POLITICAL MAGAZINES
New War of Ideas
The 1950s ushered in the modern era of American political thought. World War II had
thrust the nation into the position of leader of the Western democracies in a world increasingly divided along ideological lines defined by the cold war. The Communist governments of the Soviet Union and mainland China were poised to challenge U.S. influences, and fearful Americans began to peer beyond their country's borders and consider the potentially devastating impact of foreign affairs on their lives. The cold war was thus not only characterized by spy intrigue and threats exchanged by Eastern and Western officials, it was also fought on the domestic front. The war of ideas between the American Right and Left was the struggle to forge a political philosophy that would usher the American people through dangerous times. The struggle was fought increasingly between the covers of magazines.
The Left
The Nation and the New Republic were the most influential political magazines of the American Left. Founded in 1865, the Nation had a long tradition of criticizing the conservative influences in American government and society. In 1955 Carey McWilliams became editor of the Nation and devoted the magazine to espousing civil rights, arms control, and social programs that would move beyond the limits set by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and Harry S Truman's Fair Deal. During the early 1950s the magazine also ran columns that were favorable toward the Soviet Union and often sought to explain Communist expansion in terms related to Russian historical interests. Many critics accused the Nation of being too ready to accept Soviet policy.
The Moderates
The New Republic tended toward a more moderately liberal stance than did the Nation. Founded in 1914, the New Republic attracted more than forty-one thousand subscribers after World War II, when Michael Straight became the magazine's owner and named Henry Wallace the editor. By the 1950s the number of subscribers had peaked at ninety-six thousand, and the magazine became an important voice for Stevenson Democrats who sought social and economic reforms. The magazine typified American liberalism in denouncing communism—yet saving its most hard-hitting criticism for Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his witch-hunting tactics. It remained essentially a voice of the status quo of American liberalism.
The New Left
On the academic front a new generation of leftist historians and political scientists was emerging during the decade. Called the New Left and composed of scholars such as William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko, and Walter Lafeber, the group took a dim view of America's militaristic campaign against communism in Asia. Toward the end of the decade it was criticizing U.S. foreign policy as being rooted in expansionist and imperialist motives. There was no major magazine allied solely with this movement.
TRUMAN BATTLES A CRITIC
On 5 December 1950 Margaret Truman, the twenty-five-year-old daughter of President Harry S Truman, gave a concert of vocal music at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Appropriate to a budding vocalist of still-immature talent who was also the President's daughter, Margaret's performance was duly noted in the Washington papers. In an especially scathing review Paul Hume in the Washington Post passed harsh judgment on Margaret's singing and her prospects for a career, saying, in part,
… Miss Truman cannot sing very well. She is flat a good deal of the time—more last night than at any time we have heard her in past years … Miss Truman has not improved in the years we have heard her … she still cannot sing with anything approaching professional finish.
When the president read the review the next morning, he impetuously, and unknown to his staff, sent an emotional letter to Hume. The editors at the Post did not print the letter but a copy made its way to the Washington News, a tabloid that jumped at printing the letter on page 1:
Mr. Hume: I've just read your lousy review of Margaret's concert. I've come to the conclusion that you are an "eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay."
It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you're off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.
Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!
[Westbrook] Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you'll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.
The earthy language and physical threats of the letter did very little to endear Truman to the public. Letters and calls to the White House ran two to one against him. Most agreed with a letter that said "you showed the whole world that you are nothing but a selfish little pipsqueak." The episode showed the power of the press and, in politics, the need for careful press management.
Source:
David McCuIlough, Truman (New York: Simon 6c Schuster, 1992).
The Right
Many right-wing intellectuals soon realized that the American conservative movement lacked definition and was too closely associated with the excesses
of McCarthyism. The isolationist views of conservative Republican Robert Taft no longer had currency in the increasingly international atmosphere of American politics. In his attempt to consolidate the Right, William F. Buckley, Jr., founded the National Review in 1955. His magazine attacked communism as economically flawed, socially destructive, and intellectually and morally corrupt. In so doing, Buckley sought to move the conservatives' attack against the Left to a higher philosophical ground. Although by the end of the decade the magazine's circulation had reached only about thirty thousand, Buckley had largely succeeded in creating a conservative coalition of the religious Right, economic libertarians, and anti-Communists. He also worked to eliminate the more racist and antireligious elements from the National Review conservative coalition and established a more internationalist wing of conservatism. By doing so he made his brand of right-wing ideology fashionable for many of the intellectual elite and also for cold war strategists.
Sources:
John P. Diggins, The American Left in the Twentieth Century (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973);
George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1979);
Theodore Peterson, Magazines in the Twentieth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979).
