The Politic Generalities

Colorado's Senator Eugene Millikin stood at the rostrum reading the 1952 Republican platform. A buzz of conversation rose from the convention floor, and the aisles were filled with milling delegates. Permanent Chairman Joe Martin, accustomed to a high degree of buzz-buzz while platforms are being read, decided that this was too much. He whacked down his big wooden gavel and shouted: "The convention will please come to order. This is an important document . . . The delegates should at least know what they're going to vote on in a few minutes."

Through the Shoals. The delegates' inattention was not necessarily evidence that they did not care what was in the platform. They knew that the resolutions committee had, as usual, compromised, steered through the shoals and employed politic generalities. Before the platform got to the floor, the drafters had planed off rough spots which might have caused serious fights on three planks: foreign policy, national defense and civil rights. Now there was nothing to argue about.

The chief planer of the foreign-policy plank was John Foster Dulles, who had begun the task more than two months ago. He talked foreign policy with Dwight Eisenhower in France last May, and returned to the U.S. ready to come out for Ike. But about that time, Bob Taft called to say that he had read Dulles' foreign-policy views in LIFE and generally agreed with them. Dulles and the Eisenhower forces decided that he should stay publicly neutral to work out a foreign-policy plank that would avoid a party split on that issue. Said Dulles, just before the nomination: "The Eisenhower people told me they felt this was more important than my coming out publicly for their man."

When both Taft and Ike agreed that he should draft the plank, Dulles went to work. A week before the convention began, he arrived in Chicago with a 1,000-word document. Last week, after Dulles had shuttled between the opposing camps, he had a plank which both sides approved with comparatively minor reservations. Millikin's resolutions committee edited it (mostly to put in such barbs as "betrayed," "flouted" and "tragic blunders" when referring to the Truman Administration's foreign policy).

Foreign Policy. In its final form, the plank charged that Democratic administrations had lost the peace, traded away victory at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, retreated before Russian encroachment in Europe, betrayed China to Communism and bungled into the Korean War.

Looking forward to a positive Republican policy, the plank pledged: "We shall encourage and aid the development of collective security forces there [in Western Europe] as elsewhere, so as to end the Soviet power to intimidate directly or by satellites . . . In the balanced consideration of our problems, we shall end neglect of the Far East, which Stalin has long identified as the road to victory over the West . . .* We shall support the United Nations . . . We shall not try to buy good will. We shall earn it by sound, constructive, self-respecting policies and actions."

John Foster Dulles had produced a realistic, knowing, crusading plank.

Although the national-defense plank was not in his realm, Dulles had a hand in it, too. When he learned that the original draft leaned toward air-power-only policy, which Ike opposed, he suggested that it be rewritten. Result: a plank which called for "the quickest possible development of . . . completely adequate air power and the simultaneous readiness of coordinated air, land and sea forces . . ."

Civil Rights. While Elder Statesman Dulles was steering the foreign-policy course, one of the convention's youngest and prettiest delegates was the central figure in a struggle over civil rights. Mrs. Mildred Younger, a 31-year-old Los Angeles housewife, presided over the civil-rights subcommittee with an intelligent, calm hand, asked witnesses piercing questions which showed that her political experience extended far beyond the chicken-patty circuit of most women politicians. The daughter of a California lobbyist for public-school teachers and the wife of a lawyer, she was no stranger to proceedings of this kind. Said she: "I was two years old the first time I went on the floor of the legislature at Sacramento."

The subcommittee was bitterly divided. Mrs. Younger and two other members wanted to call for a federal agency (she avoided the explosive initials FEPC) to push civil rights. The two other members were violently opposed. As a result, Millikin's full committee got majority and minority reports, and came out with a plank that each side could construe as it wished: '"We believe that it is the primary responsibility of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions . . . However, we believe that the Federal Government should take supplemental action within its constitutional jurisdiction to oppose discrimination against race, religion or national origin."

The Orange Crate. On other issues, the platform said about what it could be expected to. It attacked the Administration's "appeasement of Communism at home and abroad," and pledged an overhauling of U.S. loyalty and security programs. It condemned the "wanton extravagance" in Washington, and promised tax cuts. After pointing out that "fraud, bribery, graft, favoritism and influence-peddling" had come to light in the Truman Administration, it vowed to "oust the crooks and grafters."

When Senator Millikin had finished reading the 6,000-word platform, the convention adopted it by voice vote, without a murmur of dissent. It was a workmanlike piece of fast political carpentry--and, except for the foreign-policy plank, about as inspiring as an orange crate. Only in one field had the framers of the document agreed to a simple proposition, stated clearly, without fear or favor. "We pledge," said the plank, "a more efficient and frequent mail-delivery service."

*For Governor Thomas E. Dewey's view of the Far East, see BOOKS.

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