By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the Minneapolis StarTribune
October 11, 1958
THE DICTIONARY defines politics as the science of government. If this be true it seems obvious that we have too few politicians and too many people who think they are but aren't.
But if we are short of true politicians, we do have a wealth of vitriol that passes for politics. The seeping and discrediting statement, the insulting slogan, the unsubstantiated indictment--these contribute about as much to the science of government as a gopher does to the science of agriculture.
SUCH POLITICAL extremes are abundant during campaign years. Issues get lost in the heat of conflict and problems of real importance are sacrificed to prejudice, deceit and bombast.
It is not enough to say that your opponent or the opposition party is wrong on agriculture, foreign policy, taxation or the race question--and to dispassionately give your reasons for thinking so. You needs must add that your opponent is either a horse thief or a tool of the "interests"or of labor, the underworld or the Commies.
And if the rival party takes control it will mean turning the country over to the robber barons, the labor racketeers or the socialists. There can be no middle ground, no sweet reasonableness. Everything is black or white. We shall have abundance never before dreamed of or we shall have chaos. Civilization is at the crossroads, brother, and you had better vote right.
I CANNOT stomach such tangy tripe. While I can see where a fellow on the stump, carried away by applause and the desire for victory, might be constrained to aim a few below the belt, I don't have to like his tactics or vote the way he tells me.
Many may have been amused, but few convinced, by recent haymakers thrown by Vice President Nixon and former President Truman. While poles apart politically, they have a common penchant for overstatement and uppercuts.
Nixon, in an understandably zealous bid to save his state of California for the Republicans, accused the Democrats of "rot gut" thinking. And old Harry, not to be outdone, is going around yelling that the administration deliberately brought on the recent recession. He also pictures the Republican Party as a worse blight to agriculture than hail, flood, drouth or grasshoppers.
Nixon and Truman may get partisan cheers and be applauded for their fighting spirit, but I see little mileage in such strategy.
MAYBE I'm wrong. Maybe this has to be done to bring in party contributions. Another argument for it is that the voter, apathetic enough at best, will stay in bed on Election Day unless fired up. There must be implanted in him the suspicion that nefarious forces are working against him and his only defense is to vote. This seems a sad commentary on the electorate. If the voter can't be stimulated through sane debate of the issues, he might better stay in bed.
I don't think democratic government will grind to a halt or the country be taken over by hoodlums if Joe Doakes wins the election or doesn't. I don't think Democrats are "rot gut" thinkers any more than I believe the GOP is out to hook the farmer.
I doubt that those who favor right-to-work laws have labor enslavement in mind or that right-to-work opponents are pinks and racketeers or want to deprive anyone of his constitutional right to make a living.
It would be nice if we had less campaign demagoguery and more campaign sense, fewer pie-in-the-sky promises and more unspectacular honesty, less guile and more forthrightness.
BUT IT seems too much to expect. Look at the success of that great political opportunist and champion of white supremacy, Gov. Orval Fabus. He won re-election in Arkansas by a whopping margin because he had called out the national guard to prevent a few Negro students from attending Central high school in Little Rock.
The nation long will pay for the mischief wrought by the little man from Greasy Creek. He has fomented hate and caused confusion, suffering and heartache.
Still he's tall in the political saddle.
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