Summing Up

It is customary for election editorials to be dark and passionate appeals to the faithful, clarion blasts on the trumpet of partisanship. During the campaign itself they probably even convince a few people, though their main role is to stir the vitals of the already convinced. As such there is nothing wrong with them--indeed, like the election campaigns themselves, they satisfy the animal urge for pure combat which lies behind the veneer of civilization in men.

This is during the campaign. But on election day such editorials are out of place. They are unwarranted impositions on the voter who is already surfeited with faction and needs instead a few quiet minutes to make his final decisions. At this time, a twenty-one gun editorial in the morning paper is like a loudspeaker in the voting booth and is not to be tolerated.

So you'll get no strong words from us this morning. Just a few observations in what we hope will be considered a quiet tone of voice, suitable to the day.

Corruption, "mess in Washington." Just a few days ago we heard about the mayor of a large eastern city who recently had occasion to announce that he wished people wouldn't pester him to fix yellow tickets. He could only manage the red ones--for parking. It never occurred to the businessman who told us this story (an ardent opponent of "Truman corruption") that this was itself a form of corruption--to him the fixing of tickets had no moral significance at all. The plain fact is that a certain amount of corruption is fundamental to the American way of life and the American way of politics. One has only to look at England, where ticket-fixing and governmental corruption are virtually unknown, to realize this. It is foolish for a nation of ticket-fixers to expect perfect honesty in its government, any more from Republicans than from Democrats.

Reds-in-Government. Future historians will look back on this issue and the emotions and campaigns that it stirred up as among the most curious and tortured in American history, a brew into which the the most miscellaneous and contradictory passions were poured. What is one to make, for instance, of Truman attacked by liberals for the Government's prosecution of Hiss, and by reactionaries for being soft toward Communists? What is one to make of McCarthy, whose open lies and many-colored dishonesties have hardly been equaled in American history? What is one to make of the Republican Party which chides McCarthy for his methods, yet arranges for him to speak for it on election eve?

What has always been the most curious to us, however, is the undoubted fact that the number of Communists in government has never been more than a handful, a fraction of the numbers which have been assaulting France and Italy for years in vain. Yet no one, not even the most ardent anti-McCarthyite, has asked the question: how much actual damage has been done by these subversives? It is natural to be troubled by the idea of foreign agents in one's government, but if the consequences have not been very serious one has no cause for hysteria. It is well, now and then, to apply the test of pragmatism to vexed ideological issues: an Everest of feathers may turn out to weigh only a few pounds.

Foreign policy. In our tight little world, foreign policy has become the prime consideration in every country's politics. If we cannot maintain peace and prosperity in the world, it will little matter what we do about Taft-Hartley or tidelands oil. Differences of opinion between the parties, therefore, are peculiarly significant when they lie in the field of foreign policy. And this election campaign has been marked by an unusually deep split on foreign policy, centered on Korea but digging down to postulates. We are not going to plague the voter with our full set of opinions on the subject, but we shall ask a few questions: Does General Eisenhower subscribe to the Fortress America theory, as his remarks about withdrawing American troops from Korea seem to indicate? Has he chinged his mind about the European policy of which he was such a great exponent? Can America afford to make even the slightest slip back to isolation?

We will say no more.