Politics and the Presidency

American Presidential campaigns rarely rise above the level of polite name-calling and Madison Avenue sloganeering. When a candidate attempts to wage his campaign on principles and issues, most often he finds himself rejected by the electorate--as Adlai Stevenson has learned on two occasions. Instead of providing a quadrennial forum of intelligent discusison of the nation's problems, the Presidential election usually degenerates into a puerile contest between rival slogans and personalities, with the real issues thrust aside as fit topics only for columnists and professors. The people seem to prefer well-meaning mediocrity to well-reasoned policy.

The 1960 campaign is likely to prove no exception to the rule, despite an intelligent, perceptive performance from Senator Kennedy in his first major speech last Thursday. Discussing the nature and role of the Presidency, he offered a serious analysis of the office and a strong, critique of the Eisenhower regime. The next decade, he said, "will demand more than ringing manifestoes issued from the rear of the battle. It will demand that the President place himself in the very thick of the fight, that he care passionately about the fate of the people he leads, that he be willing to serve them at the risk of incurring their momentary displeasure.

It is significant that in the press reports of Kennedy's appearance before the National Press Club, most papers gave the speech only secondary coverage, emphasizing instead either the Senator's oblique reference to his possible entry in the California primary or the question of his withdrawal--upon request of church groups--from a Philadelphia speaking engagement in 1950. This second issue, peripheral even to the peripheral question of Kennedy's Catholicism, is typical of the inane matters that enliven American political campaigns. Only the New York Times devoted much attention to Kennedy's address, which was--as James Reston wrote--the "first really serious political speech of the formal campaign."

Admittedly, Kennedy has not yet spoken out in specific terms on the "increasingly dangerous, unsolved, long-postponed problems" that lie "beneath today's surface gloss of peace and prosperity." But seven years of an Eisenhower Presidency have made the office itself and way it is executed an issue of importance. Kennedy's pledge of a vigorous Presidency is a welcome and promising start for his campaign. If he can continue to discuss the issues on a realistic and intelligent basis, he may be able to keep the 1960 race from the usual level of slogans and petty side issues. Cassandra may not bear glad tidings, but she is a good deal more truthful than Pollyanna.