What Are We Deciding?

November 3, 1952

What is the central issue that will be decided in this election? Perhaps the best way to find the answer to this is to imagine that the election has already been held and that the outcome is already known. Suppose Governor Stevenson has won? What will the voters have said?

The answer is clear. The election of Stevenson and of another Democratic Congress will be almost universally accepted as an endorsement of the record of Harry S. Truman and a call for the continuance of the Fair Deal.

Nobody knows this better than Truman himself. It explains his desperate campaign for the Democratic ticket. He knows that the election of General Eisenhower and a Republican Congress would be a repudiation of his regime, while the election of a Democratic successor would be a “vindication.” Stevenson knows it too. Since his first feeble efforts to disassociate himself from “the mess in Washington” he has not dared to differ from Truman on a single important issue.

What will the voters have endorsed if they endorse Trumanism? They will have endorsed the most unscrupulous campaign of slander that a President has ever stooped to in our history. . . . Truman’s defamation of the very man he had up until a few months ago most honored and appointed to the highest positions of trust. . . . Truman’s whole record of vilification of those who have dared to differ with him, from “too many Byrds” in Congress to the Marines’ “propaganda machine almost equal to Stalin’s.”

They will have endorsed an incredible softness to Communism, illustrated by Yalta, Teheran, and Potsdam; the attempt to force Chiang Kai-shek to take the Chinese Communists into his government; the payment of ransom to a Communist government to release captured American fliers; the tardiness in acting on Vogeler; the virtual abandonment of Oatis; the effort to dismiss the Alger Hiss case as a “red herring,” the Tydings committee whitewash; Truman’s statement that he liked “Old Joe” Stalin; his acquiescence in humiliations to our Ambassadors to Russia; soft now-don’t-do-it-again reproofs even when the Russians deliberately shoot down American planes and men.

They will have endorsed the unbelievable vacillations and zigzags; that bungled us into a stalemate war in Korea, leaving us today with 122,000 casualties and a thin hope that the Communists may still be willing to call it a draw and let us out.

They will have endorsed the widespread corruption symbolized by deep freezers, mink coats, and the Kansas City vote frauds.

In the economic realm, if the voters return Stevenson and a Democratic Congress, they will have endorsed the most reckless spending in our history, the most burdensome and destructive taxes, and a policy of deliberate monetary inflation, especially for the campaign period. In the five and a half months ended Oct. 15, for example, money in circulation was increased $1,157,000,000 to a new high figure of $29,617,000,000—four times the amount outstanding in 1939. This monetary inflation has been brought about by deficit financing, government-bond support, and cheap-money policies. It means soaring living costs and a rotting dollar, which Truman pretends to offset by the futile and disruptive device of price fixing.

Pour on top of this the fantastic campaign against the Taft-Hartley Act, the misuse of the Federal government to organize and build up unions and enforce their demands, and the openly declared aim of Stevenson to deprive the government itself of the injunctive power, even against strikes that imperil the national safety.

The issue in this election, in brief, is whether Federal intervention and Federal power shall be encouraged to grow until they choke out economic and personal liberty and leave us to the mercies of an increasingly arrogant and possibly irremovable bureaucracy.

Those who want this result will vote for Governor Stevenson. Those who have misgivings about it will vote for General Eisenhower.