Only an Idiot...

From across the Atlantic came dismayed cries and anxious questions: Did the elections mean that the U.S. was planning a retreat from its leadership in the world? In a year of war in Asia and tension in Europe, was the U.S. trying to turn the clock back?

Considering the U.S.'s deeds in the world since Pearl Harbor, if not its words, such questions sounded a little silly to most Americans, yet the first authoritative Republican voice to be heard gave the worriers cold comfort. Hardly had the ballots been counted before Ohio's Robert Taft, leading man of the G.O.P. comeback, talked as though he intended to take apart the framework of North Atlantic security and examine it piece by piece. "Can Europe really be defended? How many American soldiers will be required?" he asked. "There are many things on which I have to be convinced."

The Show-Me's. Taft later made himself clearer (see below) and added: "Only an idiot would be an isolationist today." The fact was, a few hard-shelled America-Only candidates had got elected, most notably Everett Dirksen of Illinois. But more than foreign aid was at issue in Dirksen's victory. And elsewhere, Republican and Democratic internationalists were back in new strength. Michigan's ailing Arthur Vandenberg expected to be back on the Senate floor in January. New Hampshire's Tobey, Vermont's George Aiken, Oregon's Wayne Morse and Wisconsin's Alexander Wiley would be around for at least another six years. Their team had added a potent freshman in Pennsylvania's burly Jim Duff, and it had sent an ancient opponent, Missouri's Forrest Donnell, to the showers. In high Republican councils, Bob Taft's show-me internationalism was more than outbalanced by the sizable majorities of the two international-minded coastal governors, Tom Dewey and Earl Warren.

Clearly, that old bogey the isolationist had gotten no mandate. Much of the confusion stemmed from a misunderstanding of McCarthyism, a made-in-America product fashioned out of wild charges and genuine fears. It could be, and was, used by politicians who wanted to cut the heart out of U.S. policy. But it was also invoked by Republicans whose criticism of the State Department was not that it was doing too much in Europe, but that it had not done enough in Asia. Maryland's John Marshall Butler, who had sensationally defeated McCarthy's archfoe, Millard Tydings, favored aid to Europe. So did California's Richard Nixon, nemesis of Alger Hiss, who campaigned against Communism in government.

The Dissatisfactions. Trumpeted Republican National Chairman Guy Gabrielson: "The attempt ... to insinuate that Republican victory meaDEGns a revival of isolationism is an unworthy fraud and deceit." Alexander Wiley announced that the results meant only a "closer supervision" of foreign aid funds. "There need not be fear that Congress will slash foreign aid with a meat ax," he said.

If the voters were dissatisfied with anything, said New Jersey's Republican Senator Alexander Smith, also a stout internationalist, they were "dissatisfied with the one-sided conduct of foreign affairs." It was the Republican 80th Congress--"the no-good, do-nothing Congress," Harry Truman called it--which had passed the Truman Doctrine (Greek and Turkish aid), the Marshall Plan and the Vandenberg Resolution, which inspired the North Atlantic Treaty.

Just to make sure that everyone understood these things, Ike Eisenhower spoke up in Dallas, repeating a lesson the U.S. had learned. "Russia knows the U.S. cannot live by itself alone. They know if they can break us away from the rest of the world, we are beaten without a war."

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