Report of the County Chairman (2 page)

I also decided that in the 1960 elections I would work diligently on the local level, but who my candidate would be in the primaries I did not know. I was somewhat in the position of the Kentucky senator who replied, when asked by a reporter what stand he was going to take in a forthcoming election, “I haven’t made up my mind, son, but when I do I’m going to be damned bitter about it.”

If I felt no bitterness, I did feel a deep commitment. This stemmed, I believe, from a profound love of country that I had developed over the years. I suppose that accidental circumstances have accounted for much of this: I have served my country in two wars; in peacetime I have been involved in many dangerous pursuits relevant to our position in the world; during the Hungarian revolution I was often behind Russian lines; I have undergone three other major revolutions, disaster at sea, and danger in half a dozen different foreign lands. An appalling share of the money I have been able to earn has been handed over to the government. And I have had to learn the operation of the American system in order to teach it at both the high-school and the college level.

But most of all, my strong affection for my country stems from the fact that America has been overly generous
to me. As a boy I lived in extreme poverty with a mother who did the cruelest kind of sweatshop work to educate a horde of abandoned children whom she picked up off the streets. But because ours was a generous country, I later on received scholarships and fellowships and traveling funds and good jobs. I was given, at no expense to myself, an excellent education and when I started to write, my countrymen supported me rather better than my native talents might have warranted. I was in truth what I remain today, a very fortunate son of America and as such I was much concerned in my country’s politics and was determined to do something about them.

“If I were asked,” I said to myself one night as our boat plowed northward to the strains of Beethoven’s
Seventh
, “why I want to become involved in the forthcoming election I’d have to say that it was because in my work overseas I’ve seen at first hand how sadly our reputation has slipped.” I recalled the riots in which I had at one time or other been engaged where Asian students calumniated the United States as a fat, weary, selfish, illiterate, perverse warmonger, determined to destroy all the world’s revolutionary movements. I recalled how ineffective I had been when I tried to argue with these students, assuring them that the United States was not like that. They would not listen to me because they were convinced that we were a tired and timid nation.

I recalled the disasters our people overseas had led us into by always supporting the reactionary side. It was what one might call the Buick syndrome. I saw it at its best once in Korea when we were about to capture a
minor city, and our general said to his staff, “As soon as we take the city, you fellows set up a civil government, and be sure to use for mayor a Korean who is sympathetic to us.” When one of his underlings asked how they were to select a mayor he replied, “Pick out one of the men who has a Buick or some other big car.” I often reflected upon this rule-of-thumb, and I concluded to my surprise that this Buick syndrome was not a bad way for selecting quickly a temporary mayor who was likely to be inclined toward our side, but it did seem somewhat inadequate as a criterion for selecting a permanent mayor. I suspect that most of our errors abroad have arisen from the fact that in laziness we have allowed temporary arrangements to crystallize into permanent agreements, for to differentiate between the two requires both courage and insight, and these two virtues have often been absent in our foreign representatives.

I recalled also how fragile our international alliances seemed to have become. In England I had read newspapers which frankly suggested that Great Britain enter into anti-American rearrangements. In Pakistan I had seen one of our most trustworthy allies, one that had risked its very existence on our friendship, turning conspicuously away from us. In Hungary I had seen the misery our vacillations had in part occasioned. And in Japan I had watched the growth of a strong intellectual movement against America. Yet our administration and our press seemed indifferent to these shifts, if, indeed, they knew of them.

Finally, I had watched for ten years the often subtle, sometimes brutal manner in which our national image
had been debased by ourselves and our enemies. From a distance we did often seem to be a fat and foolish nation. We seemed to be against the great changes that were sweeping the world. During the McCarthy period we were outspokenly contemptuous of the intellect; in the Little Rock period, antagonistic to anyone who was not white; and in the whole decade, paralyzed by a fear of natural revolution. From abroad we seemed to be a faltering nation, insecure even in those great principles upon which we were founded, and I felt that something had to be done to rectify this national image.

Another decision I reached during the night watches was that I would henceforth, insofar as I was able to determine my own actions, never again make even the slightest concession where race, religion or a man’s type of work was concerned. I found myself willing to accept a man whether he was a Negro or not, whether he was a Catholic or not, and whether he belonged to a union or not. In fact, I suppose I was dangerously close to making the error of believing that merely because a man was a Negro, or a Catholic, or a union member he must be a good man; but I felt that if I were to be guilty of error, such an error had this to commend it: on it social progress has often been built and can be built in the future. If one elects to act on the contrary principle, no progress is likely.

If I had been required then to state one short reason why I was about to plunge into national politics I would have said in summary, “Because there is a nation to be won.” In those intense days on the bosom of the stormy Pacific I visualized the United States as a rich and lumbering galleon
adrift without crew or purpose, and I knew that she could be won by men of vision and determination. In the forthcoming election on many lonely nights I would remind myself stubbornly, “There is a nation to be won,” and I knew that I was engaged permanently in the battle to win it. But if I had been asked why I wanted to capture a nation I would have been forced to reply, “Because I want my ideas of justice and accomplishment to prevail.” Later I was to discover that many of the men with whom I was to work had exactly the same idea.

Consequently, when I reached California one of the first things I told my wife was, “We’re going back to Pennsylvania, and I want to work in the Presidential election.”

“Good!” she cried. “This time well make sure that Adlai wins.”

I remember that I was silent for a few moments. Then I said, “I’m not sure I’m going to work for Adlai in the primaries.”

“My God!” she shouted. “Who else is there?”

My wife was a charter member of the Adlai Stevenson Club. In Chicago long before we were married she worked for him when he ran for governor of Illinois. In the 1952 Presidential campaign she not only worked vigorously but contributed her own funds and all that she could cadge from others. When he lost, her friends tell me, she went home and wept. In 1956 we were working in Europe, and I remember that bleak November morning when we staggered in to Paris after a dismal trip from Bordeaux to find that Stevenson had lost again. This time I know she went up to our hotel room and
cried. If ever a husband had reason to support Adlai Stevenson for President, I did.

We drove across country to our home in Pennsylvania, and as we rode through one brilliant state after another—California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado—we often spoke of how magnificent our nation was. We had each, I think, known the grandeur and the misery of life in America. As I have indicated, in my case the misery came first, in the early years as a small boy who almost never got the playthings a boy would want, with the grandeur coming later, when as an adult I found thrown at me almost everything a man would desire. In my wife’s case it was rather the reverse. As the much-loved youngest daughter of a successful Japanese melon grower in eastern Colorado, she grew up in a family where her brothers spoiled her and where the world was good. Then, in a series of dramatic shifts, her older brother died of a ruptured appendix; her father died because a doctor failed to diagnose blood poisoning; her family was swept into one of the worst wartime concentration camps; all their property was confiscated without remuneration; and the burden of holding the family together fell upon my wife. That she survived this series of disasters without impairment of her natural optimism was due to the solid education Japanese parents give their children and to the fact that Antioch College, in southern Ohio, was brave enough to award her a scholarship while she was still in her concentration camp. The college also found her a good job, and she has always felt “that one Antioch in a country offsets four patriotic societies in Southern California.” It was inevitable, I suppose, that she came
through these experiences without rancor and with a great love for a nation which might make mistakes, but which was generous enough to correct them. It was also inevitable that she would be for Adlai Stevenson.

So as we drove homeward she pressured me. “Who else do the Democrats have that you could possibly vote for in the primaries?” she demanded. “You’ve lived overseas. You’ve seen what America really needs. A President with courage to do the right thing. Somebody with brains. Somebody the other nations can respect. A man with determination in the field of social legislation. There’s only one man you could possibly support.”

Across the country my wife bombarded me with reasons why Adlai Stevenson had to be our next President and why I would be ashamed of myself if I supported anyone else. She made a persuasive case for her candidate and convinced me that she was going to further his candidacy with all her energy, which is phenomenal. By the time I reached Pennsylvania, after refreshing my powerful memories of Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, each of which held recollections of happy hours spent there during the last forty years, I was not, perhaps, completely convinced that I was going to come out for Stevenson, but I at least had more than a dozen good reasons to fortify me if I did so decide. The most persuasive argument my wife had used was this: “The people of this country sense that enormous decisions are going to be made in the 1960’s. And they know that more than half those decisions will involve foreign relations. They want somebody with brains. Instinctively they know the
President ought to be Stevenson. And without General Eisenhower to run against him, Stevenson will win.”

“If you had to give me just one reason why I should support Adlai, what would it be?” I asked.

“Because the people sense that he’s big enough to do the job.”

“Do you think he can get elected?” I pressed.

“This time, yes,” she insisted.

When we reached home I spent the better part of one November week locked up in the small room where I usually did my serious work. My dictionaries were in place; my typewriter stood on its stand; and certain objects which have a warm good-luck quality about them stared down at me from their appointed homes. But I did not pitch in to my writing. Instead I sat back and gazed out the window at the lovely Pennsylvania forest which stood stark in the autumn winds. And as I sat there I reviewed the political condition of my nation.

“The fundamental thing,” I reasoned, “is that we have got to have a wholly new administration. It mustn’t be saddled with old policies and old policy-makers. Therefore it’s got to be Democratic. This country really needs a Democratic administration.”

I thought that it had to be Democratic for these reasons. First, our country had indeed grown somewhat fat and flabby, not as seriously as our enemies abroad preached, but just enough to give me pause. Second, “It does seem evident to me that we’ve been standing still insofar as our internal affairs are concerned. Education, new dams, new factories, our general spirit of adventure
 … in nearly everything but roads we need enormous new energy.” As a former teacher of economics I was innately suspicious of a high interest rate that limited new starts in industry. And I was disturbed at the deterioration of our cities, at the vetoing of bills that would aid housing, health and depressed areas. For all these substantial internal reasons I wanted a Democratic administration. Third, it seemed certain that the Senate and the House of Representatives would be markedly Democratic, for the American people showed no inclination to elect conservative Republicans to those important bodies, and I suspected that our state governors and their legislatures would be increasingly Democratic, for that was apparently the mood of the people. “Therefore,” I reasoned, “at this critical period we ought to have a Democratic President, too. I don’t like divided responsibilities now, even though it didn’t worry me too much during the last six years.” Fourth, I was deeply distressed that President Eisenhower had not used the majesty of his office in support of the Supreme Court decision on integrating our schools, and I felt that any of the talked-about Democratic nominees would, if elected President, do so. Fifth, I was even more distressed by the fact that the last eight years of Republican rule had been a period of strong anti-intellectualism, both implied and overt. So far as I knew, President Eisenhower had done nothing to encourage the arts: he not once had attended the theater, or gone to a concert, or commented favorably on books, or entertained anyone but top business and sports leaders who were equally indifferent to the arts. One of the damning charges against the administration was James Reston’s
analysis of the Presidential visiting list; few men with an artistic or philosophical I.Q. of over 60 had ever appeared on it, and this attitude had insidiously permeated our national life. I myself do not place the arts inordinately high on the scale of national preferences; I have always supposed that people like painters and novelists and college professors came rather far down the list—say, right after efficient druggists or office managers—but they ought to appear somewhere, and much of America’s loss of prestige abroad stems from the world’s suspicion that Russia cares for the arts and we do not. I therefore concluded that as an artist and an intellectual I was obligated to vote for a change. Finally, and this was of major importance, I was convinced that any one of the principal Democratic contenders was on the whole a better man than Richard Nixon, and that assurance, whether accurate or not, gave me comfort. At the same time, from having talked with numerous Republicans, I knew that within their ranks there was deep dissatisfaction with Nixon and that in 1960 many who had previously voted for Eisenhower did not want to vote for Nixon. Therefore, if we nominated the right man, we had a chance of winning.