THE ISSUES OF THE 1958 CAMPAIGN
We are gathered here to discuss the issues of the campaign that will reach its climax in the months ahead. Some of the political pundits have been saying that this is a strange campaign – that there are no real issues – there is no way of telling whether the country would be better off with a Republican or a Democratic Congress. That kind of analysis, in my opinion, is wholly superficial.
It is true that the Democratic 85th Congress achieved a remarkable record of supporting the President of the United States on the key parts of his program. It is true that the Republican 83rd Congress did not support the President nearly as well. It is true, too, that Democratic votes and leadership were necessary to save the President’s trade and aid programs, our participation in the international labor organization, and our contribution to the United Nations Point Four technical assistance.
It is particularly true that the Republicans are completely out of ammunition in this campaign. Heretofore they have dealt in irresponsible accusations concerning Democratic administrations and foreign wars – they have reserved for themselves the title of the Party of Peace – but now American troops patrol Lebanon, American warships patrol the Formosan Straits, and we have teetered consistently on the brink of foreign wars no American wants or could even explain.
Heretofore the Republicans have tried to make an issue of corruption in government – but no longer does Mr. Nixon defy us to name him one case of Republican corruption, no longer does Mr. Eisenhower promise prompt action on any wrongdoers in his own official family. The best they can say now is that Democratic administrations fired the wrongdoers and prosecuted them, while Republicans treat them more kindly.
Heretofore the Republicans have irresponsibly assailed the Democrats as the protectors of unscrupulous labor bosses – but when the votes were counted in the House of Representatives on the labor reform bill that would have put Jimmy Hoffa and his ilk out of business, more than two-thirds of the Democrats supported the Kennedy-Ives bill while nearly four-fifths of the Republicans opposed it.
Heretofore the Republicans have accused the Democrats of being anti-business – they have relied upon the businessmen of America for their funds and their votes – but the record now shows that it was the Democratic 85th Congress that brought tax relief to 98% of the firms in this country and made permanent a strengthened Small Business Administration, and that when the Democrats went further, in the amendment offered by Senator Fulbright and sought to make corporate income taxes more gradual for small business, it was defeated by the opposition of two-thirds of the Senate Republicans.
Heretofore the Republicans have insisted that they were the party of sound money and balanced budgets – but the record of the present administration shows the worst peacetime inflation in our history, a series of unbalanced budgets despite cuts by Democratic Congresses, an increase in the number of alphabet agencies and non-defense employees, and a Democratic Congress which, in its last session, managed to fill the gaps and shortcomings of the Eisenhower program and still keep total non-defense appropriations nearly $1.5 billion below the amount requested by the President.
The Republicans cannot talk about prosperity, with more than five million still unemployed, with millions of others working a short week, with production in our key industries still down some 30%, and the number of business failures still rising. They cannot talk about a “do-nothing” Congress when the President himself, as well as every impartial observer, has agreed that this has been one of the most productive, constructive Congresses in recent history. They cannot talk about a hostile Congress that will engage in a “cold war” with the Executive Branch – when the record of constructive cooperation has been so much higher in this Congress than in the Republican 83rd.
In short, if these pundits who talk about no campaign issues mean that there is a lack of Republican issues – that the old GOP slogans have lost their meaning – we might agree with them. We might even feel sorry for the man in Republican headquarters who was employed to cross out the word “prosperity” in all of those speeches and leaflets hailing “peace, prosperity, and progress” – and now has to throw them away altogether.
But this is not to say that there are no longer any burning issues – that there is no real difference between our two major parties – that all the battles of the past have been won – and that elections are hereafter to be decided more on personalities and public relations than on issues. I know that some members of our own party may endorse such sentiments. But I cannot agree.
I cannot agree that the issues are all gone or the problems all solved. This is no time for the Democratic Party to be basking in its past glory – or even to content itself with the record of the past two years. This is a time to look to the future – a time to re-form our ranks, restate our objectives, and march ahead.
For our agenda today is, if anything, longer than it was in the 1930s. We have not yet eliminated the malignant effects of poverty, injustice, and illness from the land. We have not yet met the needs of more than five million unemployed workers – of more than four million people driven from their farms – of the nearly seven million families, believe it or not, still trying to get by on less than two thousand dollars a year. We have not yet ended the waste of our natural resources – reversed the decay that is blighting so many of our major cities – or, most tragic of all, found the means to stop man’s destruction of man.
In short, we are not entering this campaign merely seeking reward for a job well done – we are seeking an opportunity to do the job that still needs to be done. There are schools and hospitals and urban renewal projects and dams and atomic power plants which will not be built unless we can achieve a substantial Democratic margin in the 86th Congress. There are unemployed workers, retired workers, workers without minimum wage protection, workers whose dues are exploited by unscrupulous racketeers – and only an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress can give them the attention and protection they deserve. We still must face the challenge of better immigration policies, better homes in better neighborhoods, better weapons against monopoly, better race relations, and a better health program to meet the staggering costs of medical research and medical care.
No, we do not lack an agenda – we do not lack issues for the campaign – and, in seeking to fulfill these responsibilities, we do not lack the support of the American people.
LABOR REFORM
Perhaps the most shocking illustration of the importance of securing a much greater Democratic majority in Congress was the cynical act of the House Republicans, aided and abetted by the Secretary of Labor Mitchell, in killing all chance for labor reform legislation this year. How they can now insist that labor reform will be an issue in this fall’s election, I do not know. How they can now attempt to place the blame for the failure of legislative action on the Democrats, I do not know. For all the talk about possible amendments, technical omissions, Committee Control, procedural tactics and parliamentary delay cannot obscure one simple fact: the Kennedy-Ives labor reform bill, a strong bill carrying out the recommendations of the McClellan Committee, passed the Senate by a vote of 88-1 and came to a vote in the House of Representatives – and there it died, despite the fact that more than 2/3 of the Democrats supported the bill, simply because more than 3/4 of the Republican members opposed it.
I would not claim that Jimmy Hoffa controls the Republican Party in the House – and yet only Jimmy Hoffa and his associates are benefitting by the defeat of the Kennedy-Ives bill. Those who voted against it – those business interests who distorted the bill in the hope of keeping their whipping boy alive – must bear a heavy responsibility as labor racketeering continues unchecked during the coming months.
No, there is no mystery as to who killed the Kennedy-Ives labor reform bill, as some newspaper columnists have suggested. It was killed by petty politics on the part of the Republican Party.
What makes their action completely cynical and incomprehensible is the fact that this was not, and should not have been, and did not need to be, a partisan issue. Members of both parties signed the McClellan Committee report. A distinguished Republican Senator from New York, Irving Ives, joined me in drafting legislation to carry out that report. It was reported by the full Senate Labor Committee with only one dissenting vote. Amendments on the Senate floor were added by Democrats and Republicans, and in some instances resisted by Democrats and Republicans. It passed the Senate with only one dissenting vote. It was bipartisan in origin – nonpartisan in nature. It is unfortunate that, once it reached the other body, there were too many Republicans more interested in an issue than in a bill, more interested in NAM propaganda than in labor reform.
There are other essential facts which no amount of quibbling can obscure: This was a strong labor reform bill. It carried out all of the previously unfulfilled recommendations of the McClellan Committee and added other legislative curbs on racketeering as well. It was drafted by two members of the McClellan Committee, strongly supported by Senator McClellan himself, and improved on the floor by the amendment of another distinguished McClellan Committee member, Sam Ervin of North Carolina. It not only carried out all of the administration’s recommendations on labor reform (as distinguished from other areas of labor-management relations), but it was also much stronger than the proposals of the administration. The administration bill, for example, contained no effective regulation of trusteeships; no guarantees of secret elections for union officers; no requirements for the disclosure of conflicts of interests by union officials; no provision against “shakedown picketing”; no prohibition against using union funds to influence union elections; and no strong criminal penalties against destruction of union records, against false entries in union books, against refusal to submit reports, or against refusal to permit the Secretary of Labor to inspect books and accounts.
These and other important restrictions were all omitted from the administration bill and they were all contained in the Kennedy-Ives bill as it passed the Senate. Consequently, those Republicans who piously insist that the Kennedy-Ives bill was inadequate because it did not carry out the administration’s recommendations may have their eyes on the election but not on the official record.
I realize that it is always possible to find fault with any bill – to point out omissions – to read in other meanings – to call for further amendments or further study or further clarification. This is particularly true in the controversial field of labor – which is precisely why no legislation has been passed in the last decade. But had Mr. Mitchell and the Republican leadership in the House been willing to put aside the partisan sniping – to support this bill as the only opportunity available to curb labor racketeering – Jimmy Hoffa and his associates would be virtually out of business today. Their conflict of interest transactions, their destruction of union books, their manipulation of trusteeships, their rigged elections and conventions, their appointment of ex-convicts as union officials, their use of management middlemen – all these practices upon which our hearings have shown Hoffa’s empire is based – would have been curbed, had the Kennedy-Ives bill passed the House.
Whatever the cause or the merits of the delay, whatever complaints may have been made about procedure, this bill would have passed and done the job – had it only received the support of Secretary Mitchell and the House Republican leadership. We can only hope that the voters will not be fooled by such cynical tactics and partisan exaggerations – and that they will return to Washington an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress – one which will not seek to penalize a basically honest labor movement for the misdeeds of the few, by inflicting arbitrary restrictions which bear no relation to the practices exposed by our Committee – but one which will instead enact a sound, constructive labor reform measure – one which will help the labor movement itself clean its own house and remove the stigma of racketeering for all time to come. That job can be done by an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress.
THE CHALLENGE ABROAD
No crisis treated by the lack of decisive leadership under this administration compares with the constant state of crisis which confronts us around the world. Whatever the Republicans may have said about Korea in 1952, however they may have exploited to their advantage the Hungarian and Suez crises of 1956, we in the Democratic Party must not play politics with the delicate situations in the Middle East and the Far East that find us poised once again on the brink of war.
But the fact remains that the American people have no clear and consistent understanding of why we are in Lebanon; why we are committed to the defense of Matsu, if indeed we are; what we are going to do in either area, or what we hope to accomplish. We are constantly faced with possibilities of a brush-fire war after six years of steady deterioration in our capacity to fight brush-fire wars. We have extended our commitments around the world, without regard to the sufficiency of our military posture to fulfill those commitments.
We have failed to learn that leadership and prestige are not maintained simply through paper alliances with reactionary, unpopular governments which have no grassroots support. And our own failures have not yet taught us that no commitment at all is better than one which our allies do not support, and which is politically or militarily unfeasible. There is, perhaps, no better illustration of this than our deliberately vague and inconsistent response to the crisis in the Formosan Straits – where the weight of military, diplomatic, political, and historical judgment would dictate the contrary policy.
It is not as though these crises in the Far East and the Middle East are new – and that we are thus suddenly and necessarily confronted with undesirable alternatives in order to say our face and to fulfill our commitments. The deterioration of our position in the Far East, the instability of unpopular governments in the Middle East, the decline in our prestige and the increase in Soviet influence – all these may now have passed beyond the point of control or influence. But the nettles were not seized, if they could have been seized, long ago when our success might have been more assured.
I do not say these developments went unnoticed. I do not say that we were not promised action by Mr. Eisenhower and Mr. Dulles. But I do say that these promises have always sounded too much like the exhortation from King Lear that goes:
“I will do such things –
What they are yet I know not –
But they shall be
The terrors of the earth.”
Drift and indecision are incapable of meeting the problem of change – and the world has changed in the last six years. The weapons forged by the Truman administration are insufficient for the challenges confronting the Eisenhower administration, as flattered as we may be by their imitation.
The Soviets’ chief weapon is no longer military but economic – yet we have not revised our own arsenal of weapons accordingly. Eastern Europe shows chinks in the Iron Curtain – but we have not changed our policies to take advantage of them. Our Western alliances, our Good Neighbor policy, our majorities in the United Nations, our superiority in military, scientific, and economic development – all of these have deteriorated in the past six years – but we do not seem to recognize it. The programs, the policies, and the positions which were good enough for 1952 are not good enough for 1958.
In the words of Abraham Lincoln:
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think and act anew.”
This challenge reaches its greatest height in the matter and our defensive and deterrent strength. We are rapidly approaching that dangerous period which General Gavin and others have called the “gap” or the “missile lag” – a period, in the words of General Gavin, “in which our own offensive and defensive missile capabilities will lag so far behind those of the Soviets as to place us in a position of great peril.”
The most critical years of the gap would appear to be 1960-1964.
As the missile striking power of the Soviet Union increases and our own retaliatory power lags – as the adequacy of our continental defense falls behind that of the Soviets – as we fail to reduce sufficiently the vulnerability of our attack installations and planes, as contrasted with the wide dispersal of the Soviet-Red Chinese power – the deterrent ratio might well shift to the Soviets so heavily, during the years of the gap, as to open to them a new shortcut to world domination.
Our peril is not simply because Russian striking power during the years of the gap will have a slight edge over us in missile power – they will have several times as many: Intermediate range missiles to destroy our European missile and SAC bases; intercontinental missiles to devastate our own country, installations, and Government; and history's largest fleet of submarines, and possibly long-range supersonic jet bombers, to follow up this advantage. If by that time their submarines are capable of launching missiles, they could destroy 85 per cent of our industry, 43 of our 50 largest cities, and most of the nation's population.
We, on the other hand, are still emphasizing budgets over security – threatening to impound funds the Congress authorized for additional Polaris submarines – lacking the missile developments and bases needed to close the gap – relying upon a continental defense system inadequate for the missile age – and depending for deterrence and retaliation upon our manned bombers with all of their problems of sufficient alert, dispersal, and refueling.
Whether the Soviets will use their advantage to attack us in a nuclear holocaust or to nibble away gradually at our security, I do not know. I do know that these are facts which the American Congress and people must face – and understand – and act on accordingly. And yet, when I spoke of these matters on the Senate floor last month, Senator Capehart and other members of his party responded with outraged indignation. They talked clearing the Senate galleries and closing the Senate doors for a “star chamber” session. They talked, despite the fact that Defense Department’s spokesmen had publicly confirmed these facts long ago, about are giving information to the enemy and alarming the American people. They talked about our undermining confidence in the President and “selling America short.”
But this is not a time to keep the facts from the people – to keep them complacent. To sound the alarm is not to panic but to seek action from an aroused public. In the words of the poet Ella Wilcox:
“To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men.
The human race has climbed on protest.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many.”
No, my friends, it is not we who are selling America short – not those of us who believe that the American people have the capacity to accept the harsh facts of our position and respond to them. But I will tell you who is selling America short. It is the little men with little vision who say we cannot afford to build the world's greatest defense against aggression – it is those who say we cannot afford to bolster the free world against the ravages of hunger and disease and disorder upon which Communism feeds. The men who lack confidence in America are the men who say our people are not up to facing the facts of our missile lag – who say they are not up to bearing the cost of survival.
And these are the men who say, with respect to our domestic affairs, that there is no way we can avoid the periodic downturns in our economy that idle five million men and 30 per cent of our key industries. These are the same little men with little vision who scoffed at George Norris when he dreamed about a great network of dams in the Tennessee Valley – who scoffed at the concept of fifty thousand airplanes in 1940 – who scoffed at the concept of sixty million jobs after World War II.
These are the men who are selling America short – who have substituted fear for faith in our future – who are caught up in their own disbeliefs and doubts about our ability to build a better America.
The Democratic Party rejects these voices that would sell America short. Our party has never been the party of little men with little vision – and, with your help, it never will be.
Source: David F. Powers Personal Papers, Box 30, "Democratic National Committee Regional Conference, Atlantic City, NJ, 10 September 1958." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.