Policies and Votes

October 8, 1956

In 1954, the Maine elections forecast the Democratic Congressional victory that followed. This year the Maine elections seem to forecast an even greater Democratic Congressional victory. They even throw doubt on the previous complacent assumption that “Ike is a shoo-in.”

Republican excuses are not convincing. President Eisenhower declared at a press conference that he did not regard the Maine results as marking a trend: “Maine had a very popular governor . . . and his majority was such that he helped every other person on the ticket.” But by the same reasoning the popularity of the President did not help the Republicans running for Congress.

1954 AND 1948

Mr. Eisenhower’s chosen advisers, in fact, give no sign that they understand the real lesson of the Maine elections, any more than they seem to have understood the real lesson of the Congressional defeat of 1954 or the Dewey defeat of 1948. Writing in Newsweek of Nov. 1, 1954, just prior to the Congressional elections of that year, I offered an interpretation of the probable result that may apply with even greater force today:

“It is this so-called middle-of-the-roadism, this semi-New Dealism, which will probably be the main cause of a Republican Congressional defeat if it occurs. It is amazing that President Eisenhower should exactly duplicate the incredible error that caused Governor Dewey to snatch defeat out of the very jaws of victory in 1948. Like Dewey, he has ignored the traditional Republican philosophy in order to go after the votes of the supposed moderate New Dealers—the so-called middle-of-the-roaders of both parties. Like Dewey, he has taken for granted the votes of the orthodox Republicans on the assumption that they cannot vote for New Deal Democrats and therefore ‘have nowhere else to go.’ But Republican conservatives proved in 1948—as they seem only too likely to prove again in 1954—that they do have a place to go. That place is anywhere but to the polls. They can stay home, play golf, or take a walk.

“This is precisely and demonstrably what they did in 1948. Only 49 million voters bothered to vote for a President in that year compared with 61 million in 1952. Mr. Truman won by default. He got the votes of only about 25 percent of the total eligible electorate. Mr. Eisenhower’s real problem today, like Dewey’s unrecognized problem in 1948, is not that the American public is hot for a return to Trumanism and New Dealism; the real problem is the indifference and apathy of conservative Republicans.”

In the two years since the 1954 elections the Administration’s policies have swung more and more to the left. Even Adlai Stevenson, in accepting the Democratic nomination, admitted that: “After twenty years of incessant damnation of the New Deal [the Republicans] not only haven’t repealed it, but they have swallowed it, or at least most of it. . . . They have caught up with the New Deal at last.”

Mr. Eisenhower, in fact, seems to have been following the theory attributed to Sherman Adams—that if Republicans take over the New Deal they will take over former Democratic voters with it. The record to date suggests that such tactics tend only to alienate traditional Republicans without winning over New Deal Democrats, who put more trust in the originators of the program than in its imitators. Mr. Eisenhower’s popularity is personal, and in large part unrelated to his policies. For some it exists in spite of his policies. The slogan of his promoters has always been, significantly, “I like Ike,” not “I like Ike’s policies.”

NO COATTAILS

Other Republican candidates, it has been shown, cannot ride in on Ike’s coattails. There are no coattails on the Eisenhower jacket. It is not more energetic political campaigning that can save the Republicans from a Congressional defeat, but a highly improbable return before election to their traditional Republican philosophy.

The President’s advisers may think that Administration New Dealism is depriving the Democrats of issues, but its more important effect is to deprive the Republicans of zeal: Some of Stevenson’s recent demagogic and irresponsible proposals, however, may yet frighten enough voters back into the Eisenhower camp.