The Sour-Faced Governess

In Washington's Georgetown University Hospital last week, Michigan's Senator Arthur Vandenberg went under the surgeon's knife for the third time in six months. He had been in hospitals seven times in the past nine weeks, and most of the time he had been in extreme pain, unable to sit up for more than a few hours. Last week, in a four-hour operation, a nonmalignant tumor in and around his spine was removed and with it, friends hoped, the real reason for his failure to recuperate from his operation last fall. But the 66-year-old Republican, who had voiced all that was best in international responsibility and generosity, was lost to the Senate for the rest of the session.

The Republican Party would sorely miss such a spokesman; the remaining voices in Congress--or at least the loudest of them--fell too readily these days into mere nagging. Without Vandenberg, the party's ideas on foreign policy had often fallen to a low level, sometimes even to the low level of McCarthyism: irresponsible, theatrical, partisan. (At Princeton University last week, New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey warned: "Before any Republican rejoices at the possible shipwreck of the foreign policy of the Democratic Administration, he should remember that we are all in the same boat.")

Ohio's Senator Robert A. Taft had been an ideal Republican leader in the 80th Congress when his sardonic criticism of all that was weakest in the Fair Deal, at home & abroad, was a good counterbalance to Vandenberg's high courage and decisive leadership in foreign relations. For a time, Republicanism had been a coalition of vision, realism and prudence.

Now, in the flat, Ohio twang of Taft, it had an unfortunate way of sounding merely "agin." Taft, who had been slow to see the threat of Hitler, was sounding--in his urge for economy--as if he didn't really take Russia's threat too seriously. ("It is possible that the danger, of a crisis is being exaggerated somewhat at the time when appropriations are being sought," he said in a recent speech in Washington. "On the other hand, I may be wrong . . .") He also had a talent for the tactless: "We are paying out more than $12 billion . . . to individuals whose contributions, if any, have been made in past years. At the moment, they are getting something for nothing." That was his way of discussing veterans' programs, dividends on G.I. insurance, old-age pensions, unemployment and relief benefits.

Missing Bounce. Republicans, out of the White House for 17 long years, had begun to sound uncertain and querulous. By all the rules, 1948 should have been their year; their defeat had left them sulky and more demoralized than they liked to admit. They recognized that the 1950 elections were important to them, but they were not talking like men who expected to win. They had none of the bounce of Democratic Boss Bill Boyle, who was busy rounding up precinct workers, doorbell ringers and babysitters, and talking as if his only problem was overconfidence ("We'll run scared," he said).

Soured by frequent defeat, more sure of their rightness every time they lost, talking too much to themselves, and beginning to wonder whether the U.S. people would ever "come to their senses," the hard-core Republicans seemed bent on purging the party of "me too" deviationists--and in the process alienating the voters they most needed to win. The Democrats knew by heart one simple axiom: a political party should be like a Bowery mission--"everybody welcome." The hard-core Republicans gave the impression of having lost faith in their country. Writing in the current Harper's, liberal Historian Herbert Agar, who calls himself "a potential Republican voter," warned that the voters would never warm to a party that acted like "a sour-faced governess . . . Too many important Republicans now seem to regard the people as dupes who have been suborned by tax money."

Seven Seats. The sour-faced look, the scolding tongue and the defeatist attitude were the more bootless because some Republican gains were not at all impossible in 1950. A party which made gains in the last three off-year elections, and polled 45% of the vote in the last presidential election, was not withering away like the English Liberals. In the Senate, where the Republicans need to pick up seven seats to win control, their best prospect was in Idaho, where Governor Charles A. Robins was expected to eliminate Glen Taylor. There was an even-money chance that Governor Jim Duff could beat Senate Majority Whip Francis Myers in Pennsylvania and that Illinois' Everett Dirksen could unseat Majority Leader Scott Lucas. Representative Richard Nixon might defeat the Democrats' Helen Douglas in California. If they could find the right candidates, the strategists had some hope of defeating New York's Lehman and Connecticut's Benton.

In Missouri, Republicans hoped that the Binaggio murder would help out Forrest Donnell, who was opposed by Truman-blessed Emery Allison. But Republicans were uneasy about the safety of Indiana's Capehart and Wisconsin's Wiley, frankly worried about Iowa's Hickenlooper and Colorado's Eugene Millikin.

Local issues would have important bearing on the races--but the party's national face mattered too, and that face last week was still sour, its voice complaining and its attitude carping. Even National Chairman Guy Gabrielson himself reflected some of that mood. Retorting to the President's boast (see above), Gabrielson dourly undertook "to remind the American people . . . just what five years of Truman has meant to them," showing how the country was really in terrible shape. Cried Gabrielson: "The American people will not again be misled by slanders and libels . . . They will not again be beguiled by extravagant promises . . ."

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