DEMOCRATS: Razzum Spasm

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Bouncing off the B. & O.'s Diplomat in Washington one afternoon last week, twinkling Tourist Harry S. Truman volunteered that he had left his galoshes back in Independence, likely would not take his traditional morning walks along the capital's slush-puddled thoroughfares. Along with several score top-level Democrats, Truman was on hand for four days of meetings, lunches and fund-raisings that would kick off the Democrats' 1958 congressional campaign. As the opening whistle blew and the charges flew, it quickly became evident that Harry's galoshes were almost the only weapons that cocky Democrats had not moved in to toss at the dawdling G.O.P.

Top charge of the week and of the upcoming campaign was that Republicans had rocked the U.S. with an economic decline. Unanimously, the Democratic National Committee voted to view the decline henceforth as no recession, but a fullscale, vote-shaking depression. Harking back to an effective 1932 Democratic pitch, the committee accused the Eisenhower Administration of a "Hooverlike" approach to the business downturn. And when his turn came to make a speech, Harry Truman, in a self-styled "spasm," played on depression fears in every give'em-hell key.

Glass-Eyed Bankers. Said he to 3,000 Democrats at a $100-a-plate dinner in his honor: "There are four or five million men and women looking for work, and millions more working only part-time . . . the farmers are told to get off the land and join the ranks of the unemployed . . . bankruptcies have never been higher except during the last Republican depression. When a condition arises which causes you to lose your job you can call it a recession or a deflation or a panic. When you don't have anything to wear, anything to eat in the house, and you have some small mouths crying for a place to sleep and a place to eat, it doesn't make any difference what you call it."

Harry Truman played fortissimo also on his successor's foreign policy ("The present Administration has acted like an overbearing banker with a glass eye, not like a loyal and faithful friend to other nations"), on the U.S. missile lag and the possibility of a 5¢ postage stamp. But he was well pedaled down in one area: concerning civil rights he could only advise that "the Democratic Party must stand firmly and forthrightly for the full enjoyment and protection of civil rights . . . firm and foresighted leadership might accomplish this without calling out the Army for help." Seated way back in the audience but standing out among the liberals like a cypress stump was Arkansas' Orval Faubus, who had flouted the courts and forced the federal call-out in Little Rock. Like a ghost at the banquet, he was a haunting reminder of the Democrats' major, explosive problem.