The Rebuttal Begins

Flying to San Francisco to deliver the Republican Convention's keynote speech this week, Washington's Governor Arthur B. Langlie confided to a friend that he had watched the pyrotechnics of Democratic Keynoter Frank Clement, found them distasteful. Said Langlie: "I'll be passing up the Chicago brand of prejudicial fire and brimstone in favor of what I've tried to make a higher tone." To his wife Evelyn he fretted: "I want to be sure that nobody can say this speech has any unjustified name-calling."

When balding, blue-eyed Arthur Langlie took the Cow Palace platform, there was virtually no name-calling at all. But in Langlie's G.O.P. eyes, a sharp indictment of the Democratic Party was justified: "They left us a staggering national debt, a greatly reduced value of the dollar, a colossal bureaucracy and vastly increased taxes . . . The Democratic party was responsible for the security of our country and of the free world precisely when Communist world aggression achieved its maximum success, when the nations of Eastern Europe were lost to freedom and when, on another continent, China became part of the Communist empire."

Langlie, no flaming orator, had an oratorical flourish or two to rival a Clement. The Democrats, he said, have a heritage of "colossal mismanagement and corruption . . . For 20 years [they] subsisted only from one crisis to another -some real, some imaginary, some fabricated."

But Art Langlie had come to San Francisco not so much for the fun of a counterattack as for a positive statement of achievements. Quickly he ticked off major areas in which the Administration had kept its promises:

Foreign Policy. "We have done more than just talk about peace; we have worked for it. We have seen Communist aggression come to a complete halt. We have seen a halt in the world's drift toward nuclear war . . . We have seen dangers in their most awful forms lessen rather than grow . . . challenges met instead of evaded. We have seen, in great part as a result of our own conduct, the leaders of world Communism forced to renounce some of their old ways."

Agriculture. "When this Republican administration took office the bottom was falling out [of farm prices]. Under the new Republican laws in the first six months of 1956 average farm prices steadied and then went up. They are still going up ... The farmer today can once again look forward to raising his crops for his markets instead of Government warehouses."

Employment. "Our policies have sustained over 66 million peacetime jobs for American men and women at the highest wages in our history."

Civil Rights. "Through every agency in Government, except Congress, we have witnessed the greatest gains for civil rights over a period of 80 years. We have not given mere lip service. We have acted."

The Economy. "We have checked the runaway inflation we inherited from the previous Administration. We have reduced taxes by seven and a half billion dollars a year."

How had this come about? Langlie's answer was smooth, but there was a barb on every point: because "as President ... we have a man who gives dignity to that high office . . . who knows how to respect those who disagree with him . . . how to enlist the help of some of the most able people in America to support his leadership and give freely of their talents to serve their country . . . how to win the respect of the people in other lands . . . and how to exemplify the qualities of character, leadership and citizenship that really make America strong. And above all else how to provide moral and spiritual leadership."

Marshaling Republicans to continue the crusade, Langlie harked back to Democrat Clement, who had asked, "mournfully, again and again, how long, O America, will we keep our Republican Administration in office at Washington?" The G.O.P. spokesman ventured a prediction: "The American people will . . . throw the Republicans out of office the day when, if ever, they copy the Democrats and put the party first and America second."

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