Campaign of Issues

In gentler times an American political campaign was, in peacetime, something of a summer frolic, decked in bunting and confetti, full of oratorical balloon ascensions, baby-kissing, and free beer for everybody. The outside world learned to forgo any serious business and to watch with amused tolerance for the duration. In the taut days of 1960, the American political campaign is something quite different--a serious debate treating soberly the great issues that will affect the whole of mankind, enacted before the eyes of an anxious world.

Last week President Eisenhower officially opened the Republican campaign of 1960, pounding home the point that Republican "peace, prosperity, progress" are visible facts for all 179 million Americans to see and experience. The Democrats were ready to challenge both prosperity and progress with an economic issue of their own--that the balanced budget is no substitute for forced-draft national growth (see Democrats). The U.S.'s lag in the space race had brought such extraterrestrial matters as satellites and lunar probes into the orbit of political oratory. And the solid issue of peace had suddenly been turned into the hottest political question of the early campaign: Is the Administration, in its concern with sound money and balanced budgets, letting the U.S. become second best in military strength?

Solid evidence of Soviet missile progress made the issue of defense of concern to free men everywhere. U.S. defense was also involved as Frenchman faced Frenchman in the streets of Algiers (see FOREIGN NEWS) and Charles de Gaulle, with courage and surpassing leadership, faced the gravest crisis of his regime: the consequences of a weakened France could take the heart out of the Western alliance. Deeper in Africa, the strivings for independence, however prepared the newly free might be, had taken on a decisive undertone that could no longer be ignored. Tension in the Middle East, in the Caribbean, along the Himalaya frontier of the free world, in the great spread of awakening Africans, all emphasized the fact that the affairs of the world are the affairs of the U.S., and that the issues of the U.S. political campaign of 1960 are the issues of the world.

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