The Liberal Line

One Whipping Boy, Two Nixons

The Liberal propaganda machine is speaking these days with two voices — and two vocabularies —about Richard Nixon. Its mass-communications media seem to be playing him fairly “straight”—as a vigorous campaigner, as Eisenhower’s preferred running-mate, as, therefore, a properly-credentialed spokesman of current Republican orthodoxy. They did, no doubt, do a little card-stacking in favor of Stassen’s attempt to substitute Governor Herter’s name for Nixon’s on the Republican ticket—by, for example, giving Stassen front-page space long after the futility of his enterprise was apparent. But the card-stacking was done so cautiously as to conceal from most of the target audience the Liberal managers’ deep animus against Nixon, and their anxiety about that possible day off in the future when Eisenhower’s death or disability could put Nixon in the White House. Only a practiced observer, that is to say, would have been aware of any attempt on the machine’s part to influence the result. And of late—concretely, since the Convention—even a practiced observer would have to agree that Nixon has no proper complaint about the picture of him that is being communicated to the electorate in general.

WK

About the Author

Willmoore Kendall

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Richard Nixon

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Presidential Election

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Republican Party

One Whipping Boy, Two Nixons

The Liberal propaganda machine is speaking these days with two voices — and two vocabularies —about Richard Nixon. Its mass-communications media seem to be playing him fairly “straight”—as a vigorous campaigner, as Eisenhower’s preferred running-mate, as, therefore, a properly-credentialed spokesman of current Republican orthodoxy. They did, no doubt, do a little card-stacking in favor of Stassen’s attempt to substitute Governor Herter’s name for Nixon’s on the Republican ticket—by, for example, giving Stassen front-page space long after the futility of his enterprise was apparent. But the card-stacking was done so cautiously as to conceal from most of the target audience the Liberal managers’ deep animus against Nixon, and their anxiety about that possible day off in the future when Eisenhower’s death or disability could put Nixon in the White House. Only a practiced observer, that is to say, would have been aware of any attempt on the machine’s part to influence the result. And of late—concretely, since the Convention—even a practiced observer would have to agree that Nixon has no proper complaint about the picture of him that is being communicated to the electorate in general.