JUDGMENTS & PROPHECIES

NIXON REPRESENTS NEW-STYLE DEMAGOGUE

THE COMMONWEAL, pro-Stevenson Roman Catholic weekly:

The results of the November 2nd elections constitute, on the whole, a victory for moderation and a defeat for demagoguery. The tone of the campaign in some parts of the country was thoroughly contemptible. And for this the man chiefly responsible is the Vice President of the United States. His use of the "Red" issue against men like Senator Murray of Montana and Mr. O'Mahoney of Wyoming, his imputation of "softness toward Communism" to the entire national leadership of the Democratic Party, his cynical manipulation of the issues of peace and war for partisan advantage, his reckless playing of the security "numbers game"—in all these things Nixon propagated a dangerous tendency in our politics that could, if it goes unchallenged, destroy the foundations of decent political debate in America.

We in the U.S. have always been able to deal, in our own good way, with our more obvious demagogues, but how shall we deal with the new demagogues, who speak calumny, not in the raucous tones of a Huey Long, but in the winning accents of Jack Armstrong, the Ail-American Boy? How shall we deal with a Richard Nixon?

This [demagoguery] is the unforgivable political sin, that would make politics virtually impossible in a free society. If the hope of moderation in our national life is to survive, if a healthy working relationship between the Administration and the new Congress is to be achieved, an end to this disgusting "subversion" game must be made, once and for all. The responsibility for ending it rests squarely with President Eisenhower. For unless he checks it now, the sophisticated demagoguery of Richard Nixon may prove more disastrous for the ultimate sanity of our political life than the hit-and-miss methods of Joseph McCarthy ever threatened to be.

WEST CAN GAIN FROM ATOMIC STALEMATE

PUNDIT WALTER LIPPMANN :

Sen. Knowland [sounds] more like a man having a private nightmare than like a responsible political leader. His is the familiar nightmare of how in about five years the Soviet Union will have achieved atomic armaments so great that the free world will "become paralyzed and immobilized by the realization that the United States and the Soviet Union could act and react upon one another with overwhelming devastation." When this atomic stalemate is reached the Soviet Union will "seek to take over the peripheral nations bite by bite."

[But] the great period of Communist expansion in Europe and Asia took place while we had an atomic monopoly. China was bitten off before the Soviet Union had an atomic bomb.

Since 1949 the losses and gains have not by any means been one-sided. The Communists have advanced in Indo-China. But they have suffered a great setback of enormous strategic importance in Yugoslavia.

What is more, in Western Europe as a whole the Communist position has deteriorated. All that this shows is that the relation between atomic power and the ebb and flow of Communism is complicated and indirect. There is no ground for Sen. Knowland's prediction that an atomic stalemate means the Communist conquest of the world.