The Special Interests

Harry S. Truman last week explained again the secret of his party's past successes. "You know," said he. "the real reason the Democrats win elections is ... because the Democratic Party gives the American people the kind of government they want." The platform which his audience had adopted only two days before suggested that there was more to the President's statement than met the eye.

The 1952 Democratic platform does not address itself to the American people as a whole. Unlike progressives of an earlier day, Fair Deal Democrats conceive of politics not in terms of "the people" versus "the special interests," but in terms of the people as the sum of innumerable "special interests."

Accordingly, the 1952 platform contains clauses offering something to: P: Farmers, consumers, taxpayers, civil servants, investors, organized labor, doctors, advocates of socialized medicine, hunters, fishermen, conservationists, small businessmen, migrant workers, airline operators, automobile owners, shipowners, miners, veterans, students, immigrants, the crippled, the blind, the aged, the sick, the unemployed, and widows & orphans. P: East Germans & West Germans (the hope of unity), Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Rumanians, Bulgars, Albanians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians (the hope of liberty), Indians, Pakistanis, Japanese, Filipinos, Australians, New Zealanders, Israelis (continued aid), Arabs ("measures for the relief and reintegration of the Palestine refugees"), Latin Americans, Puerto Ricans, Alaskans, Hawaiians; Virgin Islanders, American Indians and residents of Washington, D.C.

Digging, really deep in the barrel, Democratic platform-makers had also come up with one of the finest special-interest appeals yet, a "babysitting" clause which urged that day care for children of working mothers "should be provided and adequately financed."

The Democrats seem pleased with their platform and Republicans should be pleased with one aspect of it: the Democratic platform proves to the hilt the Republican contention that no aspect of life is outside the Fair Deal's view of the Federal Government's domain.

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