Mr. Santiago: Bingo. I am going to mention the Great Chilean Earthquake. After all, this thing was so huge and powerful and widespread. It also seems appropriate to mention an actual earthquake while an political earthquake is going on.
H.Appleby: Reminds me of a line in "Thirteen Days":
"Let's assume for a moment that Khrushchev hasn't gone off the deep end."
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The Rival Candidate Harry Enters!!
Butler’s first major action as Prime Minister was to lift the state of emergency in Kenya, officially marking the end of the Mau Mau Uprising. Throughout Eden’s tenure, military conflict had raged in this East African British colony between the British Army stationed there and a local anti-colonial group called the Mau Mau. Exercising military power, the British were able to gradually quell the uprising and restore order. In lifting the state of emergency, Butler announced that his country would stay in Kenya for the foreseeable future to “maintain law and order” in light of the rebellion. In 1962, the colony would be granted internal self-governance with political moderate Jomo Kenyatta serving as Prime Minister. However, the Head of State would continue to be the British Governor-General and Kenyan independence would be held off until the mid-1960s as part of a larger effort by Butler and his Foreign Minister to moderate the pace of British decolonization.
At the same time Butler was keeping his country involved in Kenya, the United States began gearing up for her forty-fourth Presidential election. With Sparkman unable to run again due to term limits, voters would be heading to the polls on November 8th to pick his successor. The Republicans were certain to nominate California Governor William F. Knowland as their candidate; however, there were rumors circulating that New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller was considering challenging Knowland for the nomination. On the Democratic side, Vice President Henry M. Jackson was the heavy favorite for his Party’s nomination. On January 4th, he officially launched his campaign with a speech announcing his candidacy. Scoop gave his speech in his hometown of Everett, Washington - today a plaque marks the site where he spoke - before an audience of two hundred supporters. Awkward when dealing with large crowds, having a small crowd allowed the Vice President to be at his best. Reporters and cameramen were on hand to record the speech for national broadcast on the evening news programs. Wanting to demonstrate that he had the knowledge and experience to be the Chief Executive, Jackson spoke for twenty-five minutes about the issues he would run on and what he would do if elected to serve in the White House for the next four years. On the domestic front, the staunch social liberal evoked former President Franklin D. Roosevelt in advocating a new New Deal for the 1960s.
“It is my intention,” he said,
“To use the full power of government to ensure a fair and just deal for the American people.”
Hence, the social program became known as the Fair Deal. Among the key (and vague) points Jackson highlighted:
-Increase aid for the blind, the disabled, and the elderly
-Improve the healthcare system
-Establish a cabinet-level agency to oversee housing and urban development
-Address the needs of children, veterans, and Native Americans
-To help offset the cost of his social proposals, Jackson would continue the steamlining of the Federal Government begun by former President Adlai Stevenson. He would eliminate duplicate or wasteful programs, reorganize government departments and agencies, and make cuts in the Federal payroll by dismissing employees deemed “unnecessary”. He also admitted that he would raise taxes on the grounds that the benefits the Fair Deal would dole out would be worth paying higher taxes
-Upgrade the United States Postal Service to make it more efficent at handling mail in the 1960s
-Improve the election process, including granting residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote
-Enact a constitutional amendment providing equal rights for women
-Guarantee civil rights for African-Americans
It was an ambitious program, designed to build on
“these last seven years of progress, in which every American has seen the betterment of their lives in some way.”
Indeed, the Vice President portrayed his candidacy as the continuation of the progressive mindset begun by Stevenson and continued by Sparkman. Spending the bulk of his speech laying out domestic policy, Scoop touched briefly on foreign policy. Pledging the continuation of an aggressive containment policy against the growth of Communism, Jackson once again denounced the idea of reaching an accomodation with the Kremlin:
“It is true that the Soviet Union do not want all-out atomic war. The Kremlin rulers would rather inherit the world than obliterate it. That is why the West must use every method short of war to stop them. Those who wish to appease the Soviet dictator to achieve a new ‘peace for our time’ have not learned the lessons of appeasing Adolf Hitler.”
As a way to combat Soviet ambitions, the Vice President recommended that the United States continue to provide foreign aid to newly-emerging countries. He made the argument that helping countries develop their economies was the way to beat back the appeal of Communism. He pointed to Egypt as an example of what can happen when America is generous. He noted that the Egyptians, with American financial backing, were currently building the Aswan High Dam in order to control the flood waters of the Nile River, improve irrigation, and generate hydroelectric power. Such a move
“will help the Egyptians help themselves by opening up a path to long-term growth and stability. Countries that are stable are less likely to consider radical alternatives.”
Having thrown his hat into the ring, Jackson began a tour across the country to talk to voters and raise campaign funds as he made his way back to the East Coast. From Everett, he traveled south to Los Angeles, California. It would be here in six months that the Democrats would meet to hold their nominating convention. With thirty-two electoral votes up for grabs, California was certain to be a battleground state come fall for the two major political parties. Speaking to voters in the home of Hollywood and the new star-studded Walk of Fame, Jackson laid out one of the themes he would be campaigning on: that he had the proven ability to stand up to the Soviet Union and not blink. During his hardline speech, he advocated aggressive support for South Vietnam in her defense against Communism – by contrast, Sparkman was lukewarm in his support for Saigon.
“It is absolutely essential,” he said,
“That we are aware of the overwhelming importance of Indochina in the fight to stop Communist domination of the Far East and the world.”
It was in the Los Angeles speech that the Vice President began to crystallize his foreign policy views into an overarching grand strategy for the United States – one that he would implement if elected. As he told the gathered Angelenos:
“The fundamental issue of our time is whether a free society can generate and sustain the great national endeavor required to outperform Soviet tyranny. The outcome of the Cold War will determine what kind of world system is to be created on this planet: a Communist world system or a world system in which free institutions can survive and flourish. The Communists aim to demonstrate that their system represents the inevitable wave of the future, and that our friends and allies have no realistic alternative except to join forces with them. Loss of the Cold War would be as final – and fatal – as defeat in an all-out war.”
Having said all that, Scoop assured his listeners that he was confident the United States would ultimately win the Cold War. He predicted:
“The Soviet Union’s race to catch up with us contains the seeds of their political failure. The essence of the Soviet dilemma is that the Kremlin must grant some freedom in order to maintain technological growth. However, allowing freedom undermines Communist ideology and discipline. Rule by more and more repression can work only at the expense of weakening Soviet standing in the industrial competition with the West. In a system where there have been few freedoms, the introduction of new freedoms is perilous.”
However in order to win, the American people would have to
“persevere in the struggle for years and years” in both confronting and talking to Moscow. While advocating communication with the Soviets, he warned against treating summits as a cure-all:
“We should never forget that summitry is just another device in the Cold War arsenal. The Soviet rulers think in terms of power. Superior power, they believe, will eventually prevail.”
Following the speech, the Vice President posed with his campaign manager (left) and the state party chairman (right), all flashing victory signs for the amusement of photographers. He then mingled with supporters.
Among those he talked to was a good-looking man named Ronald Reagan. Originally born in Illinois in February 1911, Reagan moved to California in 1937 to pursue an acting career. Among the movies he starred in were “Knute Rockne, All American” (1940), “Kings Row” (1942), and “Bedtime for Bonzo” (1951). After World War Two, he served as President of the Screen Actors Guild and exercised his anti-Communist chops by being an informant for the FBI amid postwar paranoia about Communist inflitration in America. In 1954, Reagan got his current job of hosting “General Electric Theater”, an anthology television series on CBS. A lifelong Democrat, Reagan started out as a liberal New Dealer who campaigned for Hubert Humphrey when he ran for President as a third party candidate in 1948. However as he grew older, Reagan’s political views became more conservative. Although he wasn’t keen on the Fair Deal proposals, the actor loved Jackson’s pro-military and anti-Communist positions. After listening to the Los Angeles speech, Reagan and his wife Nancy approached the Vice President and chatted with him. Jackson thanked him for the post-Kitchen Debate congratulatory letter; in response, Reagan thanked him for standing up to Khrushchev the way he did.
“We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars,” he said,
“And you not only recognize that but have the courage to speak up and warn others.”
Reagan urged the Vice President to continue speaking out
“about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.”
Scoop was visibly impressed by Reagan’s passionate opposition to Communism and saw in him a kindled spirit. He spent more time talking to him than to anyone else. As they departed, Henry decided to keep in touch with Ronald. Perhaps the actor could be of some use in the upcoming campaign.
Having made a fan out of Reagan, Jackson swung his tour eastward. He made stops in important states like Missouri (thirteen electoral votes) and Michigan (twenty electoral votes)…states he couldn’t afford to lose in what would certainly be a close election. On January 10th, the Vice President arrived in Grand Rapids, Michigan – home of the Arthur H. Vandenberg Presidential Center – to meet with voters there. The Great Lakes State, aside from its’ considerable amount of electoral votes, would be in play in November due to the fact that both the Governorship and a Senate seat would be up for grabs. On that same cold day 572 miles southeast, standing on the steps of the Virginia State Capitol Building in Richmond, Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd announced that he would be a Democratic candidate for President of the United States. The announcement itself wasn’t all that surprising, considering the bad blood between Northern and Southern Democrats. With the Vice President firmly in the Humphrey wing of the Party, it was considered a safe bet that a Southern candidate would emerge to represent the Old Guard. What was surprising was the fact that Byrd was going to seek the regular nomination, not be the Dixiecrat candidate instead. Byrd’s rationale was that if he didn’t run in the primaries as a challenger, Jackson would win by default and the Southerners wouldn’t have someone to rally around in defiance.
And who is Harry Byrd you might be asking? At age seventy-two, Byrd was an old man from an old Virginia family. His family lineage included the founder of Richmond, Pocahontas, and Richard E. Byrd (the first man to fly over the South Pole). Allergic to debt and borrowing money, Byrd began his political career in 1915 and eventually became Governor (1926-1930) and a Senator in 1933. Although an opponent of the New Deal and liberal programs in general, Byrd was an internationalist and was never afraid to give nonpartisan support to foreign policy regardless of whichever political party controlled the White House. In 1944, he sought the Democratic Presidential nomination and lost to former Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace in a bitter convention battle that took thirteen ballots to settle. Sixteen years later, greatly disturbed by the prospect of a Jackson nomination, Byrd decided to mount a second Presidential campaign. He certainly had the segregationist credentials to represent Southern resistance. Byrd was one of the leading Senators in the successful campaign to filibuster Republican attempts at enacting meaningful civil rights legislation during the 1940s. When the Supreme Court struck down segregated schools as unconstitutional in 1954, it was Byrd who urged Sparkman to resist enforcing the ruling – advice that ended up doing the President more harm than good. The Virginia Senator then signed the Southern Manifesto opposing racial integration. In the wake of the Little Rock Crisis in 1957, he called for “massive resistance” on the state level to prevent what happened in Little Rock from happening elsewhere. To quote one historian:
“You could not have scripted a better candidate to represent the Southern Old Guard in 1960 than Senator Byrd.”
Following Byrd’s announcement, the Strom Thurmond-led Dixiecrats coalition endorsed him for President. With that, all hell broke loose. After years of growing angst, the Democratic Party finally ruptured into all-out civil war. For the next three weeks, the American people watched as the Humphrey Democrats and the Dixiecrats pounded each other in a vicious verbal brawl. Every time one side criticized the other, the attacked came back with stronger words. Both sides claimed to represent the “true” Democratic Party and accused their opponents of being “traitors”. Jackson and Humphrey, Byrd and Thurmond…they all used heated language in explaining why their respective sides were right and not the other. Even Republicans, no strangers to political feuding, were taken aback by how ugly things were getting as January faded into February. Watching events play out from his home in New York, former President Thomas E. Dewey dismissed comparisons between the Dewey-Taft Feud and the Jackson-Byrd Feud as both simplistic and ignorant. According to him, there was a major difference between these two:
“What we Republicans were arguing about was the idealogical direction in which we would go. After beating each other up quite badly, we came to the realization that our party could never exist being either too liberal or too conservative. Instead, in order for us to go forward together, we would have to strike a balance between the two sides.
The Democrats, on the other hand, are not arguing about an ideology direction. What they are struggling to answer is this basic question: ‘Are all men created equal?’ This is a question the Democrats have never been able to answer for as long as they have existed, instead putting it off through compromise and silence. Now they have to answer that question. What will that answer be? I do not know. I do know this however: ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’”
