Ordeal by Campaign

A presidential campaign is more than a debate, more than a chance for the electorate to compare the "views" of candidates. It is also an ordeal, a trial of character. As debate, the Nixon case did not amount to much on either side; the Democrats started an argument, lost it and wound up defending Stevenson's fund which had been brought to light by the Nixon case. As ordeal, however, the Nixon case was by far the most important event so far, in the campaign.

Few verdicts of that obscure judge, public opinion, have ever been plainer than the reaction to Nixon himself. That part of the public that could be convinced (and had to be convinced) made up its mind that he was an honest and thoroughly sincere man. His fund was probably a mistake in political judgment (as was Stevenson's) but by the time Nixon had finished speaking, the snowballing charges against him had melted down to a tactical error--and no more.

Less obvious and more important than Nixon's acquittal was Eisenhower's ordeal in the Nixon crisis. From the start, the central (and unsolved) problem of the Eisenhower campaign was how to get over in public speeches the relationship between Ike's essential character and the problems facing the nation. What the speeches had failed to do, the Nixon crisis did.

Ike had two courses easier to follow than the one he took: 1) he could have fired Nixon instanter; 2) he could have promptly announced that Nixon would stay on the ticket. Most of the advice that Ike got was for one of these courses or the other.

Political amateurs, in general, were for the first course, some of them insisting that the Nixon case offered a heaven-sent opportunity to demonstrate Ike's political purity and independence. Reporters assigned to Ike's train were almost unanimous in this view, and many of their stories reflected the fact. The argument was that whether Nixon was right or wrong he had become a liability to the ticket, and should be dumped. Had Ike listened to this view and put seeming expediency above justice to Nixon he would have belied what his friends have said of him: that his character and experience fit him for the decision-making job at a time of moral crisis and leadership crisis in the history of his country.

Professional politicians, in general, urged Ike to take the second course. If he had followed their advice and backed Nixon completely from the start, there is no doubt that Ike would have choked off much of the anti-Nixon clamor simply by removing the element of dramatic suspense from the case. But if Ike had done that, it would have sounded like an echo of the Truman "loyalty," the complacent quality in the Administration that has caused what men of both parties recognize as "the mess in Washington." Ike was neither impetuous nor smug about the Nixon crisis. He admitted a real possibility that Nixon might be wrong, but he waited for Nixon's public defense and he was not afraid of the people.

"Loyalty" (in the Truman sense) is the glue on the flypaper. It touches far more in the campaign than the corruption issue. The people are reacting strongly to the phrase "the mess in Washington" but reporters say that this does not mean merely mink coats and tax scandals. Voters who talk about "the mess in Washington" have in mind the entanglement with fellow travelers as well as the entanglement with five-percenters; they have in mind the Korean war stalemate as well as the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Blind "loyalty" to wrong men and wrong policies is as conspicuous in foreign policy as in the corruption area. "I will not turn my back on Alger Hiss" has a lot in common with the "loyalty" of the Pendergast machine, and produces results far more damaging.

The art of leadership consists largely of the balance of loyalties, the weighing of facts, the finding of the problem's heart. Eisenhower in the military and diplomatic field has been demonstrating that quality for years. In the Nixon crisis he showed that he could transfer it to the political field, that leadership is not an occupational technique but an attribute of personal character.

Some of Ike's advisers think that the Republicans have won another corruption argument with the Democrats and want to continue by concentrating on Stevenson's fund and similar interesting but decidedly secondary matters. What the Nixon ordeal did was much more; by spotlighting Ike's ability to make successful decisions, it opened Ike's path toward what ought to be the center of the campaign: the question of whether Eisenhower or Stevenson is better equipped, by training and character, to remove the Communist pressure before it mounts into World War III.

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