What Are We Deciding?

October 24, 1960

What are the central issues that will be decided in this election? The best way to find the answer is not through the TV “debates”—which seem mainly designed to show how quick each candidate is on his feet, and how he can handle, in two or three minutes, the particular curve thrown to him by a reporter—but by imagining the victory of either candidate, and asking ourselves what its probable sequel would be.

A victory for Kennedy would first of all be interpreted as a repudiation of the record of President Eisenhower, both in foreign and domestic policy. It would above all be interpreted as a repudiation of practically every element in his domestic policy that is conservative, noninflationary, or in the direction of fiscal prudence.

For the Democratic platform is an out-and-out left- wing document. It was drafted to reflect Kennedy’s ideas. He supports all its extreme proposals. He starts from the premise that the taxpayers and food consumers owe the farmers a living, at “full parity levels,” regardless of the conditions of supply and demand. This parity income is to be achieved even if it involves not only permanent subsidies but permanent controls over what the farmer plants and sells.

STRIKE VIOLENCE

Kennedy has not dared to differ on any important point from the country’s big labor bosses, especially Walter Reuther. They, in effect, dictated the labor planks of the Democratic platform. What this will mean in practice can be seen from a glance at the current General Electric strike. The International Union of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO, has thrown picket lines around 55 plants. Around GE’s biggest plant, at Schenectady, the union threw a mass picket line of 3,500 strikers, “shoulder to shoulder and belly to back,” to prevent those who wanted peacefully to continue to work from doing so. If Kennedy sees anything wrong with such lawless violence he has neglected to make his view known.

The Democratic platform is a pledge to impose the total welfare state. It promises bigger spending in every direction—housing, education, farm subsidies, old-age medical care, public power. Vice President Nixon has estimated that it would increase total Federal spending by $13.2 billion to $18 billion a year. Kennedy has denied this, but on the Oct. 13 TV debate failed in answer to a direct question to supply his own total. Instead, he professed to believe, like the Democratic platform, that his huge new spending program could be financed with a balanced budget and without inflation. But as his spending promises can hardly add up to less than $10 billion more a year, he owes it to the voters to tell them what additional taxes he proposes to impose to raise it.

TENDENCY TO RETREAT

As to foreign policy, we find that, wherever Kennedy has turned from vague generalities to specific proposals, he has shown a tendency toward retreat and appeasement. His preference for advisers like Stevenson and Bowles, his suggestion that the President should have halted the U-2 flights earlier and expressed regrets to Khrushchev, his opposition to United States resumption of underground nuclear tests, his suggestion that we should publicly declare in advance that we have no intention of defending Quemoy or Matsu—all point in the same direction. If we were to surrender Quemoy and Matsu chiefly because they were “militarily indefensible,” what would become of the case for standing firm on Berlin?

If the implications of Kennedy’s election were more widely understood, that election would be improbable. Why is it, then, that his chances today seem at least even? The reason is that Nixon has failed to make the issues clear. He has not supplied a sufficiently clear- cut alternative. True, on a few questions—the U-2, Quemoy and Matsu, the error of attempts to force “economic growth” by cheap money and inflation—Nixon has spoken out. But he will have to speak out much more clearly for a firm and unequivocal foreign policy, for encouragement of private enterprise, and against big government, big spending, inflation, labor violence, and the total welfare state, if he hopes to win.