How to Win the Cities

One of the most persistent myths of U.S. politics is that the Democrats are invincible in the big cities and that the G.O.P. might as well shop around elsewhere for votes. New York's Senator Jacob K. Javits is one Republican who thinks otherwise, for he has found the shopping just fine in the biggest U.S. city of all. "The big cities of the U.S. represent the areas with the greatest political opportunity for the Republican Party," writes Javits in a book published this week, Order of Battle: A Republican's Call to Reason (Atheneum; $5.95). "The attitude which surrenders these to the Democratic Party, almost without a fight in many cases, is as falsely grounded in fact as it is suicidal in result."

Neurotically Defensive. Javits himself is proof positive that the G.O.P. can win metropolitan votes. He is Jewish and liberal in a state where both count for thousands of votes, but even those special advantages do not account entirely for his phenomenal power at the polls. In 1962, he won his second term in the Senate by a 983,094-vote landslide, the largest margin enjoyed by any Congressional candidate that year.

With metropolitan population expected to swell to four-fifths of the U.S. total by 1970, Javits argues that his colleagues must also find a formula for victory in the cities if the G.O.P. is to win nationwide elections. For one thing, says he, Republicans must "show themselves to be a party that is committed heart and soul to the solution of the problems of daily life that vex the metropolitan man."

To Javits, the G.O.P.'s greatest drawback in the cities is its image as the party of fat cats and coupon clippers. "Republicans must stop getting neurotically defensive when Democrats accuse them of being the 'party of business,'" he says. "There is nothing wicked about being the 'party of business.' And if 'business' is understood as being something infinitely more than a collection of managers, including also investors, workers, consumers and farmers--all of whom draw sustenance from the function of business--there is nothing narrow-minded about it. 'Business,' properly understood, is so central to every aspect of our civilization that Republicans should proudly announce that they are indeed 'the party of business.'"

Delicately Balanced. Where Javits comes into conflict with his more conservative colleagues is in his estimate of the degree to which business--and such other areas as civil rights and social welfare--must come under federal control. He has little patience with those "of Senator Goldwater's point of view, for whom 'states' rights' all too often means in practice denouncing the Federal Government for trying to do too much--while in effect sustaining the right of the states to do nothing at all." In a society that is "urbanized, industrialized, automated and internationalized," he argues, the Republican party must urge business to accept "the role of cooperation with Government" or risk the imposition of "ever-increasing control on our economy."

But Javits acknowledges that where free enterprise is concerned, the balance "between the need for decentralization and the need for a sense of central direction" is a delicate one indeed. In fact, notes Javits, Teddy Roosevelt was worried about the very same problem back in 1905, when his Republican Administration was wrestling with the problem of railroad regulation. "We shall have to work out methods of controlling the big corporations without paralyzing the energies of the business community," Teddy wrote. For, he warned, "overcontrol might drain the vigor from the enterprise, might destroy its dynamism."

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