Yardstick for Failure

William Randolph Hearst: A New Appraisal, by John K. Winkler. 325 pp. New York: Hastings House. $5.00

Occasionally evasive, frequently myopic, this is nevertheless a competent biography of America’s great baron of the daily press. No amount of good will, however, can make of Hearst a heroic figure. Since his phenomenal success was attained by demagogic journalism, he necessarily appears as a Sorcerer’s Apprentice, overborne by the forces he himself had set in motion. Well in advance of the Democratic conventions of 1912 and 1932 he identified Wilson as a narrow-minded prig and Roosevelt as, at best, a supple hypocrite “unworthy of public or private trust.” But he was unable to prevent the nomination of either, and consequently used his vast influence to promote the election of both. Of both compromises with his conscience, to be sure, he repented, but too late. In 1935 he saw at once that the scheme of taxation devised by America’s frantic rabble-rouser was “a bastard product of Communism and demagogic democracy.” Yet even today, after twenty years of bitter experience, his admiring biographer is impelled by fear or superstition to call “almost hysterical” that simple statement of the obvious. Such is the measure of Hearst’s failure.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Woodrow Wilson

William Randolph Hearst: A New Appraisal, by John K. Winkler. 325 pp. New York: Hastings House. $5.00

Occasionally evasive, frequently myopic, this is nevertheless a competent biography of America’s great baron of the daily press. No amount of good will, however, can make of Hearst a heroic figure. Since his phenomenal success was attained by demagogic journalism, he necessarily appears as a Sorcerer’s Apprentice, overborne by the forces he himself had set in motion. Well in advance of the Democratic conventions of 1912 and 1932 he identified Wilson as a narrow-minded prig and Roosevelt as, at best, a supple hypocrite “unworthy of public or private trust.” But he was unable to prevent the nomination of either, and consequently used his vast influence to promote the election of both. Of both compromises with his conscience, to be sure, he repented, but too late. In 1935 he saw at once that the scheme of taxation devised by America’s frantic rabble-rouser was “a bastard product of Communism and demagogic democracy.” Yet even today, after twenty years of bitter experience, his admiring biographer is impelled by fear or superstition to call “almost hysterical” that simple statement of the obvious. Such is the measure of Hearst’s failure.