In Search of a Voice

Where's the voice, however soft, One would hear so very oft?

--John Keats

Did he have any comment, a reporter asked Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson in Washington one day last week, on Adlai Stevenson's sniping at the Eisenhower Administration's foreign policy? "Mr. Stevenson," said Johnson stonily, "can speak for himself."

Johnson was setting no party policy, but he had made a point: in the wake of Eisenhower's victory, the Democrats are in desperate need of a voice. Even Minnesota's liberal Senator Hubert Humphrey, a red-hot Stevensonite. agreed. In the months ahead, he said, party leadership "will be essentially congressional."

But the return of such congressional figures as Johnson and his fellow Texan, House Speaker Sam Rayburn, to their roles as the nation's most powerful Democrats, does not mean the party can speak with a single, clear voice. Liberals in Congress, with an eye toward 1958 elections, are already insisting that the party should offer its own ambitious legislative program, have been sharply critical of Johnson's announced business-as-usual, middle-of-the-road strategy for the next session of Congress (see below). Last week the Fair Dealing New Republic gloomily warned that "Eisenhower's brand of modern Re publicanism may continue to attract . . . broad support if ... Lyndon Johnson is allowed to continue directing the party in Congress as an appendage to Ike . . ."

Volunteer Victory. Whatever its elocution troubles at the national level, the Democratic Party proved in the 1956 election that it has great grass-roots strength. Items: the slightly strengthened congressional position, the successful battle for at least 15 statehouses. the increase in the number of state legislators in such Republican strongholds as South Dakota, Kansas, Iowa, Oregon and California. The waning influence of its old-line, patronage-powered machines in the big cities, notably Chicago and New York, was offset by the work of aggressive "new look" (i.e., post-Truman) volunteers in California, Michigan, Oregon, Washington and Pennsylvania.

In Pennsylvania the volunteers (including a solid representation from labor) played a key part in Joe Clark's victory over Republican Senator James H. Duff. Clark, many a Pennsylvania Democrat is sure, is just the kind of politician the party is looking for to fill the vacuum at the top. Like Adlai Stevenson, Harvard-man Clark is wealthy and articulate, but Clark is far ahead of Stevenson in his ability to get his ideas across to the plain citizen. (And, unlike Stevenson, quipped a Pittsburgh newsman, his name is Joe.) When Clark ran for mayor of Philadelphia five years ago, he made dozens of street-corner speeches, waved a broom over his head to dramatize the clean sweep he intended to make (and did) at graft-ridden city hall. Against Duff, he demonstrated the same ability to pound home simple, telling points. His most effective charge: Duff's frequent absences from the Senate left Pennsylvania with an empty chair on Capitol Hill.

Clearing the Wreckage. While hopefully eying the ascendancy of Joe Clark, the Democrats must also face up to the task of clearing out the wreckage left by the Eisenhower avalanche. Probably one of the first to go will be National Chairman Paul Butler, who may get his walking papers at the national committee's first post-election meeting. (Said Butler last week: "I'm not going anywhere; I'm staying on. I don't mean to sound cocky or ungrateful, but I don't think anyone has the strength to remove me.") Stevenson's shrewd, capable campaign manager, James A. Finnegan, who also guided Joe Clark's campaign for mayor, will probably rise even higher in the party.

As Finnegan, Johnson and other party leaders are aware, what they must do before another presidential election rolls around is find a Democratic voice the nation not only can hear but understand.

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