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Show Cowardice In Politics Cowardice, as Rodney Dutcher pointed out in a dispatch from Washington the other day, has become one of the most common characteristics in American public life. Our political leaders, he remarked, possess an extraordinary extra-ordinary amount of caution. They fear nothing so much as a real live issue. When they fight they take good care to get j all the big guns on their side. They reserve their heaviest blasts for insignificant opponents who cannot fight back 1 effectively. The commonest explanation for this sad state of affairs is that it is inevitable in a democracy. Office holders depend de-pend on votes for their jobs. If they make enemies they lose votes. The pressure to straddle, to compromise, to placate pla-cate powerful minorities and minority leaders, is almost overwhelming. Oddly enough, though, a casual glance at American political poli-tical history will show that this sort of thing isn't in the least necessary. The politicians are revealing, not the fundamental fun-damental fault of democracy, but ther own weakness. What has happened is that the politicians have made the mistake of underestimating the common sense and good judgment of the electorate. The greatest figures in American political history are the men who dared to maSe enemies the men who were willing to follow their own conceptions of right and trust to the electorate for an accurate understanding of them. Jackson, Lincoln, Cleveland,. Roosevelt, Wilson they were, one and all, fighters, enemy - makers. They knew politics, of course ; they could compromise when they had to ; but they could also adopt an unpopular line of attack and stick to it no matter how great the risks to their own personal per-sonal fortunes. And it is worth remembering that the electorate elec-torate stood by them time and again. The cowardice-of our politicians, in other words, isn't an inevitable part of democracy. Let a really bold and determined deter-mined political leader appear today and the response he would get might be astonishing. |