Why It Matters

In a littered office at Republican national headquarters one day last week, a worn G.O.P. tactician looked up from his master list of congressional districts, nervously reshuffled the foot-high pile of reports on his desk and breathed: "Thank God it isn't next week." Only a few blocks away at Democratic national headquarters, a party tactician jauntily swung his feet up on his desk, carefully straightened his tie (miniature dogs--in honor of Charlie Wilson--on a black back ground) and sighed: "Oh, if it were only next week."

Almost everywhere that politicians gathered, the tacticians' agreement was accepted as political fact: if the election were held this week, the Republican Party would lose control of the U.S.

House of Representatives, and perhaps of the Senate. Explained a Washington pundit last week: "Lots of voters still like Ike but feel quite free to vote Democratic--out of vague protest against something-or-other."

Widespread among voters was the feeling that this election did not matter much. The shift--if there is a shift--would probably be by a narrow margin. Since neither Democratic nor Republican Congressmen have been obedient to party discipline, what difference would it make which side had a numerical advantage?

This line of reasoning missed some basic facts about contemporary U.S. politics. More than ever before Congressmen and congressional candidates are trying to read the public mind, rather than to persuade the voters that such-and-such a course is right. A Democratic victory that included the re-election of liberal Paul Douglas, for instance, would be interpreted by scores of ear-flapping Congressmen of both parties as a sure sign that the nation had swung leftward again. Similarly, the defeat of such Eisenhower Republicans as New Jersey's Clifford Case together with victory for right-wing Republicans would reopen the split in the Republican Party, which this campaign has done much to heal. Facing the voters, the right-wing Republicans struck their flags and yelled to President Eisenhower for help. If his coattails pull the party through with majorities in both Houses, there is not going to be much future argument about who's in charge. After the election it will be clear that every shade and nuance of the returns will bear heavily upon future policy. Eisenhower and the 83rd Congress swung the nation off one course, started it on another. But it is by no means committed to the new direction. It can swing back, or it can fall into a two-year interlude where the President is relatively helpless and Congress breaks into four warring groups: right-and left-wing Democrats, right-and left-wing Republicans.

Presently, voter apathy is so thick it can be cut with a knife. A recent Gal lup poll found that only 21% of voters had given "quite a lot" of thought to the coming election, while 19% had given it "some" thought and 60% "little or none." A year from now it may be hard to believe that the nation did not realize in advance that the 1954 election would set the political scene for 1956 and beyond.

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