Cause & Effect

Buried deep in the rubble of Republican defeat lay the causes of Democratic victory--a victory which will shape U.S. policies and politics for the next two years. The causes and effects of Election Year 1958:

Farm Policy

In the traditional Republican heartland between the Mississippi and the Rockies, Republicans lost eight House seats, two Senate places, at least two governorships (Nebraska is still in doubt). High on the list of causes: the political unpopularity of Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson. Taking over in 1953, Benson inherited a farm-policy mess that saw prices slumping badly while the Government poured billions into the farm economy. Trying to reverse the policy of farm government-by-handout, Benson was blamed when the agricultural recession continued. By this year, when the farm economy dramatically improved (TIME, May 12), it was too late for Ezra Benson to regain lost personal ground. "The farmers just don't like Benson," said Iowa's Republican Representative Ben Jensen, himself a winner by only 2,200 votes. "They got mad at him a couple of years ago, and they stayed mad."

Almost to a man, Democratic winners in the Midwest campaigned harder against Benson personally than against his policies. "I got up to 5-to-1 majorities in normally Republican rural areas," said Iowa's lone Incumbent Democratic Representative Merwin Coad, who increased his 1956 plurality of 198 to 16,000 last week. Yet, while attacking Benson, Coad, like a remarkable number of other Midwestern Democratic winners, is far from committed to an all-out reversal of Benson's policies. "I see a moderate reversal of the direction Benson was going in," said Coad. "By moderate reversal, I mean lifting minimum supports from 65% up to 70% or 75% of parity and looking at the limitations on production."

With a farm-policy review by the lopsidedly Democratic Congress a certainty, the Eisenhower Administration has a real problem. Should Ezra Benson stay on? Politically, it is probably too late for Benson to help Republicans by leaving. In a policy sense, Benson might hurt the policies for which he stands more by staying than leaving. But at the same time, for the Administration to dump Benson would be to dishonor a man who has fought hard and honestly for a policy aimed at ending the nation's scandalous, multibillion-dollar farm giveaway.

Right-to-Work

"Those stupid Republican businessmen," cried one of the nation's top Republican politicians on a don't-quote-me basis. "They insisted on right-to-work." Then, turning to Washington newsmen, he said: "Strike the word 'stupid.' " And then, five minutes later, he shook his head and cried again: "Those stupid Republican-businessmen." Echoed Ohio's Republican State Chairman Ray Bliss after seeing his state ticket swamped by Ohio's landslide against right-to-work: "During the past year I repeatedly warned the proponents of this issue that this defeat would be the possible consequence. They chose to ignore my warnings."

Becoming identified with right-to-work proposals on the ballots in six states was indeed the stupidest of all Republican campaign stunts. Right-to-work won in Kansas by 76,500, got edged out by 5,000 in Idaho. In the big industrial states where it really counted, right-to-work got swamped (by 966,000 in California, 927,000 in Ohio, 240,000 in Washington and 114,000 in Colorado)--and Republican candidates drowned with it. So deadly was the R.T.W. tag to Republicans that in the last weeks of the campaign, Ohio's Republican Senator John Bricker (who had reluctantly endorsed R.T.W.), tried to disassociate himself from Republican Governor William O'Neill (who had wholeheartedly embraced R.T.W.), refused to appear on the same platform or have his picture taken with O'Neill. Result: Bricker lost by 165,000 votes to a Democratic nonentity, Stephen Young, while O'Neill got clobbered by 460,000 votes by Democratic Mike Di Salle. Said State Chairman Bliss: "I estimate that a minimum of 200,000 additional labor-Democrat voters went to the polls solely because this issue was on the ballot." Said John Bricker of Bliss's estimate: "He's wrong. There were at least 500,000."

The effect of the elections was a predictable kick in the teeth for right-to-work sponsors: within hours after the votes were counted, labor's leaders abandoned the defensive, began working for a federal law that would outlaw R.T.W. in the 19 states where it exists. And for Republicans, there was a lesson: forget about R.T.W. or get whipped.

Labor Bossism

Organized labor, led by the A.F.L.-C.I.O's Committee on Political Education, poured vast sums into the campaign, on the whole worked effectively for Democratic candidates. But 1958 was not an unqualified success for labor; Arizona's Republican Senator Barry Goldwater furnished a notable example of how a tough, smart campaign could upset labor's best-laid plans. And more important, Democrat after Democrat won not by defending labor 100% but by standing for reasonable legislation aimed at corruption in high labor places. Example: Indiana's John Brademus, a liberal Democrat who won by 25,000 votes in labor's South Bend stronghold, said after the elections that "I kicked Republicans hard for voting against the Kennedy-Ives labor-reform bill." Plainly in the political works for the near future: some sort of labor-reform bill along the general lines of Kennedy-Ives.

The Catholic Issue

The 1958 elections went a long way toward laying to rest the notion of Roman Catholicism as a ruinous national political liability. Even in heavily Catholic Massachusetts, Senator Jack Kennedy's huge 869,000-vote plurality clearly cut across all religious lines. In Pennsylvania Democrat David Lawrence became the first Catholic Governor in history. In California Catholic Pat Brown was elected Governor by a landslide. And in Minnesota, where Catholicism had long been considered a fatal handicap outside St. Paul and Minneapolis, Catholic Eugene McCarthy beat Republican Senator Edward Thye, a Lutheran (with a Catholic wife), by 57,000 votes. In New York, where the Catholic vote is supposed to be powerful, the voters pulled a switch, defeated Democratic Senatorial Candidate Frank Hogan, a Catholic. Said Iowa's Congressman Coad, himself a Disciples of Christ minister: "I think the country is 30 years beyond 1928, and I mean that not only from a standpoint of time but from the standpoint of this subject. It's just not an issue."

Recession

The first-half recession and its jittery aftermath was a basic cause of Republican defeat, especially in such still-troubled spots as West Virginia, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Effect of the recession issue: Democratic congressional leaders, apparently willing to go slow as long as recovery continues, will be standing by to start priming the pumps as never before the moment the economy turns down.

Personalities

The biggest Republican winners--New York's Governor-elect Nelson Rockefeller, Pennsylvania's Senator-elect Hugh Scott, Arizona's Senator Barry Goldwater, Oregon's Governor-elect Mark Hatfield--had one thing in common: highly attractive personalities that they effectively displayed to the voters. At the same time, the Democratic Party was far more successful in finding young, attractive candidates nationwide. In Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, for example, the six newly elected Democratic Congressmen averaged only 42 in age, as against 60 for their Republican opponents. Republican Hatfield best explained the meaning of personality to his party: "Let's face it. We had some turkeys, reactionary turkeys. I would except Goldwater because he's a sensational personality. But race-for-race, it's the middle-of-the-road Republican, in communication with the people, who can win, and it seems to me that this is our key to the future."

Party Organization

Neglected by the party leader in the White House, Republican organization fell almost completely apart while Democrats put together smooth-working machines in state after state. In California, Indiana and Utah, Republican factions spent more time fighting each other than fighting Democrats. But in Ohio Democrat Di Salle, beaten by O'Neill by 428,000 votes in 1956, went to work with State Chairman William Coleman, spent two years building up an effective organization, during the campaign held at least seven seminars in every congressional district to teach workers the best vote-hunting techniques. In Minnesota Democratic Representative Eugene McCarthy's capture of Republican Ed Thye's senatorial seat was the harvest of years of organizational planning (see Minnesota). The organizational lesson: party precinct work is a day-in-day-out job.

Presidential Leadership

Of all causes for general Republican disaster, none was more sharply pinpointed by pundits and editorial writers (see JUDGMENTS & PROPHECIES) than presidential leadership. At a strictly political level, President Eisenhower showed little interest in his party. Last week even loyal Eisenhower-Republican Senator Cliff Case of New Jersey was moved to comment on Ike's lack of "love of politics and the political game." Said Utah's G.O.P. National Committeeman Jerry Jones, himself a middle-road Republican: "We have no political leadership. Ike, with his aloofness from politics--his attitude of being above it all--has made us all just a bit ashamed to be politicians." When Ike finally entered the 1958 campaign, the damage was already done. Said an Iowa Republican scornfully: "You can't do much work in one day if you start at sundown."

But it was in another sense that the presidential political weakness was even more hurtful to Republicans. In fact, Dwight Eisenhower wrote a good, constructive record in 1958. Yet the widespread impression remained of a dispirited, drifting Administration. That impression first took real form back in 1957, when Ike hemmed, hawed and refused to crack down on Treasury Secretary George Humphrey's forecasts of a hair-curling depression. It persisted in 1958, when the President delayed for months getting rid of Sherman Adams because "I need him." Again, even while Ike fought wisely and successfully at bringing the U.S. out of recession without pushing the panic button, he failed to dramatize the achievement.

As a result, the Dwight Eisenhower who led the Republican Party to power in 1952 saw the G.O.P. sink to its lowest ebb (see map) in decades this year. And perhaps the most significant effect of the 1958 election was that for all practical purposes, it ended the Eisenhower Crusade. President Eisenhower had failed in the task of remolding his party in his own winning image. Because of that failure, for the rest of his term he would have to fight hard merely to keep his accomplishments from being rolled back.

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