Rolling Out the Lines

In Meridian, Miss, one night last week, Adlai Stevenson listened to a guitar-twanging singer moan through Mississippi River Blues, then rose to speak. Before him, overflowing Ray Stadium, were 18,000 ballad-loving Democrats who had gathered to observe "National Hillbilly Music Day" and listen to a Democratic speech. At about the same hour, in New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Vice President Richard Nixon sipped a glass of milk* and then stepped up to have his say. Before him sat 2,700 New Yorkers who had paid $100 a place for champagne, milk, rare beef and the Republican cause. In these contrasting settings last week, five months before congressional election day, Adlai Stevenson and Richard Nixon rolled out the basic party lines for the campaign of 1954.

Dog in the Meathouse. The Democratic line, strung all through Stevenson's speech, centered on two main arguments: 1) after 20 years of opposing the executive for opposition's sake, Republicans in Congress have shown that they do not know how to function as the party in power; 2) Dwight Eisenhower, trying to please myriad Republican viewpoints, has failed to lead as he should.

Stevenson gave his case a characteristic bounce (and uncharacteristically mixed his metaphor): "Caught between contradiction, apathy and McCarthy, they act as confused as a blind dog in a meathouse. And this is little to be wondered at, seeing that the Republican Party has as many wings as a boardinghouse chicken." The Republicans reminded Stevenson of the people of Siena, Italy, of several hundred years ago: "It is said that a captain they hired to wage war on a nearby town . . . won a great victory . . . [The people] wanted to thank the captain in a handsome way, yet they also feared that he might now conquer Siena as well . . . It was finally [decided] that the way to strike a balance between fear and gratitude was to kill the captain, and thereafter worship him as Siena's patron saint."

Said Stevenson: "What has unbalanced the system, imperiled the nation, splintered our basic unity, sapped our energy, is the congressional invasion of the President's domain, together with the President's reluctance to man the barricades of his office and defend those rights and perform those duties that are his . . ."

The Lip Servers. In New York, Richard Nixon (and Oveta Gulp Hobby, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare) laid out the Republican line just as plainly: since Jan. 20, 1953, the Eisenhower Administration has accomplished much. The bloodshed in Korea has been ended, a new defense policy has emerged, foreign policy has been strengthened, inflation has been stopped, taxes and Government spending have been cut. The President has presented a history-making program to Congress, and there is one main reason for the difficulties the program has encountered: too many Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Said Nixon: "Don't listen to those who say that a Democratic Congress would support President Eisenhower . . . The truth is that Democrats pay lip service to the President because they want to capitalize on his popularity. But when the chips are down, they have voted solidly against his program."

Nixon blamed one of the Eisenhower Administration's most pressing problems on the Democrats: "There would be no crisis in Indo-China today if the Truman-Acheson foreign policy had not lost China to the Communists." Illustrating that the Republicans and boardinghouse chickens do not have a monopoly on wings. Nixon pointed out that one wing of the Democratic Party shouts for civil rights while another blocks action. Said he: "The Republican Administration has done more for civil rights in 17 months than the Democratic Party did in 17 years."

About the McCarthy issue, which underlay so much of what Adlai Stevenson said, Nixon made no direct comment. But the meeting's whole tone was anti-McCarthy. The Vice President said that the Administration, through Attorney General Herbert Brownell and FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, are "smashing the Communist conspiracy to bits." When New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey praised Nixon as a Communist fighter "who got results, not just headlines," applause swelled through the ballroom.

Variations on the Theme. Both party lines obviously had some weak strands. Locally, many of the races for 435 seats in the House and 36 in the Senate will develop variations on the theme. While some Democrats obviously will attempt to cast themselves as better supporters of the President than their Republican opponents, Dwight Eisenhower's popularity will be the Republicans' asset.

Unmentioned in last week's line-rolling, but carefully watched on all sides, is an important issue that will work for one side or the other: the state of the U.S. economy. Three months ago Democrats began to cry "Republican recession." By last week most of the business indicators clearly pointed upward. Before the polls open, that issue may shift to the G.O.P side.

* Served at the suggestion of Dairy Farmer Thomas E. Dewey as part of his campaign to help dairy farmers.

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