The Caucauasu & the Congress

"Caucauasu" was an Algonquian word meaning "elder" or "councilor." The Americans borrowed it and made it "caucus," meaning a party war council on the eve of battle. Last week, at Cincinnati, 125 Republican caucauasu caucused on the eve of battle. They called their meeting a "workshop," a term borrowed from universities, which had (quite unimaginatively) borrowed it from workshops. The chief Republican caucauasu at Cincinnati was Vice President Richard Nixon. "I do not come to you terribly optimistic or terribly pessimistic," said the Vice President to the Republican braves. "I think that this election is extremely close. We Republicans are behind in the House; it is extremely close in the Senate. The swing is against the party in power."

Back Ike! After warning that Republicans should "run scared," Nixon had some other strategy tips. When an opponent criticizes Dwight Eisenhower's golf playing, there is a ready answer: "If the President spent as much time playing golf as Truman spent playing poker, the President could beat Ben Hogan." Stay out of debates, but if they are unavoidable, there are some handy techniques. "If he asks you where you stand on Dulles, ask him where he stands on Acheson. If he asks you how you stand on the McCarthy issue, make him say where he stands on Mitchell and Bobby Jones, on Roosevelt and Condon. I personally can't see much to choose between the bellows of McCarthy and the bleats of Mr. Mitchell. He is using the McCarthy technique."

The Vice President continued to plead for party unity by calling the kettle a pot. There is disunity in the Republican Party. He acknowledged that some Republicans think Idaho's Senator Henry Dworshak is too conservative. "But what are you going to do? Elect that cowboy (former Democratic Senator Glen Taylor) instead?" He granted that other Republicans believe that New Jersey's Senate Nominee Clifford Case is too liberal, "but we've got to get 48 votes in the Senate. Let's get that into our heads."

Along with these warnings and knuckle-rappings, Nixon had some words of hope: "There is no reason why 1954 cannot be a repetition of 1934* because our Democratic friends have no great issue. We have ... to create an issue." Before the Republicans went home they agreed on the issue that they would create: "The Eisenhower Administration must have a Republican Congress to complete the Republican program of peace, progress and prosperity now well under way."

Hit Ike? On the other side of the fence, the Democratic National Committee was preparing for the formal opening of its campaign with appropriate war dances at Indianapolis on Sept. 16. Warming up, Tennessee's Democratic Senator Albert Gore made a nationally broadcast answer to President Eisenhower's report on the 83rd Congress. Gore charged the Administration with "weakness, timidity and vacillation" on important issues, e.g., world trade. In Chicago Adlai Stevenson told the A.F.L. electrical workers' convention that "this has been a year of futility--or worse--in meeting ... the problem of labor-management relationship."

Behind their closed doors, the Democrats had a disunity problem of their own. Stevenson & Co. wanted to pitch the campaign on an anti-Eisenhower theme. But many of the politicians who will be stumping the congressional districts are firmly against that policy. They are convinced that Ike is still overwhelmingly popular with the U.S. voter. Said one Democratic pro: "We ought to pretend that 1952 never happened, that there is no such thing as Eisenhower."

*The first congressional election after Franklin D. Roosevelt became President, and the only off-year election in this century that gave the party in power a net gain in House seats.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.