Stupidity

Whenever General Eisenhower opens his mouth these days, he sounds snappy and foolish. His most recent foolishness has, unfortunately, been to lead the Republican National Committee into supposing that President Kennedy's foreign policy should be made the central issue of this fall's campaign. By embracing Ike's language, the party has forced its candidates for office to insist ever more strongly and frequently that the current Administration has wobbled inexcusably in its attitudes toward Cuba. As a necessary corollary, they have shouted for precisely the sort of punitive action against the island that the President at least senses to be extremely dangerous, and that nearly every U.S. ally has sensibly protested.

That foreign policy has for the moment ceased to be a non-partisan issue is not the worst of all this furious talk. It is rather that the President, by failinp to make sure the electorate is sufficiently aware of just how complicated issues like Cuba are, has failed also to stifle public suspicions that Democrats are always appeasing someone. Mr. Kennedy's calculation that he should avoid educating the people to painful realizations in election years is going to backfire badly.