University of Virginia Library

Masked Liberal

Hubert Humphrey: a liberal
whose liberalism was masked by
understudy to an Administration
which climaxed the Vietnam war
and to a President who will have
not once but future greatness when
the Great Society is called the
Second New Deal; a man whose
evanescence unlike Franklin
Roosevelt's — is, strangely, not an
asset but a liability; a
misunderstood man who if he could
match his intellect and his
compassion with some Nixon or
Kennedy power lust would deserve
to be President and might be so.

George McGovern: a George
Norris who, like Eugene McCarthy,
plays mostly one note, but who
plays it so well that he wins the
political heart of all those who are
deeply disenamored with a
wretched, wasted war; but who so
clearly lacks the diversity of
support which he needs for
nomination.

Birch Bayh: the Hoosier farm
boy who with wife Marvella won a
high school oratory contest, who
distinguished himself especially by
Constitutional and Senatorial
reform and the fight against Judge
Carswell, but who excels Edmund
Muskie in his vagueness. The boyish
idealism upon which he is
campaigning may be his route not
to victory but to early defeat; and
if that is all he has to offer,
deservedly so.

Harold Hughes: former alcoholic
and truck driver; like Muskie and
McGovern and Bayh, a Democratic
wonder boy in a Republican state
(Iowa) but only like McGovern
courageous enough to blast the war
— indeed courageous enough and
self-made enough to override his
paucity of any other qualities.

Henry Jackson: a rare bird: and
Democratic hawk, an
unreconstructed Stuart Symington
who likes the ABM, the SST and
who has a perverse fascination with
military muscle but whose
liberalism is otherwise atypical.

In other words, the Democracy
does not seem to be running its best
men.

In the Senate alone, the titular
candidates are outclassed by men
who aren't even running —
Wisconsin's William Proxmire,
Michigan's Philip Hart,
Connecticut's Abraham Ribicoff,
Rhode Island's Claiborne Pell and
especially Illinois' Adlai Stevenson
III.