The Road to November

The U.S.'s two great political parties this week took off along the twisting, bumpy road that leads to November. Each claimed right-of-way in the middle, but anybody who thought that the new era of "moderation" meant a calm, courteous campaign had not been listening to the cries that came out of Chicago. There, the Democratic platform accused the Republicans of "betrayal" on natural-resources policy, called the farm program "a direct vote-buying scheme," attacked a foreign policy of "bluster and bluff." Democratic orators scored Republican "racketeers," branded Vice President Richard Nixon as a "vice-hatchet man" and a "pet midget."

Driving the 1956 party models were Adlai Ewing Stevenson, 56, of Libertyville, Ill. and Dwight David Eisenhower, 65, of Gettysburg, Pa. Sitting in the front with Stevenson was Estes Kefauver, 53, of Chattanooga, Tenn., the Democrats' strongest possible (farm-vote) vice-presidential nominee. The man most favored to sit beside Ike was Richard Milhous Nixon, 43, of Whittier, Calif. But while both vehicles were styled to the fashionable 1956 moderation lines, they were powered by opposing convictions: the Democratic Party by a belief in more government to direct the people's affairs; the Republican Party by a belief that government should help the people manage their own affairs.

Common Denominator. Stevenson emerged from convention fights within his own party as a tough-fibered winner who had bested Harry Truman and encumbered himself with no special alliances. His acceptance speech laid out his route and his intended destination. Starting from the New and Fair Deals, Stevenson looked for something beyond: an America where poverty is "abolished" and abundance is "used to enrich the lives of every family." The common denominator of most Stevenson plans: government action.

In 1952 Dwight Eisenhower proved himself a rough, aggressive campaigner, and he has promised that he will be the same this time. Moreover, Ike has his own route and destination: by helping Republicans of like mind win offices in the Congress and the statehouses, he hopes to rebuild the G.O.P. into a party that will long remain dedicated to his ideas of partnership between the people and the Federal Government.

General Good Will. This week the big wind from Chicago had eased to a zephyr while the Democrats rested up. But more than 15,000 Republican convention goers were trooping into San Francisco and the cavernous Cow Palace. All seemed serene on the Republican scene: the only faint hope of convention excitement lay in the windy efforts of Harold Stassen to dump Nixon just before the convention opened. Harold got a hand up from California's Nixon-hating Governor Goodwin J. ("Goodie") Knight, who fought a delaying action against a Nixon endorsement in the California caucus -but did little to ruffle the general serenity.

But the fact that Republicans were getting along with each other did not mean that they intended to brake on the curves. Washington's Governor Arthur Langlie, the convention keynoter (see below), spurned Democratic Keynoter Frank Clement's highballing forensics. But Langlie set a hard-hitting style for the Republican campaign when he charged the Democrats with "a naked admission that they are now addicted to the principle that loyalty to a political party comes ahead of loyalty to our beloved country."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.