National Affairs: Who’s for What

When a newsman last week asked a candidate’s pressagent what his man would talk about in his next speech, the pressagent replied: “I guess it will be the speech again.” All four of the Democratic Party’s leading avowed candidates are stuck in similar ruts. Reason: the freeze-up created by the party leaders’ indecision on whom to back.

The four are badly divided on only one issue: compulsory FEPC. Harriman is strongly for it, Russell strongly opposed; Kefauver and Kerr are weaseling. On foreign policy, none of them differs appreciably with the Truman-Acheson line. All are increasing the vitriol content in their remarks about Eisenhower.

But there are vast differences in emphasis as they tour the hustings. Harriman, the 100% Fair Deal man, trades in quick, slashing, sometimes outrageous pronouncements. At Golden, Colo, last week, he said:'”We can show Taft’s policies are what Stalin would have us do; Taft is Stalin’s candidate.” At Cheyenne, Wyo.: “The Republicans haven’t had a new idea since Harding’s time.” At Boise, Idaho: The forces opposed to price and wage controls are “ignorant special-interest groups . . . laying the basis for the crack-up the Kremlin has been looking for.”

Southerner Dick Russell’s main objective is to persuade voters that he is not a sectional candidate, and to call attention to his position as chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee. At Denver last week, he attacked Taft and Eisenhower for “unrealistic” tax-and budget-cut promises. At the same time, Russell assailed the Truman Administration for “inexcusable waste” in rearmament, and for its stretch-out of aircraft production. He said it was “little short of a national disgrace to be outproduced in jet planes by Soviet Russia.” Russell was also busily defending his opposition to FEPC, which he calls an “adventure … in socialism.”

Last week in Manhattan, Estes Kefauver was still attacking “the bosses” who oppose him. He was also busily dispensing Kefauver handshakes and Kefauver platitudes. Sample: “What we need is more democracy, not less democracy.”