THE NATION: Sell the Sizzle

(3 of 3)

In a column last week, Joseph Alsop, who considers himself a leader in the fight against McCarthy, wrote: "One of the real achievements of the Eisenhower Administration, apparently, is curing the national neurosis that was produced for so long by McCarthy's demagoguery, the Truman Administration's maladroitness and the foolish wartime misjudgments of the Communist Party's character." Coming from Joe Alsop, this is quite an admission. Are the Republican orators calling attention to their party's achievement in belling the McCarthy cat? They are not—and many of the intense anti-McCarthy votes are going Democratic on the ground that McCarthy is a Republican. Meanwhile, much of the hard-core McCarthy following is against Eisenhower because of what his Administration did to their hero.

In U.S. politics, most issues except war or a major depression are made, not born. The party in power has an obvious advantage in being able to frame and develop the issues. Almost without leaving their desks, the President and his Cabinet officers in State, Treasury and Defense could have built a dramatic national campaign around the Eisenhower Administration's accomplishments.

The irony of 1954 is that as the election neared, most observers predicted a Democratic victory, although all the events and all the decisions of the past three months—the successful record of the 83rd Congress, the bolstering of the economy, the reduction of unemployment, the strides in foreign policy—were events and decisions favorable to the Republican Party.