Dishonesty in High Places

It is perhaps bad form to say so, but there is one campaign issue which must not smother in the post-election Era of Good Feeling. The nation must not forget the systematic deception of the public practiced for eight years by the Eisenhower government. This is one of those evils against which angry dissent is more effective than understanding and tolerance; for the trouble is that Eisenhower is leaving as popular as he came. Unless the press and the public rub the point in, American governments will learn just how easy it is to fool all of the people all of the time.

The Administration cannot, for example, offer the lamest excuse for the Labor Department's extraordinary step of refusing to release this month's unemployment statistics until after the election was over. (Such statistics normally come out in November before the eighth.) Because they showed that last month's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was the highest since the '57-'58 recession, the figures were of obvious and vital relevance to the election. Yet they were withheld.

Nor does one need to cast very far back for another example: the suppression of the CIA "prestige" report is an exact parallel to the Labor Department's move. Whatever the value of such a report, and however genuine the entire issue of prestige, the people had a right to judge for themselves. And in the same vein of cynical contempt for the public's intelligence was this summer's trick of dating checks for items bought last fiscal year payable in this fiscal year. In effect, this rigged the figures to show an artificially balanced budget to the electorate.

What is so curious about this deliberate withholding and suppression of information in almost every area of governmental operation is that--until this election--it was needless. With mandates in '52 and '56 so powerful that the men in the Eisenhower government could have told hard, unpopular truths to the American people, they chose instead to play insecure and intimidated roles. Unreasonably afraid of the people's reaction to any sort of bad news at home or abroad, they preferred deception, suppression of facts, and silence, to running the small political risk of being unpopularly right too soon.

Despite the depressingly thin margin of voters in this election who cared that their government was not being honest with them, the issue ought to be pressed. For routine deception by the government has become a vicious habit under Eisenhower, and no one wants it under Kennedy.