the President did not like to fire a man who had been loyal. He suggests that the example of Vice-President Henry Wallace in 1944, having been eased off the ticket in that year, posed a nearly identical situation to that involving Vice-President Nixon in 1956, with the important exception being that the party bosses had been against Mr. Wallace, while the Republican Party bosses were supportive of Mr. Nixon. But in both cases, it had been known that with a President re-elected who had health problems, the chances were strong that the Vice-President would wind up succeeding to the office.
It had also been feared by those around President Roosevelt, as with Mr. Nixon at present, that Mr. Wallace would be a drag on the ticket. But President Roosevelt had not wanted to inform Vice-President Wallace of that belief, just as President Eisenhower had not wanted to do to Mr. Nixon. FDR had delegated the job to two members of his official family, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and Judge Sam Rosenman, the latter being the same man who had plumped for Governor Averell Harriman in Chicago the prior week. They had assumed that Mr. Wallace would be easily pried loose from the Vice-Presidency, but when they had gone to see him, he was irked and refused to retire unless FDR, himself, asked him to do so. The same was true of Mr. Nixon. Mr. Wallace had been completely loyal to FDR, unlike his predecessor in the office, John Nance Garner of Texas, who had undercut the President's program in Congress. Like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Wallace had made repeated speeches, some of which had been on disagreeable subjects the President did not want to make, supporting the Administration. Yet, FDR knew he would be a drag on the ticket, but because of his loyalty, did not want to ask him to step aside. When Mr. Wallace, himself, finally broached the issue with the President, FDR gave him almost the same answer which President Eisenhower had provided to Mr. Nixon, that being "to chart his own course." He had told Mr. Wallace that if it had been a peacetime election, he would insist on him being with him, but since he was a wartime President, he could not do that, but promised to do anything he could to help. He suggested that Mr. Wallace call some of the party leaders to rally support for his renomination. Mr. Wallace asked the President to issue a statement of support, but the President had ducked the issue, just as President Eisenhower had done with regard to Mr. Nixon. FDR had provided a statement that if he were a delegate from New York, he would vote for Mr. Wallace. But at the same time, he had also provided a letter to DNC chairman Robert Hannegan stating his preference for either Senator Truman or Justice William O. Douglas.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop, in Chicago, find the impression left by the Democratic convention to have been curious, similar, in the the second successive nomination of Adlai Stevenson as the presidential nominee, to a man marrying his mistress long after the flames of passion had dissipated because he was accustomed to her and badly needed someone to darn his socks. They find the contrast between 1952 and 1956 in that regard to be marked, as four years earlier, there had been true passion toward the nominee by the party's intellectual and idealistic elements as well as by the harder-boiled types who saw in Mr. Stevenson the hopeful image of a successful, reforming, thoughtful Governor of Illinois.
But this time was different, with the candidate actively working for the nomination rather than awaiting the draft as in 1952 as the reluctant candidate, there being few signs of the old passion, though most of the intellectuals and idealists remained for him, having turned depressingly peevish toward former President Truman and Governor Averell Harriman following Mr. Truman's endorsement of the Governor just prior to the start of the convention, as they resented the obstruction to Mr Stevenson.
As for practical politicians, the basic attitude of most had been typified by two leaders of delegations, major early supporters of Mr. Stevenson, who had talked to the Alsops, not to be quoted by name, indicating that Mr. Stevenson had not much ability to get through to voters, to establish close and emotional contact with them, the natural mark of a true political leader, predicting he would mount an indifferent campaign, though both believing that his campaign manager, James Finnegan, would at least ensure that the campaign would be orderly and well organized, as it had not been four years earlier. They had backed Mr. Stevenson almost because they knew he would not produce a stirring campaign, as the people of their states did not want a spirited campaign of the type earlier conducted by President Truman. They were in an Eisenhower mood, amiable and contented, anti-political, and complacent, a mood which Mr. Stevenson's moderate approach would not offend. The two men did not think Mr. Stevenson had any chance of winning in the fall, provided the President's health remained good.
The Alsops conclude that the President would have a hard time limiting his campaign to television, to be pressed by Republicans to help them in their campaigns down the ballot, and if he succumbed to those entreaties, he might compromise his health and the whole picture could change, providing the moderate Mr. Stevenson a chance. They find a large number of Democrats thinking in such grim terms.
Walter Lippmann, in Chicago, indicates that although the nomination of Adlai Stevenson had been assured by the time the long platform section on foreign policy had been put together, the drafters of it had not been thinking much about any presidential candidate, as the section could not be taken as a serious and responsible statement of U.S. foreign policy under a Democratic President, not being a platform on which a party could stand but rather a series of heterogeneous planks thrown together in the hope of pleasing various pressure groups in various localities.
He indicates that the best thing which could be said for it was that it was no worse, no more demagogic and no more irresponsible than had been the foreign policy section of the Republican platform on which General Eisenhower had run in 1952, suggesting that the authors of the 1956 Democratic foreign policy platform had used that Republican platform as a working model.
On the Far East, the Middle East and the European satellite countries, Democrats were making most of the same promises, raising most of the same hopes as had John Foster Dulles when he had written the Republican platform in 1952, both having been designed as voter bait rather than national policy. Mr. Stevenson had said what General Eisenhower had stated four years earlier, that he approved of the platform and would run on it, but if elected, he would have to do what President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles had done, hoping that the country would forget what the platform said.
Mr. Lippmann indicates that he found no evidence that the platform as a whole had aroused interest among the delegations at the convention, the most serious part of it having been that regarding civil rights. He asserts that as an event of great significance and promise in the history of sectional and racial relations in the country, as the Northern and Southern Democrats had found common ground without rancor and with an overwhelming determination on all sides to be tolerant and accommodating. The civil rights plank had employed words in favor of using persuasion to bring about compliance with Brown v. Board of Education, words which were couched in understatement because the Democratic leaders, Mr. Stevenson and Eleanor Roosevelt, the latter the keeper of the party's conscience on the issue, had been wise enough not to force the hands of the Southern leaders.
There were masses of people in the South who were not persuaded and if they were to be persuaded, it would have to be by people who lived in the South and knew its problems. For those believing that desegregation (possibly a misprint by the printer's devil, intended to be "segregation") had to end, but that it could occur only by consent and never by force, there was nothing weak in the plank, which he regards as a courageous act of accommodation on the part of the Southern political leaders, doing them great honor.
He concludes that the plank had given the Democrats a large claim to the confidence of the voters, the right to say that they had shown themselves competent to deal responsibly with one of the most difficult problems existing in the country.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., blesses the poets and scriveners, as they would inform the grandchildren of political campaigns long after profiles on the marble statues had been dulled, calling attention to an item announcing that Arthur Guinness, Sons and Co., the famous British beer brewers, were going to make awards for the three best poems in English, published for the first time in the British Isles and Ireland during the year, starting on July 1. He asks who would deny that poetry and beer were suited to each other and suggests that the citizenry ought perhaps also be reminded of the birth of George Bernard Shaw, whose plays were continually being performed throughout the world. Unlike most 19th Century playwrights, Mr. Shaw's works were still popular despite the fact that he had been dead for more than six years. A musical version of his "Pygmalion", "My Fair Lady", was drawing large audiences on Broadway in New York. He indicates that critics had been unmerciful to Mr. Shaw when he was young, one having written: "It is impossible to put Mr. Shaw even to a test of his own century. If Mr. Shaw will work hard he may learn to turn out a play in the minor manner…" William Archer, a famous dramatic critic, had urged him to give up trying to write plays, claiming that he had no obvious talent for the stage. He suggests that if Mr. Shaw had been less tough, such stupid criticism would have caused him to leave the theater, but he had remembered that Henrik Ibsen had been told by Copenhagen—or maybe Oslo?—critics to return to his apothecary shop to mix pills instead of writing plays and that Moscow critics had nearly driven Anton Chekhov to commit suicide. During the first nine years of Mr. Shaw's career as a playwright, he had earned less than $20, but had left 1.5 million dollars in his estate by the end of his life, plus, moreover, important dramatic contributions producing an awakening and growth of the mind in the English theater, making the audiences think. He advises young writers to use his example to keep punching.
Let's see: The rain in Spain falls mainly on Mr. Nixon's pane. Hmmm. The rain on the plane of Mr. Nixon's pain falls mainly on his character's
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