Republicans went to Washington in January 1953, with a mandate to clean out the mess left by a Democratic Party too long in power. In a way, they succeeded: the aura of graft no longer hangs over the U.S. Government. In other ways, they have failed. Some of the Democratic mess remains. And the Republicans have created some of their own.
Dienbienphu and Geneva are symbolic of the Republican failure to free foreign policy from the paralyzing, defensive spirit in which the Democratic Administration was caught. Dulles made brilliant progress in redefining U.S. goals, but the gap between definition and practice is still huge.
At home, the President's ambitious legislative program has bogged down. Hawaiian statehood and Taft-Hartley revision, for all practical purposes, are lost for this session of Congress. The Administration, it now appears, will not fight hard for its foreign-trade program—at least not this year. Eisenhower's farm policy is under withering fire. Foreign aid is in trouble, seems in for deep cutbacks. Housing legislation is holed up in a Senate committee. Meanwhile, the most conspicuous sight in Washington is that of Republicans locked in a death struggle with other Republicans in the Army-McCarthy hearings.
The Washington picture is not only bad; it is worse than it was a few months ago.
Failure in Loyalty. What is wrong? What defects in the Republican Party or its leadership caused these failures and setbacks?
Part of the answer lies in the era 1933-53, when leaders of vastly different opinions were united as Republicans only because they were not Democrats. During this period, the Democratic Party was also sharply divided. But the Democrats were welded by the pressure of an enormous expansion of political power which fired the ambitions of some and nurtured in others a sense of party responsibility. In fact, personal ambition often creates in politicians a sense of party discipline. To get ahead, they have to get along with their fellow leaders, to compromise.
A generation of GOPoliticians missed this lesson because they had no chance to practice it. Unable to attain national authority, the G.O.P. Congressman in New Deal-Fair Deal days had only to satisfy the narrow interests of his own constituency; it was every Republican for himself. It still is. The habit of opposition, born during the years of exile, has not been broken. The appropriate charge against Republican Congressmen is not that of venality, or even of personal selfishness. It is that of a failure to understand the meaning of party responsibility, loyalty and discipline which are fundamental to the two-party system. Examples are numerous and startling.
The harshest critic of Republican foreign policy is California's Republican William Knowland, who is also the Senate majority leader. The most powerful opponents of liberalized foreign trade are