Harold Stassen

In a manner obscured by a derisive myth, Harold Stassen bears somewhat the hallmark of a Republican Stevenson. Though his wit is an auxiliary to (rather than a component of) his thought, and though he relishes politics, unlike the reluctant Democrat, Stassen shares with Stevenson, a first-hand respect for thought and an intellectual boldness, along with a reputation for defeat.

Among the cliches about Stassen is the charge that he is a perennial candidate, having run 20 years for the presidency and lost every time. In fact, Stassen's name was first entered in a presidential race by some of his friends, while he, then 37, was serving in the Pacific theatre with Admiral Halsey. In 1948 he did make a serious bid on his own, and was the man to beat until Dewey upset him in the Oregon primary. Stassen lost the nomination, and his party lost the election from failing to hold the farm vote. Stassen, three times elected governor of Minnesota (first taking office when only 31), might have held the farm vote and taken his party to the White House.

In 1952, Stassen ran against Taft as a stand-in for Eisenhower, who could not return from Europe until late spring. Meanwhile, Stassen argued for a liberal foreign policy, and on the first ballot his votes gave Eiseinhower the nomination over Taft. In the new administration, Stassen served as director of Mutual Security and of Foreign Operations. He was a member of the National Security Council and participated regularly in Cabinet sessions. He was appointed Special Assistant for Arms Control, (or, as Eisenhower called him, "Secretary of Peace"). In this last capacity, he negotiated seriously with the Soviets in the summer of 1957, proposing steps that make today's test ban look pallid. In this effort he was frustrated by Dulles.

Another Stassen defeat occurred is the summer of 1956, when he said that polls showed Nixon would detract from the ticket and might cost the Republicans some Congressional seats and statehouses, if not the White House. He offered Christan Herter of Massachusetts as an alternative. Nixon and his manager, Leonard Hall, moved fast and ruthlessly to isolate Stassen. Under this shadow, Stassen in 1958 sought the G.O.P. gubernatorial nomination in his adopted state of Pennsylvania, but was put down by a hostile machine. In 1959 he ran for mayor of Philadelphia, and lost to Dilworth in a definitively Democratic city. If we judge Stassen by the men he has fought, his defeats appear in a different light. His opponents were Taft in '52, Nixon in '56, Dulles in '57. Moreover, he denounced McCarthy well before the Senate voted to censure their colleague.

It was Stassen who in 1943 presented a proposal for a U.N., and who in 1945 was one of the three Republicans appointed by President Roosevelt to work in drafting the U.N. charter at San Francisco. In 1947, two weeks before Marshall broached his plan, Stassen presented in detail an extensive program of economic aid for Europe.

Today, as in 1948, Stassen is asking his party for the chance to run against a vice-president brought to the White House by an untimely death. Now, in the New Hampshire primary, Stassen is beginning to challenge Johnson's leadership, both in foreign policy, where the President has already shown weakness, and in economic renewal at home. Stassen asks for re-education of those now working below potential who could be trained to enter the service industries, a sector of the economy whose growth Stassen hopes to promote.

Stassen will elaborate his proposals in a speech here Monday night, and afterward in the District of Columbia and California primaries. Meanwhile, entering the New Hampshire primary months after Rockefeller and Goldwater, Stassen is aiming for 10 per cent of the vote in a state where polls shows 70 per cent of the voters are either undecided or unenthusiastic about the big two. Whether he is heard will depend on New Hampshire's willingness to consider a man whose ideas have often gone beyond what was congenial to men in control of national power.