TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/60elect/60elect.001

Text File | 1992-08-29 | 11.5 KB | 233 lines

                                                                                February 15, 1960

THE CAMPAIGN OF ISSUES

In 1960 Candidates Run Against Ideas


     In 1960 issues are astir, and no dominant personality such
as F.D.R. or Ike, no overriding emergency such as World War or
Great Depression looms on the November horizon to overshadow
them. A historian of U.S. presidential elections might well have
to go back to 1912, with its clashing tides of opinion on
tariffs and regulations of Big Business, to find a presidential
contest in which issues were as significant as they promise to
be in 1960. So far no hopeful in either party has nailed
together a complete issue platform (the closest: New York's
Governor Nelson Rockefeller). But most candidates have begun to
sense that they may in the long run be measured by how they
measure up to the issues. The major issues and positions so far:


DEFENSE AND PEACE

     Already hotting up is a major debate over the adequacy of
the Eisenhower Administration defense programs to cope with the
dangers of the coming "missile gap." Nixon defends the
Administration program with no sign of misgivings. Among the
Democratic hopefuls, Texas' Lyndon Baines Johnson and
Missouri's Stuart Symington have hammered hardest at the missile
gap, but Massachusetts' John Fitzgerald Kennedy has been
frankest in facing the prospect that more defense might cost
more money. The nation must increase the "portion of our
national resources" devoted to missile programs, he says.
Symington, Harry Truman's onetime (1947-50) Air Force Secretary,
claims that drastic reorganization of the defense structure
could chop defense costs by $10 billion -- 25% of the present
defense budget.

     As measured by pollsters, the missile gap's impact on
public opinion has been faint so far -- partly because of
widespread public confidence that President Eisenhower knows
plenty about defense, partly because the public tends to see
national "peace," which also takes in the aims and conduct of
foreign policy. Public-opinion probers find that the public 1)
puts "keeping the peace" far ahead of all other national issues,
and 2) believes, by a margin of 7 to 5, that the Republican
Party is able to keep the peace better than the Democratic
party. That 7-to-5 margin may be more than enough to cancel out
any gains the Democrats can squeeze out of the missile gap.
Shrewdly aware that "peace" rather than national defense is the
No. 1 issue as the public sees it, Hubert Humphrey has been
comparatively quiet about the missile gap, has stressed
disarmament instead. "There is a real possibility of progress
toward genuine disarmament," he keeps repeating.

     The "missile gap" will loom bigger in November if
Democrats can succeed in convincing the voters that the U.S. is
also lagging in the space race, in rate of economic growth, and
in scientific-technical education -- and that all the lags
together add up to a danger that the U.S. may slip to "second
best" in the world. Such a composite "second-best" issue is
already shaping up among pundits. But it is a sticky issue for
a Democratic candidate to grab hold of, involving a risk that
it might lose votes by seeming unpatriotic.


GROWTH & INFLATION

     The underlying ideological difference between the
Democratic and Republican parties emerges in the debate between
1) the Democratic claim that the Administration's stress on
sound money has hindered the nation's economic growth, and 2)
the Administration argument that sound money fosters economic
growth by encouraging saving for investment. The
Administration's "prosperity," argue the Democrats, is really
stagnation: the economy has been growing at a rate of 2.3% since
1953 when it ought to have been growing at a rate of 4.5% (or
5% or 6%). Humphrey and Johnson have hit the "growth" issue
hardest. "Tight money," cries Johnson in a scrambled metaphor,
"can only mean a tight grip of stagnation about the windpipe of
our future." Humphrey, playing on an old Populist dislike of
bankers, claims that the Administration's tight-money policy,
by pushing up interest rates, is "a benefit for the big banks."

     Since it involves basic Government policies that affect
the lives of all citizens, the "growth" controversy may be the
most important domestic issue of the 1960 campaign. But so far
it has had little impact on public opinion. As the public sees
it, the No. 1 economic issue by far is the high cost of living.
Paradoxically, the public feels, by a margin of 8 to 5 in a
Gallup poll, that the Democratic Party, rather than the
Republican, is more interested in trying to hold down prices.
In public opinion, apparently, the long spell of price upcreep
beginning in 1956 cancels out the Administration's stress on
the goal of sound money.


THE FARM MESS

     Just about everybody in both parties -- even the farmer
himself -- agrees that federal farm programs have become
intolerably expensive (cost in fiscal 1959: $7 billion). But
none of the presidential hopefuls have as yet come out with a
convincing agenda for cleaning up the mess. Humphrey has
unveiled a four-point "charter of hope for agriculture," and
Kennedy and Symington have outdone him with rival six-point
programs, but all three programs are short on specifics. Johnson
says that "American ingenuity should be equal to the task" of
channeling surplus food to "those who need it," but his own
ingenuity has produced only a slogan ("food bin for freedom").
Administration insiders say that Nixon, with the President's
tacit blessing, is planning to speak out with a farm program of
his own, departing from Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson's
rigidities enough to sidestep the massive dislike that Benson
has piled up among the farmers.


EDUCATION

     Last spring the Gallup poll undertook to find out what, if
anything, people thought the Federal Government should be
spending more money on. Topping the list: education. The Gallup
finding indicates that federal aid to education will be one of
the 1960's most important domestic issues. Johnson, Humphrey,
Kennedy and Symington all favor more of it. Vice President
Nixon's efforts to take hold of the education issue
("Inadequate classrooms, underpaid teachers and flabby standards
are weaknesses we must constantly strive to eliminate") are
hindered by the fact that President Eisenhower has drawn back
from his first-term support for federal aid, now opposes direct
grants for school construction.

     Neither Nixon nor any of the Democratic hopefuls have yet
grabbed at the real education issue: the troubles of U.S.
education arise not from a shortage of federal funds but from
a shortage of citizen responsibility -- the failure of many
parents and local leaders to see to it that their own
communities build adequate schools and that the children in them
are instructed according to standards of excellence. Federal
grants might help to raise salaries and speed classroom
construction in lagging areas of the U.S., but essentially the
problem is one that faraway Washington is incapable of solving.


CIVIL RIGHTS

     Federal protection of Negro rights may be a hotter issue
before the Democratic Convention than after it. The image of
Texan Lyndon Johnson as a Southerner is the biggest single
roadblock between him and the nomination. If Johnson is not the
Democratic nominee (and the odds as of now are against him),
the civil rights issue may be pretty well neutralized. Nixon
has spoken out forthrightly for civil rights progress, says that
the goal is "equality of opportunity for all Americans."
Humphrey, Kennedy and Symington all have unspotted voting
records on civil rights. All three Senators (and Johnson too)
back the Democratic plan for federal registrars to protect Negro
voting rights in federal elections. But the Administration has
seized the initiative with Attorney General William Rogers' plan
for court-appointed referees to safeguard Negro voting rights
in all elections, state and local as well as federal. Whether
the Democratic majorities in Congress accept the Rogers plan or
reject it, it may win some Negro votes for the G.O.P. Dwight
Eisenhower got an estimated 21% of the Negro vote in 1952, some
39% in 1956; unless the economy sags in the meantime, Nixon
might do even better in 1960.


FEDERAL AID

     Democrats will doubtless try to make an issue out of the
Administration's reluctance -- stronger in Ike's second term than
in his first -- to spend federal money for state and local
projects such as public housing, urban renewal, programs to aid
depressed areas. Sure to pass during the current session of
Congress, as exhibits for Democrats to point to from the
hustings, are housing and depressed area bills much bigger than
the Administration wants. If Ike vetoes them, Democrats can
point to the vetoes. The need for state and local public works
is undeniable -- the big-city slums, the inadequate airports, the
battered depressed areas all too visible -- but it will be a
misfortune for the nation if no presidential candidate in 1960
comes forth with a program for getting states and localities to
do the best part of the job instead of calling upon Washington
to do it all.


TAX REFORM

     The Federal Government's power to cope with most domestic
problems is severely limited. Washington cannot abolish
Southern prejudices against Negroes or the tendency of local
politicians to demand federal aid instead of upping local taxes.
But there is one issue that the Federal Government is entirely
competent to deal with: reform of the federal income-tax
structure. The present structure, piled up piecemeal over the
years combines steeply rising tax rates that reach a
confiscatory 91% with a maze of loopholes and deductions. A
millionaire may pay a lower rate of income tax on his gross
income than a salary earner who has to scrape to send his
children to college. One taxpayer may carry a much heavier tax
burden than a neighbor with the same gross income and the same
number of dependents. Equity demands drastic tax reform that
will both cut the rates and plug the loopholes. Counted so far
on the side of tax reform: Nixon.


LABOR

     The real problem -- how to keep Big Labor from damaging the
economy by pushing up wages faster than productivity goes
up -- is likely to be pretty much ignored in 1960; nobody wants
to antagonize labor leaders already annoyed about last year's
Landrum-Griffin labor-reform bill. To soothe labor's feelings,
Democrats in Congress are planning to pass a bill upping the
U.S. minimum wage from $1 to $1.25 or at least $1.10. Democrat
Humphrey openly calls the Landrum-Griffin Act "punitive."
Republican Nixon openly calls it "very constructive."


RELIGION

     Off by itself, unrelated to differences between the two
parties, lurks the bristly issue of religion -- meaning the
religion of one particular Democratic hopeful. Roman Catholic
John Kennedy. In a Gallup poll last year, one voter out of
three in the South and one out of five in the rest of the U.S.
said that he would not vote for a Catholic for President even
if the nominee was "generally well qualified" (but only 47% of
the voters polled knew that Jack Kennedy is a Catholic). Hence
Kennedy's Democratic rivals may try to convince convention
delegates that a Catholic cannot win: Kennedy in turn can make
a case that Catholics might turn against the Democratic Party
if he is refused the nomination after showing he can win in the
primaries.