1956. The Democratic and Republican Party Platforms Compared

The 1956 Issues

"Adlai E. Stevenson and President Dwight Eisenhower shake hands at the White House in Washington, Feb. 17, 1953, when Stevenson lunched with Eisenhower and a group of congressmen. A few months before, Eisenhower had defeated Stevenson in the presidential election" (source)

Below is a summary of the Democratic and Republican party platforms from WATCH: The Television Guide to the 1956 Conventions, the Campaign and the Election, Columbia Broadcasting System (New York, 1956), pp. 66-76. See also the 1940 party platforms compared.

The 1956 Issues

Foreign observers often profess to be puzzled by American politics. They say they can't see any difference between the two parties. If that were true, there would be no campaign issues. But, as you'll see, the next 10 pages of WATCH contain as lively a political argument as you'll come across this year. It's a debate between the Republican and Democratic National Committees, who don't seem to have any doubt that issues of vital importance are at stake in this 1956 election. The eight issues of greatest importance were picked by mutual agreement, and then the two parties went to work to give you, as precisely as they could, their respective positions on each. No matter how strong your own opinion already is, you'll find fresh ammunition here.

Foreign Policy

REPUBLICANS: The Administration's leadership in bringing West Germany into NATO, the developing co-operation under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the mutual defense treaties with Free China and South Korea, and the support of the Baghdad Pact exemplify our aim of building collective security through mutual agreements to take joint action against aggression and to supplement each other's economic and military strength. In Asia: We favor help to nations struggling against the threat of Communist subversion. In Europe: We wish to see increased not only the military strength of NATO, but also its unity of purpose and political cohesion. In the Near East: We will work tirelessly for a just solution of the dispute between the Arab States and Israel. The sum of our international effort is: the waging of peace, with all the resourcefulness, dedication and urgency we have mustered in time of war.

DEMOCRATS: In four years of the Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy, the U.S. has suffered important losses and communism has made important gains in every part of the world. Indochina fell to the Reds; pro-Western governments in Indonesia and Ceylon have been replaced by pro-Communist governments; the NATO alliance, our first line of military defense in Europe, has been weakened; the Communists have penetrated the Middle East, and nation after nation has resumed friendly contact with Moscow. Our foreign policy has continually offended our Allies and has not kept up with the new tactics of aggression pursued by Soviet Russia. We have suffered badly from a lack of firm leadership; a tendency to bluff our way through world affairs; a dangerous complacency and false optimism; and an abandonment of the bipartisan policy of past Democratic administrations.

Natural Resources

REPUBLICANS: We adhere to three fundamentals: (1) to develop, wisely use, and conserve mineral, fuel, land, forest and water resources from generation to generation; (2) to develop these resources primarily by private citizens under fair provisions of law including proper restraints for conservation; (3) to treat resource development as a partnership in which the participation of private citizens and state and local governments is as necessary as is Federal participation. Where local enterprise can shoulder the burden, it should be encouraged. And where local action cannot or should not fully meet the need, we should have Federal support. In this way our people can reserve themselves as many of the basic decisions affecting their lives as possible.

DEMOCRATS: The Eisenhower power policy is called "partnership" by the GOP. But the "local" partner is almost invariably one of the absentee-controlled power companies of America, with rural electric co-operatives and municipalities left out in the cold. For example, at Hells Canyon on Snake River, a "local" partner, the Idaho Power Company of Augusta, Maine, has been issued an FPC license to construct three dams which would mean only half the power, generated at three times the cost. TVA, characterized as "creeping socialism" by Eisenhower, has been under consistent Republican attack since 1953, as witness the illegal Dixon-Yates deal. Perhaps the best example of the Administration's attitude toward natural resources was the nomination of one of conservation's worst enemies, Wesley D'Ewart, as Assistant Secretary of the Interior in charge of the nation's public lands.

Farm Problem

REPUBLICANS: The Republican Party has accepted the challenge of developing a farm program that will help American agriculture adjust to the conditions of peace. The Administration's new farm law will attack the surpluses which overhang the market and depress prices. It is making $750,000,000 available to farmers agreeing to withdraw land from crop production. An additional $450,000,000 is earmarked for diverting land to soil-conserving uses on a longer-term basis. Another provision authorizes an annual appropriation up to $500,000,000 to supplement price-support operations for certain perishable commodities, and the previous limitation on the value of surplus commodities that may be distributed abroad under various assistance programs has been raised from $300,000,000 to $500,000,000. The result: Since the beginning of the year farm prices have responded and are now (June) up 9 per cent.

DEMOCRATS: Since the Eisenhower Administration took over the farm program, farm prices have fallen 22 per cent. Sliding-scale price supports have failed. Production actually increased, adding substantially to the so-called surpluses. The farmers' share of each consumer's dollar dropped from 47 cents in 1952 to 38 cents, the lowest point since 1941. Besides deliberately reducing farm price supports, when the prices of things farmers have to buy have stayed up or increased, the Administration has failed to step in quickly with help in emergencies. The GOP Administration also has hobbled the soil-conservation program, failed to develop low-cost electric power and made it much harder for farmers to get crop insurance.

Civil Rights

REPUBLICANS: The Republican Party has supported action to eliminate segregation in public schools. We fully concur in the decision of the Supreme Court and will work for and support its mandate. We have virtually eliminated discrimination and segregation in executive-branch operations throughout the nation. We have fully enforced Federal civil rights statutes. We have asked Congress to create a bipartisan civil rights commission with full authority to hold public hearings, to subpoena witnesses and to take testimony under oath. We have asked for the establishment of a civil rights division in the Justice Department. And we have asked Congress to give the Justice Department direct authority, subject to the Constitution, to bring civil rights actions against attempts to deprive citizens of the right to vote throughout the U.S.

DEMOCRATS: There have been loud partisan GOP claims that all advances in civil rights have been achieved since the Eisenhower Administration took office. Vice-President Nixon has falsely claimed, among other things, that this Administration brought about integration in the armed services. But an examination of the Eisenhower record on civil rights reveals that until this election year Eisenhower did not ask Congress to enact a single piece of civil rights legislation. Why didn't he support the Democratic program introduced last year on which hearings had already been held? Republican claims to the progress made under President Truman in civil rights do not take the place of a program.

National Economy

REPUBLICANS: Under the Republican Administration the American enterprise system has achieved unprecedented prosperity. This prosperity has been and will continue to be fostered by these Republican policies: removal of direct controls on prices and wages; assistance to small businesses to encourage competition; curtailment of governmental business that can be handled by tax-paying enterprises; restriction of public expenditures, while adding to the country's defensive strength and its public assets; lowering taxes when the fiscal situation permits; expansion of international trade; shielding the people against unemployment, old age, illness, and eliminating blighted neighborhoods, without impairing self-reliance; reinforcement of the workings of our fiscal system that offset income changes due to changes in economic activity; a forthright attack on fundamental weaknesses in the farm situation; and prompt action when either recessionary of inflationary influences are evident.

DEMOCRATS: In the first three years of the Eisenhower Administration, the increases in factory employment, industrial production, personal income and weekly factory earnings have been less than half what they were in the last three years of the Truman Administration. The average citizen is deeper in debt, has more bills and less savings than he had at the end of 1952. As a result of Republican favoritism, corporation profits have increased 34 per cent since 1952, while farm and small-business incomes have dropped sharply and the average person's take-home pay has increased only 8 per cent. It's the old Republican theory that if big business does well, the benefits will sooner or later trickle down to the rest of the people.

Labor

REPUBLICANS: The Republican Party favors improvements in the Labor-Management Relations (Taft-Hartley) Act, and will continue to make every effort to improve the wage-hour law. We have initiated legislation to assure adequate disclosure of financial affairs of each employee pension and welfare plan and to authorize the provision of Federal grants to states for industrial safety programs. In February, 1955, the American Federation of Labor published a statement that "wage increases in 1954 provided more of a gain in real wages than in any other postwar year." The record of labor peace and unparalleled prosperity during the past three years under the Republicans demonstrates our industrial maturity.

DEMOCRATS: The open hostility of the Administration to labor is symptomatic of its failure to serve the people in contrast to the privileged treatment of big business. A comparison between the corresponding periods in the Eisenhower and Truman Administration reveals that under the Truman Administration the wage earner received 50 per cent higher increases, plus invaluable fringe benefits—which means that under the Eisenhower Administration the worker has suffered a loss of more than $500 a year. In addition, the President has broken his pledge to bring about the 19-point amendment to the Taft-Hartley law, including eliminating the "union busting" provisions. The Administration has failed to fight unemployment, and it has opposed any improvement of social security.

Security Program

REPUBLICANS: The Republican Party believes that an effective defense requires continuance of our aggressive attack on subversion at home. FBI investigations have been reinforced by a new Internal Security Division in the Department of Justice. The security activities of the Immigration and Naturalization Service have been revitalized. The Department of Justice and the FBI have been armed with new legal weapons forged by the Republican 83rd Congress. Believing that employment in the Government is a privilege, not a right, we have established and will continue a security program which guarantees that all employees are loyal and trustworthy. While we guard against the threat of subversion, we are determined to protect the rights of every American citizen.

DEMOCRATS: The Eisenhower Administration has badly mismanaged the national security program, while failing to find a single Communist on the government payroll. The chairman of the Civil Service Commission has admitted that over 90 per cent of those people fired as "security risks" were not, in fact, fired under the security program. It has been estimated that up to 75 per cent of them actually were hired by the Eisenhower Administration itself, and many of them were later rehired by other agencies. In addition, the Republican security system has damaged the vital partnership between Government and private scientists. Contrary to the false charges of the Republicans, the Truman loyalty program rooted out bona-fide subversives and still protected the rights of loyal Government workers. The Eisenhower security program has done neither.

National Defense

REPUBLICANS: Under the Republican Administration the combat readiness of our forces has been improved by developing new weapons and by employing the latest scientific developments. We shall continue to push the production of the most modern military aircraft and the development of long-range missiles. We will keep moving as rapidly as practicable toward nuclear-powered aircraft and ships. Combat capability and mobility have been substantially increased. To strengthen our continental defenses the United States and Canada, in the closest co-operation, have substantially augmented early-warning radar networks. The Republican Party's defense policy emphasizes an effective, flexible type of power calculated to deter or repulse any aggression, retaliate against it and to preserve the peace.

DEMOCRATS: The Republican defense program has been developed not with just one eye on the budget, and the voters back home, but with both eyes there. One of the first acts of the new Administration in 1953 was to cut the Air Force budget by $5 billion. A Senate committee explored this question with Secretary of Defense Wilson and brought out the fact that it was the money men in the Treasury and Defense Departments who devised the cuts, not the military men. Now, three years later, we find that Russia has almost overtaken us in air strength and that some time between 1958 and 1960 the U.S. will have the world's second-best air force. We don't think the American people want to be penny-wise and pound-foolish on a matter of this vital importance.

1956. The Campaign Circus

Organizing Political Mayhem

"Caricaturist George Wachsteter takes this view of the CBS-TV political commentators at work" (1956). Featured are Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Robert Trout, Bill Downs, Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, and others.

Bill Downs

CBS Washington

1956

Organizing Political Mayhem

The highlight of the hullabaloo that characterizes the political campaign for Middletown, USA is the night that the presidential candidate makes a major speech in the municipal auditorium.

The local politicians sweat blood. The last minute emergencies seem to spring out of the floor. At least one lady in the "Women for Runninghard" organization gives up in a faint. The competition among the local bigwigs to be on the reception committee sometimes leaves scars that last for years. And usually someone always forgets to put a pitcher of water and a glass on the speaker's stand.

The big moment arrives. The dignitaries assemble on the station platform. The local brass band, which incidentally will also play the campaign song of the other candidate when he hits town—goes into its carefully planned list of tunes. The town's biggest Cadillacs are drawn up to receive the visiting politicians. And at the tail end of the procession there is a transit bus marked "Press, TV and Radio."

The train pulls in on schedule. Middletown policemen keep the small fry out from under its wheels. Local photographers and radio and TV broadcasters close in to record the event. The Candidate steps off the train wearing the same broad smile that he has worn in a score of towns.

Shakes hands. Shakes hands. Grins. Shakes hands.

Meanwhile behind him the campaign train disgorges several hundred people. Secretaries, speechwriters, economists, farm experts, and just plain politicians.

The reporters traveling with the candidate carry their typewriters, cameras, tape recorders, briefcases, and whatever other tools of the trade and immediately head for the bus. They already have the advance of the Middletown speech. Their job now is to check it, pick up local color, and try to assess in a very few hours just what is the political flavor of the town.

The Chief of Police signals to the motorcycle escort which roars into the lead, sirens whining. The Candidate is taken to the best local hotel, best suite, given the chance to wash up and meet some more dignitaries, and the time arrives to leave for the speech.

The party faithful give a big ovation. The introductions, to meet radio and television time commitments, happily are brief. There may be a dinner featuring creamed peas. Always creamed peas.

The Candidate makes his speech. He says his thanks. The Cadillacs and bus appear mysteriously from nowhere. The entire party of some 300 to 400 persons pile in, pile off again at the station, climb onto the train. The train pulls out, leaving behind the hand wavers and the same band playing the same tunes.

Half of Middletown has had its big day. The other half will celebrate when their own Candidate arrives and substantially repeats the same process.

The phenomenon that is the American political campaign has followed this general pattern since the days that highways and railroads permitted reasonable travel by men seeking votes and public office. In the past thirty years, radio and the airplane have facilitated and sped up the campaign and the number of people to which a candidate can personally make his appeal.

The impending 1956 campaign will see the use of television adapted to campaign techniques as it has never been before. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have already optioned time on all major networks to make their key appeals.

But at the base, no matter what the media, the organization of a presidential campaign in these United States remains substantially the same as it was in the days of Abraham Lincoln. The Candidate and his party must present his personality and the party principles to as many citizens as possible and hope to win their approval.

Over the years, the art of winning voters has developed into what amounts to a science. And this science under our political system receives its major test every four years when the American people choose a president.

At one time in our history it might have been that organizing a presidential campaign was something like putting a circus on tour. However, the concept of a campaign manager as a kind of combination of P.T. Barnum and a travel agent has changed. The modern campaign manager, characterized in the person of the present White House Press Secretary James Hagerty, must be able to read and assess the scores of charts and statistics of recording votes, opinions, and preferences supplied to him by his party's national committee.

Many times he must speak and act for his candidate on every conceivable subject in such a manner that will not embarrass the campaign or his man personally. He acts as the final arbiter on speeches, introductions, and endorsements. As the campaign progresses, the campaign manager acts as social secretary, alter ego, and sometimes father, mother, and brother to his man. And toward the end of the ordeal, the manager's main job is to get the candidate through election night alive, healthy, and able to make what he hopes will be an inspiring speech of acceptance.

The successful campaign manager must also know how to lose with grace and dignity.

Hagerty handled the two unsuccessful Dewey campaigns in 1944 and 1948 before organizing the Eisenhower victory. In this coming contest he does not like to be referred to as a "campaign manager," although you can be sure that the Hagerty touch will be evident in every move made by the Republicans to reelect the President. The GOP 1956 race will be unique in the Mr. Eisenhower believes that, as president, it would be undignified and debasing the office for him to appear before the citizens he governs as a politician seeking votes. He believes the the incumbent must run on his record in office and the principles for which he has employed in serving that office. Thus the citizens going to the polls in November will approve or reject him and his conduct of the nation's affairs, not just cast a vote for a man and his personality.

However, no one, and particularly the GOP politicians, is going to play down the Eisenhower grin or charm in this contest whether the President thinks it dignified or not.

The major political parties never stop organizing their campaigns from one election to the other. The Democratic and Republican national committees keep permanent staffs to keep records, collect data, and make surveys.

When Thomas E. Dewey was defeated badly by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, the GOP National Committee shook itself down again and started to work on the congressional elections. You remember Republicans controlled the 80th Congress in 1946, good evidence of the importance and value of continuity and continuing work in the national headquarters.

Certainly there are struggles within both national party organizations. In the Republican headquarters in 1952, it was between the Taft forces and the Eisenhower adherents. In the Democratic organization, it is a running battle between the Southern conservatives and the Northern liberals. The national committee is the so-called neutral battlefield where these internal forays are fought. The battles are settled at the national conventions.

While all this is happening between elections, the organizing for the next campaign goes on.

This spring, both the Republicans and Democrats began seriously collecting ammunition for their fall vote drives. Many people don't realize it, but the issues which the candidates will debate, the time and place where they appear, and even the words they are likely to say were all decided a year or six months before either man received his party's nomination. It's all part of organizing the campaign.

For example, in May of this year the Democratic National Committee sent out a questionnaire to every one of their party's senators, congressmen, state governors, National Committee members, state directors, and county chairmen asking a dozen questions which will vitally affect the type and extent of the campaign their candidate will pursue. The Democratic professionals do not know who the candidate will be, but the political vital statistics will be ready for him when the convention chooses the man this August.

This questionnaire asks these politicians to designate his area's four most important cities where the presidential or vice-presidential candidate might appear. It asks for the ethnic makeup of these areas as to race, religion, and background. The Democratic leader is asked to designate the three most important issues in his area from a list of some 25 subjects ranging over taxes, farm problems, civil rights, high interest rates, foreign policy, part-time presidency, and the polio vaccine.

The Democrats ask their people across the country searching questions on economic and farm conditions as well as labor and management problems, and are concentrating this year on the plight of small business.

The Republican National Committee employs its own professional public opinion poll-taking and research organization using the same techniques and often the same methods as the Gallup company and similar concerns.

The GOP organization had its women's division organize what it calls the "Poll Takers of America," a group of amateurs who last winter operated in 47 of the 48 states under the direction of Republican state and county leaders. The winter floods canceled the question drive in Connecticut.

Some 15,000 Republican women polled some 250,000 persons across the country on September 25. The answers were kept confidential. The instructions to the poll takers specified that they should "smile, be brief, and be friendly." The poll takers were told to identify the poll as a Republican party venture only if asked. If the one questioned then says "I'm not going to answer questions for the Republicans," the reply should be: "You'll be doing a real service for your country because our administration wants its policies to be what all the people want."

Democrats say that this poll was conducted with loaded questions such as the opening query that read, "Most Americans agree that the aim of our foreign policy is to work with other countries for a just and lasting peace. Do you think that the Eisenhower administration is doing a good, fair, or poor job in this field?"

The GOP National Committee did get some valuable information on a number of general attitudes from the questions. And the Republicans were able to put out a publicity release statement that the administration's efforts to secure peace met with "overwhelming approval" of the nation's voters.

At the same time that the Democratic and Republican politicians are researching the nation for problems and issues for the campaign, other experts study election results for the so-called "critical areas" which often determine just where the candidate will concentrate his campaigning.

These are 63 Republican "critical" or "marginal" districts across the country—that is, districts where the GOP candidate won by less than five percent of the vote. There are 31 "marginal" Democratic districts in which the Democrats won by less than five percent.

For both parties, the "critical areas" stretch across the country literally from Maine to California, and include areas of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, Kansas and New Jersey. Depending on last minute assessment of the party's chances of swinging a district by perhaps the personal appearance of a candidate, then it will be to that area that the campaign itinerary will lead.

Organizing a campaign is a complex, difficult, and often thankless business.

The organizer who gets the least thanks of all is the "advance man" who precedes the candidate and tries to make certain that all possible arrangements are completed. It's a delicate and diplomatic job. Not only must he expedite the final arrangements, he must also see that the presidential candidate does not unwittingly become involved in a local political scrap of which the number is myriad.

Consequently, leaders of all party factions must get an even break. The wives must not be neglected and the major campaign contributor must—repeat must—get the candidate's gladdest hand. If anything goes wrong with the advance man's arrangements even though he is not there, he usually gets the blame. Usually he's a jump ahead of the candidate hoping each day that "this time everything will work out."

The advance man's job is considered so important that the GOP National Committee has put out a whole manual on the job. Its secrets are so politically delicate that this book of instructions is kept under lock and key.

Each successive campaign is different, and this 1956 drive for both Republicans and Democrats will be no exception.

The national conventions are being held later this year—the Democrats in Chicago on August 13, the Republicans a week later in San Francisco. The result is that the campaign organizers will have less time to plan before the traditional Labor Day kickoff for their individual candidate. This will present difficulty, particularly for the Democrats.

On the other hand, the Republicans feel themselves doubly blessed in the upcoming campaign. Barring unforeseen difficulties, they have their candidate in the White House and their planning is ahead of schedule.

The Democrats know what they are up against in trying to beat the incumbent. The president running for reelection has, in effect, a built-in political organization around him. Since every move and statement by his administration is in a sense political, every cabinet member and every member of his staff act as his spokesmen. Every bill that he signs or vetoes becomes a political document. Every word that he utters ranks somewhere in the category of campaign oratory.

As one Democratic politician pointed out somewhat wistfully, "In this country, only twice has the incumbent in the White House been removed from office by an election." The two were, however, Republicans—William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover.

In the last presidential campaign, General Dwight Eisenhower traveled 51,000 miles by train, plane, and automobile. Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson traveled 32,000 miles. At the end of the line, both men said they would never like to go through the ordeal again.

However, in the second volume of his memoirs Years of Trial and Hope, former President Harry Truman speaks of the 1948 whistle-stop campaign during which he virtually single-handedly snatched the election away from Governor Dewey. Mr. Truman says he traveled 31,700 miles in 35 days of campaigning and made 356 speeches—an average of ten a day. "I believed...that people still prefer to make up their own minds about candidates upon the basis of direct observation, despite all the claims of how society depends today upon newspapers, radio, and other media of communication."

The new medium of television was not developed eight years ago to the extent it is now. If the 1956 campaign proves anything, it may prove whether the era of the old-fashioned "whistle-stop" campaign is truly ended.

The Republicans have announced that they are going to depend on electronics and modern means of communication to put across their candidate—both his policies and his personality. Also, after his heart attack it is unlikely that Mr. Eisenhower would subject himself to a campaign ordeal such as the one he undertook four years ago.

The two frontrunners in the struggle for the Democratic nomination have both adopted the personal appearance, hand-shaking technique in the primary contests, and both are known to feel that "whistle-stopping" by train, plane, and automobile is an effective—if tiring—way to get votes.

Right now both the Democrats and Republicans are as organized as they can be. Come Labor Day, hold onto your hats.