Ike's First Year

After he had heard Eisenhower's first State of the Union speech, a prominent Republican Congressman said the President "had sounded the death-knell f the New Deal." Last week, it seemed everyone was remarking how much New Deal ahead turned up in the second State of the Union message. This shift points up an important result of Eisenhower's domestic year; simply by leaving the basic social programs and tax strategic of past Democratic administrations untouched, Eisenhower has made the New Deal a permanent fixture in American life.

But, unlike his foreign programs the success of Eisenhower's domestic year cannot be tested by its ability to continue sound policies of the past. For, in his election campaign, Eisenhower had promised that he "would not turn back the clock." He must be judged rather by his ability to carry out his own program, and his success at breaking the deadlock of interests that has been plaguing domestic political life.

For at least ten years, it has been evident that almost no powerful interest group in the nation could transform its interests group into legislation without encroaching on the programs of other groups. Unions and management; New England and Southern industry; civil rights advocates and Dixiecrats; farmers and protectionists--engaging each other in Congress and the White House, they have battled to a stalemate. During Truman's years, he spoke up for Negro, union, and slum-dwelling interests. Their opposing numbers were entrenched in Congress. Truman proposed the same Fair Deal program every year and he got nowhere.

When Eisenhower became President and established himself as a symbol of national unity, all these conflicting interests converged upon him. They hoped he could use his popularity to push through their programs. Since every positive action he took was bound to offend someone, he faced the choice of trying to break these deadlocks or dodging them. And by deliberately choosing the second alternative, he failed to meet the most pressing domestic problems of the nation. There is such a thing as a President being too popular to be effective, and that was Eisenhower during his first year of office.

For example, Eisenhower decided to soft-pedal Congress instead of forcing his program through. But by this decision he failed to represent the urban millions of the nation who, badly under-represented in Congress have traditionally looked to the President as their real representative. This failure is writ large across the many items of his own program labeled "unfinished business." Revision of the McCarran Immigration Act, for which scores of urban nationality groups had petitioned, and which the President had pledged, never came about. The promised Taft-Hartley amendments were lost somewhere in the White House political shuffle.

By standing pat on the programs of the New Deal of the thirties, he let the nation lose ground to the evils which a modern New Deal should attack. Slums have continued their spread and decay. The health of those millions who cannot really afford voluntary programs is getting worse. The teacher shortage mounts everywhere. In the face of these problems, the President has done no more than wrinkle up his forehead, appoint a study commission (all have been studied for years) and mouth lofty, empty statements of concern over the "human needs" of his people.

At first glance, these programs have been lost in the no-man's land between the federal government's desire to leave them to the states, and the states incapability of financing them. Actually, they have been sacrificed to the President's unwillingness to expend a little bit of his popularity to help the less privileged masses of the country. Most of these items, postponed the first year, have cropped up again in his second year's program. We have heard a good deal about the new, tougher approach the President plans to take toward Congress to get this program passed. We hope he will not fail in is second year as he has in his first. But success will only come from the realization that all Eisenhower's popularity is worthless unless put to some positive purpose.