September 30, 1964

Extremism A Phony Issue That Backfired Against Humphrey

We have a new and interesting issue in this year's presidential campaign — extremism.

It now has become a political vice to be strongly for or against anything or anybody. The Democrats centered attention on those Republican views differing widely from their own in an attempt to discredit Goldwater and Miller.

It is ironic that a similar charge has been hurled back by the Republicans. We suspect the Democrats wish extremism had been left to the minorities of both parties.

The extreme right wing groups, in our opinion, are the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society. The counterpart left wing organizations are the USA Communist Party and Americans for Democratic Action.

The KKK and Communists are beyond the pale of any consideration by Americans. The Birchers and ADAers are kooky but should be tolerated for the opportunity of full expression afforded the political parties to which they have attached themselves.

Extremism is a phony issue — a whipping boy for both political parties. It provides the rationalization for those voters who long ago decided their ballot and now desperately need support for their decision.

Nevertheless, for those who are intrigued by politics the issue has academic interest.

We remember the Republicans trying to put Franklin D. Roosevelt. on the spot during his third campaign by demanding he repudiate the support of the Communist Party. In those days the American communist party was at its peak and prominent liberals openly espoused its views.

Roosevelt refused to deny the communists and properly left their evaluation up to the American people.

Perhaps it was a desire to retaliate which led the Democrats to clamor for Goldwater's disavowal of the John Birch Society. At first Goldwater refused to be drawn into the sucker play, but subsequently knuckled under to pressure within his own party and publicly repudiated the Birchers.

Currently the Republicans are making some political hay from Hubert Humphrey's close ties with the left-wing extremist group — the ADA. The Democrat vice-presidential candidate is a co-founder of ADA, once its national chairman, and for the last 14 years a national vice-chairman.

The ADA is consistently for domestic welfare programs and international communist viewpoints. We feel sure that there is no direct control of ADA by Russia, just as we are confident there is no control of the John Birch Society by the KKK. But the views of both extremist groups conform disturbingly to their alleged patrons. .

The ADA seeks admission of Red China to the UN, extension of credit to Russia, repeal of all US anti-Communist legislation and disbandment of the House Un-American Activities Committee. These are strange views for a vice-president of the United States. So strange that Humphrey, too, succumbed to internal party pressure and early this month resigned his ADA post, though not his membership.

President Johnson had serious reservations about Humphrey's association with the ADA in 1960. In that year, when Lyndon Johnson was seeking the nomination for president, the ADA had no use for him. Its support then was for another of its founding members, Adlai Stevenson.

Said the ADA, "The Democratic party has a number of leading figures who can carry the banner of liberalism to the American people. Senator Johnson is not one of them."

To this, Johnson replied: "We don't want the support of the odd balls on the left or right, ADA or KKK. The ADA is an extreme group."

Now, four year later, Johnson has hand picked one of those odd balls as "the number one man for the number two position."

Politics does, indeed, make strange bedfellows.

We are reminded of a personal observation of Humphrey in 1951 during an investigation of the Bell Telephone System's labor policies by the Senate Labor Committee.

In those days we were toiling in the vineyards of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. We were assigned by the company to attend the investigation and make a daily report to all Bell subsidiaries. It was our first experience with a Senate committee and we looked forward to seeing wise, impartial statesmen in action.

For three days the Democrat members of the committee, led by Hubert Humphrey, fished for weaknesses in the Bell System personnel policies. Republicans for the most part said little. The hearings were about to run out of gas when Joseph Bierne, president of the Communication Workers of America, wrote a note on a scrap of paper and passed it up to Humphrey on the committee platform.

Reading directly from the note, Humphrey asked a pointed question of the company witness. The company successfully defended itself, after some lengthy debate. Whereupon, Bierne again passed an embarrassing question up to Humphrey who immediately took up the new line of attack.

It became a matter of amusement to the audience during the next few days to see Bierne scribble his notes and watch the piece of paper flutter down the row of spectators, up the aisle by a messenger, and into Humphrey's hands who, unabashedly, fired the one-sided inquiries at the company.

The hearings finally fizzled out for lack of any evidence. But the point is that Humphrey was a pleader for a special interest. Such special allegiance — regardless of the merit of the cause - is extremism.

Perhaps bias is acceptable in your representative so long as it matches your own.

But somehow, it seems, there should be a broad purpose to politics that rises above extremism.

Author: Lindsey Williams