The Issue of Purpose

As the nation's most damaging steel strike dragged toward a court-enforced halt, as the television industry sagged under disclosures of mass deceit and wholesale perjury, newsmen were primed with some uncommonly philosophical questions at the President's press conference last week. Essentially, they were asking: Has American society lost its moral vitality?

The President did not think so. The TV scandal touched off by the confessions of Charles Van Doren (see SHOW BUSINESS) seemed to leave the U.S. "bewildered," said he. It reminded him of the time when the Chicago White Sox were accused of taking bribes to throw the 1919 World Series; a bewildered newsboy went to Outfielder "Shoeless Joe" Jackson and said, "Say it ain't so, Joe." Obstinacy at the bargaining table and dishonesty on the air waves, Ike went on, are reminders that "selfishness and greed . . . occasionally get the ascendancy over those things that we like to think of as the ennobling virtues of man--his capacity for self-sacrifice, his readiness to help others."

"We Have Gone Soft." Reminders of man's ignoble qualities were falling on the public ear with increasing frequency, not only in sermons, books and editorials, but in plain-spoken political speeches. Economic Man, his wants largely satisfied for the time, was no longer the main concern of the stump-thumping candidates. Instead, a rising chorus of politicos urged a prosperous U.S. to see beyond personal prosperity to national purpose. With the approach of 1960, a major new political issue was emerging, capable of maturing into a serious debate of U.S. aims and purposes.

"The harsh facts of the matter are that we have gone soft--physically, mentally, spiritually soft," said Democratic Presidential Candidate Jack Kennedy last week, restating a warning woven into his speeches since September. "We are in danger of losing our will to fight, to sacrifice, to endure. The slow corrosion of luxury is already beginning to show." Bejeweled and tuxedoed Hollywood Democrats nodded solemnly. As he introduced Campaigner Kennedy, California's Governor Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown was attuned to the issue. Asked he: "Shall we allow a chromium-plated materialism to be the principal apparent goal of our national life; or do we not have a responsibility to muster a new national conscience, a new sense of public purpose in the face of the challenge by the Soviets?"

"People Are Looking." With the immemorial necessity of "Outs" in all campaigns, the Democrats were reaching for an issue. In a time of evident prosperity, the "slow corrosion" issue turned prosperity from the world's wonder to a road to wickedness and decadence. But the issue gained strength from general uneasiness about the U.S. lag in space and missilery. Some hard-boiled Democratic pros, mindful of Adlai Stevenson's disaster when he tried to discuss the issue of national "drift" in 1956, were trying to avoid such words as "purpose" and "softness" in favor of Candidate Stuart Symington's line: "The people are not too flabby to do the job; they're just being misled." Yet Democrats could not convincingly fault Dwight Eisenhower's leadership without saying where they themselves wanted the nation to go. Inescapably, the debate would turn to purpose.

New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller, intent on establishing an independent Republican identity in his try for the presidency, seems to assume as much. Said he in a recent speech: "Our people are looking for a sense of direction and purpose." In agreement is Chicago Industrialist Charles Percy (Bell & Howell cameras), who last month led a committee that set G.O.P. goals. Predicted Percy last week: "National purpose will be a more important issue in the 1960 campaign than in any previous peacetime campaign."

Anticipating the rough-and-tumble days ahead, Arizona's Barry Goldwater last week threw a roundhouse punch. The U.S. has indeed gone "soft," said the stalwart of the G.O.P. Old Guard, but the blame rests with "Senator John Kennedy and his fellow Democratic lawmakers. These people in the last 30 years have made us soft because of an abundance of federal controls, federal spending and unnecessary foreign entanglements."

Policy on the Move. Concern with "softness" goes deeper. Said the Rev. Homer McEwen, Negro pastor of Atlanta's First Congregational Church: "We have lost our traditional thrust toward a moral society." Watching the modern morality play unfold in Washington, a Bostonian remarked: "The awful thing about the quiz show scandals is that we're looking at ourselves." But a Los Angeles man said, "This television mess is a pimple on the body politic--what Kennedy is talking about is the real illness."

No consensus emerged from stirrings of opinion, no pat judgment that the U.S. is "soft." The U.S. knew that, save in wartime or other great crises (the Depression), national purpose cannot always be precisely denned. The President's announced trip to South Asia (see The Presidency) was in a sense national purpose on the move. So, in effect, was Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson's attempt to establish a durable world economic policy based on free trade and mutual self-help (TIME, Nov. 9). But there was no clear articulation of purpose. "Our leaders have not been able to give us a sense of direction," said Sylvan Meyer, editor of the Gainesville (Ga.) Times. "They've told us we have to sacrifice luxuries to carry out our job in the world. We're willing. But nobody tells us what to sacrifice and nobody tells us the purpose."

Having raised the national-purpose issue, both Republicans and Democrats would have to answer those questions. In prospect was a partisan exchange that might reveal to the U.S.--and the world--the purpose that a society could set for itself beyond material plenty.

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