Evening star., 1952-11-02
Time for Decision

The presidential campaign Of 1852 has
reached stage which may best be summarized
in Kipling's words:
The tumuH and the shouting dies
The Captains and the Kings depart
There remain of course the conventional
election-eve appeals But for practical purposes
the campaign is over. The venerable platitudes
e will be filed away for another four years. The
laundering torrent of charge and countercharge,
of SANDER and answering slander, Of vain boast
and empty claim, has subsided-and one may
hope, will soon be forgotten The candidates
and their encourages, the great as we'll as the
small, having done their best, or their worst
according to ones point of view, must now retire
to the sidelines and await the verdict.
The Star, being uncommitted to either
candidate, certainly does not now presume or
pretend to forecast the decision of the voters
That is an undertaking best left to those endowed
with perceptive powers denied to ordinary men,
or who belong, perhaps, in the category Of per-
sons who do not hesitate to rush in where the
angels fear to tread.
About the most that can be done, lacking
reliable crystal ball, is to review some of the
problems which have confronted the candidates
and the devices by which they have sought to
meet them.
General Eisenhower had the harder early
road to travel. He won the nomination at
price-the price of deeply split party with the
Old Guard licking its wounds and muttering
threats Of election day revenge So his first task,
as he says he saw it, was to unity the Republic
cans He set out to repair this split and he did
it-but also at price When he made his peace
with Senator Taft and went through the motions
of indorsing such Senators as Mccarthy and
Jenner he furnished the political enemy with
ammunition. And they used it to assail General
Eisenhower on both tanks Sometimes he was
derided as the helpless captive Of the Old Guard.
At other times he was pictured as the captain
of the Republican team and charged with full
responsibility for everything the Jenners and the
McCarthys did and said. This, of course, is
politics. but it is difficult as common-senSe
matter to see how General Eisenhower could
have done otherwise If he wanted to win the
election
With the party breach more or less healed,
General Eisenhower turned to the vote-getting
issues. There were several of them-the "mess'
in Washington, imitation, high taxes and the
Korean war. He has been accused perhaps with
some justification, Of seeking to exploit popular
discomfort with the Korean stalemate for parti-
san purposes. Again, however, it is necessary
to remember that hard-fought political cam
paign was under way. 1t would have been more
surprising if General Eisenhower, as the candi-
date of the party out of power, had refused to
make the Korean war an issue.
Governor Stevenson did not start out under
quite the same handicap. There was, to be sure,
some dsaffecton in the South. But the threat
to him from that quarter was much less serious
than the threat to General Eisenhower which
arose from the possible detection of the Taft
wing of the party.
Governor stevensons real handicap lay in
the fact that he was relatively unknown figure
pitted against an opponent who was something
of a national hero and whose name was known
to every American. For time Governor Steven
son, despite the admitted high quality of his
campaign addresses, seemed to be trailing badly.
He tried, at the outset to take an Independent
stand. He set up headquarters in Springfield,
he picked his own man as chairman of the
Democratic National Committee, and he chose
as intimate advisers men removed from the inner
circle of the Fair Deal But when the chips
were down and the battle seemed to be going
badly, Harry Truman, the whistle-stop cam
paigner, came charging into the fray. And since
that time, whether it be coincidental or a direct
result of this reinforcement, the Stevenson stock
seems to have been going up.
This led, as night follows day, to the Re-
publican charge that Governor Stevenson had
become the prisoner of Harry Truman and the
Fair Deal-that vote for Stevenson would not
be vote for change, but rather vote for
of the same that the country has been
getting for the past seven years.
Here again. however, hard political fact
intrudes. Just as General Eisenhower needed
the support of the Old Guard, Governor Steven
son needed the support that Harry Truman,
with the votes that the Truman brand of cam
paigning could be expected to bring to him.
If General Eisenhower is elected our political
system being what it is, he certainly will be under
some obligation to the Old Guard And If
Governor Stevenson should win, he just as
certainly will be under some obligation to Harry
Truman and the elements which comprise the
Fair Deal.
In The Stars judgment, however, it is
childish to suppose that either man would be
the Captive" of either element They are not
men who can be put or kept in any ones pocket
The chances are that most voters know this
And since, as far as the real views of the candi
dates are concerned, there is no substantial
issue of foreign policy involved, this election, in
all probability will be decided by the reaction
OF majority of the voters to the domestic issues
at stake. Whatever the outcome, the future Of
this country is going to be intrusted to better
than-average hands.
Champion
Lawrence Westbrook, former assistant at
the Democratic National Committee who has
s,,