The New Republic

Trying to evaluate the foreign policy of the Nixon administration during its first term, one must, as always in foreign policy, distinguish between rhetoric and policy. Rhetoric and policy may by and large coincide, one reflecting the other, or a wide gap may separate the two. In the latter case, what governments do is more important than what they say they are doing or are going to do. However, even here the kind of rhetoric used, in conjunction with the kind of policy pursued, can give a clue to the government's intention.   READ MORE >>

The signs and chants and songs said "Four More Years" and "Nixon Now, More than Ever," and in their idiotic way they provided a depressing indication of the kind of presidency that Richard Nixon is likely to give us in his second term. It predictably won't be very different from his first-term presidency unless more of the same, perhaps marked with a confident sense of rightness that was missing at the start of the Nixon tenure, is thought to constitute a meaningful difference. In the weeks between his renomination and his reelection, Mr. READ MORE >>

A commission on party structure and delegate selection and a commission on rules were set up by the 1968 Democratic national convention in the hope of avoiding a repetition of itself; and everyone immediately began to fear that the two commissions, particularly the first, would help bring about exactly what they were meant to forestall, and more of it even than in 1968. New requirements would be imposed on the process of delegate selection, the state parties would not yield to them, and the 1972 convention would be a shambles of credentials contests and little else. READ MORE >>

Here we have proof, if any be needed, that really good books about Presidents in mid-term are not possible. The modern standard for such books remains Robert J. Donovan's Eisenhower (1956). Written by a first-rate reporter with maximum help from the incumbent President, even it was flawed by the necessary reticence of the subject and his associates. READ MORE >>

Given the war aims of the President, as pointed out on these pages many times before, the escalation of the war was inevitable; only its nature was in doubt. The President is still resolved that the Thieu government remain in power in South Vietnam. There was never a chance that Thieu could survive by his own efforts, and that estimate has now been proven correct by the failure of Vietnamization. Hence, the United States must fill the vacuum left by that failure and by the withdrawal of the main bulk of American combat troops. READ MORE >>

Fewer voters will go to the polls in two weeks than did in the last Presidential election. This decline will occasion no surprise. Presidents know that voters take midterm congressional elections far less seriously than Presidential elections; they also know the resulting threat that mid-term elections pose for them. READ MORE >>

A porno movie house on 8th Avenue had a film on its bill recently called simply. Divorcee. That one word was supposed to call up enough libidinous fantasies to induce customers to pay the $5 entrance fee. Yet, the real obscenity in a divorced woman's life a brutal and dehumanizing experience is her encounter with the judicial system, which is stacked in custom and practice against her, and her degrading visits to the house of horrors on East 22nd Street, known as Family Court. READ MORE >>

This article was originally printed on October 12, 1953   READ MORE >>

This article was originally printed on October 1, 1962 It has become a settled conviction, at least among American democratic idealists, that the contest which engulfs the political life of the whole world is between Communism and democracy. READ MORE >>

This article was originally printed on July 4, 1955 READ MORE >>