The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

A YEAR in advance of the next campaign, it seems clear to Washington, as one sage observer has put it, that “the Republicans need Eisenhower more in ‘56 than they did in ‘52.” The reasoning is that in '52 the country was ready for a change, given any reasonably decent GOP candidate, but that in '56 the normal Democratic majority will be likely to reassert itself, as forecast in the ‘54 congressional voting, unless there is a powerful counterforce. And only Eisenhower can provide that. Since hope springs eternal, the Republican faithful refuse to consider the dreadful possibility that Ike might retire to Gettysburg.

Washington feels that the Republicans will be campaigning a year from now on a “peace and prosperity” platform, just about the dream of any party manager. If so, the Democrats will be reduced to running on a party plank labeled “Yes, but we made peace possible” — something less than a dream.

The Eisenhower performance at the Geneva “Summit” Conference all but obliterated his foreign policy opponents at home. It brought back the waverers who had grown distrustful of the Dulles exhortations and the Radford bomb-rattling. And it drove underground the right-wing bitterenders in the President’s own party, with the exception of McCarthy and perhaps Jenner. The simple fact is that the politicians know that the American public is fed up with wars, hot or cold.

How will the South react ?

The Southern Democrats have perhaps a little less incentive than their Northern liberal colleagues to try to capture the White House, since the time has not yet arrived when a Southerner can get the party nomination. A good many Southern Senators and Representatives would settle for retention of their present powerful committee chairmanships with Ike in the White House again. But to do that would call for the election of a President of one party and a Congress controlled by the other.

It is true that the Democrats in general have the breaks when it comes to the one third of the Senate who are up for election next year. Of the fifteen seats to be contested, nine are in the South or border states, three others are in states which would be lost only in a GOP sweep, and only three are likely Republican prospects. Of the seventeen Republican seats at contest, eight or nine are vulnerable. Control of the House traditionally goes to the party with the winning presidential candidate since all 435 members must face the voters, While Eisenhower in ‘52 barely carried a GOP Congress with him, the feeling in Washington today is that he would gain a much larger following in '56.

If the Democratic presidential candidate is Adlai Stevenson again, there will be another Texas revolt led by Governor Shivers. If it is Governor Harriman, there will be balking in other Southern states as well. How much Southern voters will offset this by blaming the Republicans for the Supreme Court’s decision regarding public school integration is hard to estimate.

The best Republican No. 2 ?

Because of Eisenhower’s age, a good deal of attention is being paid to the question of his '56 running mate. Who is the best Republican No. 2? The President has been saying many kind words about Vice President Nixon. Those who do not trust Nixon to carry out the Eisenhower program if he should come into office are not happy at the prospect. Those who take Nixon for granted argue that the President thinks Nixon has fulfilled Eisenhower’s idea of what a Vice President should be - not a Throttlebottom but a hard-working member of the Administration fully aware of the presidential problems and hence ready and able to step into the job should death or disability strike.

Those who want someone other than Nixon will have to find and build up the man and sell him to Eisenhower. For there is no question that if Eisenhower runs again and indicates the slightest choice for his running mate, that man will be on the ticket. In all probability the President will not hand the party politicians a list of half a dozen acceptable candidates as he did in ‘52. The most likely alternatives to Nixon would seem to be in the ranks of the GOP governors, and the best of them are Massachusetts’ Christian Herter and California’s Goodwin Knight.

If Eisenhower should decide not to run, the outcome at the Republican National Convention would be completely unpredictable. Chief Justice Earl Warren is the only other Republican leader with a strong hold on the independent vote— and he has declared himself ineligible. Nixon and Senator Knowland probably would knock each other out, with Governor Knight emerging as the California candidate, and California has the second largest number of delegates. Knight is not a particularly happy thought for liberal Republicans; they recall that he refused even to proclaim United Nations Day in his own state, yet a few months later stood before Eisenhower at the UN Commemorative Meeting in San Francisco and uttered words which made him sound like an original UN booster.

Unfinished business in Congress

The second session of the 84th Congress will follow the traditional pattern of politics in a presidential year. Democrats hope to add to the DixonYates furor with a battle over Hell’s Canyon. But a good many politicians report they can find only small pockets of anger on the public power issue. Investigations will be another Democratic tactic — with the emphasis on showing that the Eisenhower Administration is partial to big-business “fat cats.” The Talbott affair was a sample. The row over the Commerce Department’s Business Advisory Council will be taken up again. Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks already has sounded the GOP defense by calling it “politics” and “a massive attack” on the free enterprise system.

It is perfectly clear that the President likes and admires business and businessmen. His attitude was unconsciously but clearly expressed when, in defending the appointment of the Pentagon’s petroleum logistics expert even though he remained on an oil company payroll, he said: “It would be idle to employ as a consultant anyone who didn’t know something about the petroleum business. He is bound to come from the petroleum industry.”Such a remark enraged the liberals, but it didn’t affect Ike’s standing in popularity.

Kefauver and juvenile delinquency

For two years now a Senate subcommittee has been delving into one of America’s more important internal problems —the causes and cures of juvenile delinquency. On the whole, it has been a highly constructive investigation, demonstrative of the usefulness of that much abused legislative procedure. From the testimony of experts, public officials, and laymen these points have emerged: —

1. There is a direct relationship between insecurity, on the part of both parent and child, and juvenile delinquency. Further, the insecurity is related to the general national feeling of insecurity during the cold-war years and the hot Korean War. Juvenile delinquency figures were on the decline from the end of World War II through 1948 when a low of under 300,000 cases was reported by the states. The figure began to rise in 1949, and in '53 the total was about 435,000 cases, while last year’s figure was close to half a million.

2. There is, in fact, a predisposition toward delinquency among some youths. There is no evidence that such a predisposition is an inherited characteristic. But there is evidence that delinquency is greater among those who in their formative years were exposed to subnormal influences in terms of housing, schools, family relationships.

3. Insufficient numbers of teachers mean insufficient attention to those children who are affected by insecurity and predisposition to delinquency. Lack of facilities for the treatment of unstable children and those of less than normal intelligence is a part of the problem. The Kefauver committee is clearly disposed toward more federal aid for housing and toward federal aid for schools.

As to the mass media which affect the young — movies; television, comics — the issue of censorship is at once raised. In its investigations the committee has found that the television code is satisfactory but is not lived up to; the movie code is satisfactory but the movie advertising is not regulated and is provocative; the comics have, as a result of the committee’s work, started to clean house. A loophole in the federal statutes against pornography has been closed by a committeesponsored bill which now makes it illegal to send such offensive material across state lines by private car or truck as well as through the mails or by other public transportation.

Of course the fight against juvenile delinquency can no more be won in toto than the battle against crime in general. But an aroused public, especially aroused communities and states, with federal help, can accomplish much. The value of the current Kefauver committee lies in the spot light it can throw on the problem, in the encouragement it can give those dedicated to meeting it, and in the additional legal weapons it can help forge on both the national and local levels of government.

East-West détente

A year ago, only the very daring would have predicted that 1956 would bring a change in East-West atmospheric pressure. The Russians decided, apparently last spring, that an effort should be made to reach a détente with the West. Western experts credit the arms burden and the failure of the Soviet economic system to meet the demands of a growing industrial population as the reasons behind the decision.

On the American side, the 1954 Democratic congressional victory gave the President the necessary elbowroom to meet with the Russians. The senatorial condemnation of McCarthy a few weeks later gave the Administration courage to draw back from the concessions it had made to the extremists.

But one suspects that the dominant factor in both Washington and Moscow was the bomb. The element of timing was of crucial importance: Moscow changed its course because of the bomb, and did so at a time when it had become possible for Eisenhower to respond. It also may be argued that the majority among the Kremlin’s “collective leadership” felt that Eisenhower’s presence in the White House provided a unique opportunity, for he was a man known to some of them as something less than the Marxist version of the capitalist leader. At Geneva, Bulganin smilingly expressed the hope that Ike would run for President again.

What is clear is that the “summit” conference turned out to be, in essence, a two-power conference. The Russians came to do business with Eisenhower, and Eisenhower decided that it was time to appeal directly to Lite Russian leaders.

The global success of the Eisenhower appeal on the arms control issue was well demonstrated a few weeks later when Bulganin first publicly commented on it. As soon as Moscow learned that Bulganin’s remarks were being taken as a rejection of the President’s proposals, Bulganin publicly declared that he had been misunderstood. The important point here was that Moscow realized Russia could not afford to oppose something so spectacularly popular.

The President’s post-Geneva problem thus became one of how to make the most of this acclaim — how to use it as a lever to win Soviet acceptance of hard agreements. The skill with which the President now uses his new lever not only will determine Moscow’s “sincerity” but may affect the Russian decision on what to do on the questions of arms control and German unification.

Mood of the Capital

Many of those who were “at the summit ” came away with the feeling that the “collective leadership” itself had not made the decision on how far to go. The Western problem is to conduct its diplomacy in the coming months so as to strengthen the hand of those in Moscow who may want a real accommodation and who would be willing to pay a real price for it.

All this is less likely to provide Eisenhower an excuse to retire than to create pressure on him to run again on a “finish the job” basis. The President talks more about his health than anyone else—both publicly and privately. He is proud of his general physical well-being for a man who will be sixty-six this month. But he is also conscious of the fact that he would be the oldest man ever to occupy the White House if he served out a second term.