It Is Deep & Real--& Wno Can Repair It?

OUT from the office of Minnesota's liberal Democratic Governor Orville Freeman last week went a flurry of telegrams urging the state's Democratic members of Congress to support the defense budget of Republican Dwight Eisenhower. "This program," wrote Freeman, "is of utmost importance to insure our safety and to promote the prospects for peace in the U.S. and the world." Governor Freeman was not the only Democratic leader upset by the budget-slashing direction of the 85th Congress under Texas Democrats Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn. In nearly every state outside the South, top Democrats viewed with anguish and anger the party record being written by the 85th Congress. Reason: the Johnson-Rayburn emphasis on budget cutting means hacking away at programs for which the national Democratic Party has long stood.

Out of Everything. Such Democratic governors as Connecticut's Abraham Ribicoff and Massachusetts' Foster Furcolo are having enough trouble defending their own budgets without having congressional Democrats throw economy curves. Says a Furcolo friend: "Poor Eisenhower. Poor Furcolo. They're both really in the same jam." Then he adds: "It will turn out to be suicide if they [the congressional Democrats] destroy the party's longstanding program and adopt shortsighted economy just because they want to squelch Eisenhower." Says an Illinois leader: "Our party ought to be in there fighting to save the defense and foreign-aid budgets. The Democratic Party created the Eisenhower security policies, and we should fight for them now, not abandon what is right for the sake of fast politics."

Much of the bitterness is directed at Senate Leader Lyndon Johnson himself. Says Pennsylvania's Democratic State Chairman Joseph Barr: "I see great danger and distress signals in the spectacle of a man like Lyndon Johnson trying to lead the Democratic Party away from its traditional principles." Says Oregon's Governor Robert Holmes: "The Democratic Party goes forward when it remembers it is a liberal party, and I could wish Senator Johnson would remember that our party dares be the liberal voice of America." Says Colorado's influential Eugene Cervi, editor and publisher of Germ's Rocky Mountain Journal and onetime Democratic state chairman: "As far as Lyndon Johnson is concerned, he is outmoded, out of date, out of step, out of philosophy, and has almost taken himself out of the Democratic Party."

In the Well. So far, nearly all the controversy is west of the Potomac. On Capitol Hill itself, Johnson and Rayburn head an apparently serene household. Congressional liberals have had no national leader since the political passing of Adlai Stevenson, and they readily admit that Dwight Eisenhower has taken over much of their program. Lyndon Johnson, with his great compromising skills in the Senate, and Sam Rayburn, holding the whip over the tightly disciplined House, have filled the leadership vacuum and brought forth a program--a budget-cutting program. A 24-member, liberal-loaded Democratic National Advisory Council is supposed to set party policy between convention years. But Johnson & Co. have withheld support from the council, and it has never got off the ground. The "Lister Hill Club," a group of some 25 liberal Democratic Senators--including Illinois' Paul Douglas, Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey, Massachusetts' John Kennedy, Montana's Mike Mansfield and Arkansas' Bill Fulbright--who used to meet at the invitation of Alabama's Lister Hill to make plans and discuss policy, is now a dim memory. A House liberal groans helplessly: "I feel like an inchworm at the bottom of the well." Even Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse is reduced to cloakroom muttering: "And I thought this was the party of liberalism."

Only One Answer. The battle between Old Guard Republicans and Eisenhower Republicans over the budget (TIME, May 20) cannot much longer provide a smokescreen for the deep-running Democratic problem over civil rights. Last week the House Rules Committee finally approved, by an 8-to-4 vote, the Eisenhower civil-rights program. The House is virtually certain to pass it before adjourning. If civil rights gets to the Senate floor it will touch off a historic row, perhaps a filibuster by the Southerners. But it may well be too late in the session for Senate action; if so, the bill and the brawl will go over to next year--election year.

When the fight comes, it will do more harm to Democratic unity. Civil rights is an issue on which neither Northern liberals nor Southern conservatives can afford to give an inch. Explains an Illinois Democrat: "The Northern city leader is just as much a captive of his voters on the civil-rights issue as is the Southern leader. You can't compromise when great blocs of your voters are Negroes and members of other minority groups. Michigan's Governor 'Soapy' Williams can't compromise any more than Mississippi's Governor J. P. Coleman. And don't fool yourself, if the party has to choose between Michigan and Mississippi, there's only one answer."

Despite the probability of a major civil-rights battle, Democratic prospects for next year's congressional elections are good, especially in the Senate (where 13 marginal Republican seats are up as against five Democratic). Beyond that, some thoughtful Democrats see a clouded future. The old North-South split will still exist. Northern Negroes will probably continue the trend, begun in 1956, toward Republicanism (and the G.O.P. should pick up in the South, as more and more Negroes win the right to vote). The Democratic Party no longer has a strangle hold on the labor vote. Republicans have cut deeply into Democratic urban strength. On top of all this is the liberal-Democratic dissatisfaction with the conservative, budget-cutting, Johnson-Rayburn leadership.

Some time before 1960 this new source of party friction is likely to blow up with a bang rare even among Democrats. It is with these facts in mind that a top party analyst in Washington says flatly: "Maybe we can hold on for four or even eight years. But unless we do something quick we'd better get ready to lose our shirts."

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