Plea for Partisans

The President said Yes, the Vice-President said No, and the Secretary of State equivocated righteously. "Foreign policy ought to be kept out of partisan debate," declared Dwight Eisenhower last week. He said that he "deplored" the exchange of criticism and reply on official actions; that when he himself is accused he does not expect to answer; and that America's interests will be best served "if we do not indulge in this kind of thing." Richard Nixon called this "an unsound idea" ("one of the reasons the Republican party is in trouble today") and insisted on the opposite policy. John Foster Dulles took turns agreeing with both and then issued a "clarification" showing that there hadn't been any real disagreement all along.

Mr. Eisenhower's position was clearly untenable. Keeping things bipartisan means keeping them out of the electorate's reach. To deplore debate and ignore criticism is to rise above the tests of rationality; it is to rule by fiat rather than by consent. The State Department is not to be run by Gallup Polls, of course, but to hold that any policy is altogether above the clash of political parties is to deny it democratic legitimation.

What remains the most unnerving aspect of the whole episode, however, are the assumptions on which all parties to the controversy finally agreed. Harry Truman, for all his hell-raising, also declared himself opposed to "partisan attacks in the field of international relations." And Adlai Stevenson hymned the virtues of bipartisanship. It was felt, on all sides, that beyond certain limits criticism can become "radical," "partisan," and "un-American."

The advocates of this position--and they are legion--are obscuring one vital axiom (whether consciously or not) which must be made clear:

If the United States seriously expects to claim the world's respect for any other reason than material wealth and brute strength, it cannot lose the capacity for unmitigated self-criticism.

As so many examples in both parties demonstrate, one can scarcely expect anyone in even a quasi-official position to discharge this vital function relentlessly today.

The United States, then, does not suffer from an excess of "partisanship" or fundamental criticism. Quite to the contrary. Indeed it is only the capacity to encourage such thoroughgoing judgement and analysis--and to grow from it--that justifies all other risks and claims for support, at home or abroad. Far from being obliged to cultivate the gentle art of "bipartisanship" among her citizens, America needs nothing more desperately than to resurrect the grand tradition of prophetic outrage and Socratic treason.