Galbraith Picks Kennedy In Recent 'Esquire' Poll

John Kenneth Galbraith, professor of Economics, declared he prefers John F. Kennedy '40 for President, in a poll of 54 men and women published by Esquire this week. Only one of six other Harvard professors stating their Presidential choices agreed with Galbraith.

In an accompanying article, "The New Mood in Politics," Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. '38, professor of History, repeated his cyclical theory of politics. According to Schlesinger, the new decade will be "one of the exciting and creative epochs in our history." "The politics of the Fifties were.... the politics of fatigue," he wrote, adding, "The people wanted any excuse to forget public affairs."

Both Paul J. Tillich, University Professor, and Louis M. Lyons, Curator of the Nieman Fellowships, were among the 16 persons who chose Adlai Stevenson as the ideal President. It was the largest backing for one person.

C. Crane Brinton '19, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, supported Kennedy along with Galbraith and three others. Brinton framed the major issue of the times as: "orthodox or 'classical' economics, and what I'll call Keynesian or Galbraithian economics: . . . whether we are to let our present methods of production and distribution produce the kind of consumers' goods that annoy the intellectuals, or whether we will tamper politically so as to produce education, housing, hospitals, public transportation, which people ought to want..."

Riesman Warning

Although he did not name a Presidential favorite, David Riesman '34, Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences, warned against the contemporary political complacency. "I feel along with many people that the current American assumption that there can be 'politics as usual' in the year of the atom bomb does not make too much sense. We are perhaps too sure that 1960 will come along without a contaminated atmosphere or even a worse explosion and that we can play guessing games without serious risk to life on this planet."

The only support for Nixon among the Harvard respondents came from Stanley F. Teele, Dean of the Business School. He saw the essential issue as living with Russia "without sacrificing any of our essential values."

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History, Emeritus, backed Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, and the late Summer H. Slichter, Lamont University Professor, favored Nelson A. Rockefeller.