THE NATION: Sell the Sizzle

For two decades a supersalesman named Elmer Wheeler has made a handsome living advising U.S. businessmen: "Don't sell the steak—sell the sizzle!" This week, with the congressional elections of 1954 just a week away, there were clear indications that the Republican Party had paid too little attention to that sales formula.

A striking example showed up baldly in the "major issue" of the campaign. Still riding the ghost of the "Hoover Depression," Democrats have made much of unemployment in the U.S. in 1954. It is an economic fact that the Eisenhower Administration...