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Above Party? President Eisenhower is fully aware of his trouble with the dickey-birds. Time and again, he asks his closest advisers, more in anguish than in anger: "What is this party trying to do—commit suicide?" Yet he must share in the accounting; the trouble does not lie exclusively with Capitol Hill. In the U.S. tradition, the President is a party leader. The Republican Party is Ike's instrument for achievement; to use it, he must be of it. If he does not like some aspects of it, he must try to change them. But Ike has often tried to stand above party—and this in itself is a lofty form of party irresponsibility. The last 17 months have shown that he cannot demand of others what he is unwilling to give himself.
Patronage, that familiar lever of presidential leadership, has today only a minute fraction of its former effectiveness. But other levers lie under Eisenhower's hand. The most powerful is his own enormous personal popularity—unequaled in this century except by that of the two Roosevelts. But Ike's popularity contributes nothing to party discipline unless he can bring himself to use it as a whip on Republican Congressmen who oppose his policies. What the Administration needs most, said one of its top (and most politically astute) officials last week, is "a ruthless s.o.b. to run its politics. Don't misunderstand—when I say ruthless and s.o.b., I mean them as words of praise."
Such a man, recognized as the Presiident's spokesman in things political, would be able to go, for instance, to Nevada's Senator Malone and say: " 'Molly,' you've consistently voted against us. Name anything you want—you won't get it. You are a so-and-so, but the White House latchstring will be out to you—as soon as you change your ways."
Back in the Bottle. The failure of Republican leadership—especially White House leadership—was strikingly seen in the handling of the McCarthy-Army affair. The President himself last week agreed that the best thing to do would be to call Joe McCarthy as the next and last public witness and then cut off the hearings abruptly, in an effort to bury the hatchet. Implicit in the scheme was the lingering hope that McCarthy could still be poured back into the party bottle and, in the future, used only against Democrats. But McCarthy has made it abundantly clear that he is not bound by any loyalty to the Republican Party. He does not even aspire to lead it. He simply disregards it.
Unless Eisenhower makes McCarthy feel the weight of reprisal, Joe—and dozens of other Republican Senators—will go blithely on their way, taking care of their own political fences, but refusing to accept an obligation to follow or compromise with the leader, upon whom Republican national success depends.
On Sept. 4, 1952, Candidate Dwight Eisenhower told Philadelphians: "I have said, and will say again and again, that there is only one issue in this campaign. That issue is—'the Mess in Washington.' " Unless something is done, and quickly, the mess in Washington will be the major issue of November 1954.