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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Jan. 20. 1960
Nixon in Training
Richard Nixon's alleged lack of moral and intellectual stiture make him unacceptable to many voters as a presidential candidate, but he is nevertheless the front-runner and has made the most of the Vice-Presidency in training himself for the nation's top executive position.
Writing in 1956 Rossiter called the U.S. Presidency the greatest constitutional office the world has known, but termed the Vice-Presidency "an uncomfortable heir-apparency sought by practically no one we would like to see as President." He wrote that the Vice-Presidency had "perked up noticeably" in the period since 1948, but fundamentally remained a disappointment in the American constitutional system.
Nixon has been the busiest and most useful Vice-President the nation has had. And he is likely to be the first Vice-President since Martin Van Buren to be elected to the White House. The Vice-Presidency never has been known as an office of any prominence or as a training ground for the Presidency.
The Vice-Presidency has been from its conception a "hollow shell of an office," in the words of Clinton Rossiter, professor of government at Cornell University, whose book, "The American Presidency," is a most thorough analysis of our government's executive branch.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower has stated many times that he believes the Vice-President should be given substantial duties to perform, in order that he may become a vital member of the Presidential team.
Several of the tasks which Eisenhower has delegated to Nixon have brought the Vice-President much favorable publicity and have aided
Nixon greatly in establishing himself as the favorite to win this year's Presidential election.
Nixon's latest triumph, whether real or contrived as a political move, was his "settlement" of the steel strike, with an assist from Secretay of Labor James Mitchell. Eisenhower, who has professed a hands-off policy in labor-management disputes, reportedly gave the job of working for a strike settlement to Nixon, who can profit greatly from the favorable publicity at such a timely point in the election year.
As Rosserite has noted, there is now a trend toward adding substance to the Vice-Presidency. Harry S. Truman's Vice-President, Alben Barkley, a former Senate majority leader, played a significant role in the executive branch of the government and was a vital link between the President and Congress, to put the Vice-Presidency on the road to real prestige and power.
His trip to Russia in July of 1959 to open the American National Exhibition was critical prelude to the issuing of an invitation to Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev to visit the U.S. The role Nixon has been given in international affairs has shown that in the Eisenhower administration the office of Vice-President is considered to be more than a ronentity.
Nixon also has gained admirers and votes by making visits to other nations as a special envoy for the President. In May of 1958 the Vice-President made international headlines when Communist mobs stoned his car in Peru while he was on a tour of South America.
Nixon has done even more. He may soon show that the Vice-Presidency can be a training ground for the Presidency.
Jack Harrison
The Mack Parker Case
Southern justice has triumphed in Mississippi. Last week a Federal grand jury refused to indict anyone in last April's lynching of Mack Charles Parker, a 23-year-old Negro accused of raping a pregnant white woman.
Parker was being held in an unguarded jail when he was dragged screaming from his cell by a mob of masked men, shoved into a waiting automobile and driven away. His body was found pierced by a single high-caliber bullet a week later in the Pearl River, the boundary between Mississippi and Louisiana.
The FBI immediately started an intensive investigation. But their evidence was completely ignored when they presented it to the Pearl River County grand jury. No indictments were returned.
Many of the witnesses called to testify invoked the fifth amendment on questions they considered self-incriminating. The FBI thought they had sufficient evidence to indict some of the guilty men but the grand jury disagreed.
Then the Justice Department obtained a reopening of the case by a Federal grand jury. Although the FBF's evidence was considered, the results were nil. The grand jury, composed of 20 white men and one Negro failed to indict anyone in the case.
The results of the jury's decision seem tragic to many observers. While this is not denied, the trial may have pointed to one constructive possibility; the passing of stronger civil rights legislation. The present civil rights bill is locked in the Senate Rules Committee. Now it appears the bill might be released sometime this month because of judicial failings in the Parker case. And since it is an election year, the bill may become one of the biggest political footballs of the campaign. If Southern Democrats can pour enough water into the bill to make it ineffective, the Mack Parker trial may become just another misfortune in the annals of southern justice. But if the trial does influence Congress enough to pass a stringent civil rights bill, similar cases in the future may be decided by a full measure of justice.
—Doug Yocom
Dailu Hansan UNIVERSITAT
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represen-ted by National Advertising Service. 20 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. News office; press association. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan.; every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays, and public holidays are covered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 18, 19 at Lawrence, Kan.; post office under act of March 3, 1879.
Jack Harrison ... Managing Editor
Carol Allen, Dick Crocker, Jack
Managing Editors; Rael Amos, City
Editor; Jim Trotter, Sports Editor;
Carolyn Frulley, Society Editor
Susan Hayn, Associate Editorial Editor
NEWS DEPARTMENT
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
George Bord and
John Husar
Co-Editorial Editors
Sorge Ibsenbórn ... John Husar ... Co-Editorial Editors
Bill Kane... Business Manager
Ted Tidwell, Advertising Manager;
Martha Crosier, Promotion Manager;
Rebecca Foster, Marketing Manager;
Tom Schmitz, Circulation Manager; John Massa, Classified Advertising Manager.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
... Letters . . .
Anyone viewing the exhibition of student art in the Music and Dramatic Arts building cannot help but notice the poor craftsmanship prevalent throughout most of the paintings.
Editor:
Noticeable at first glance are the terrible frames in which many of the paintings are presented. The corners of the frame of "Mysterious Landscape," by William Wright, just to mention one painting, are not well mitered. The corners do not fit together by more than one-fourth inch.
In many of the frames the nails have split the wood. Little, if any, sanding of the wood has been done, nor have the frames been covered with a wood preserver. In short, the finish is a very poor job.
The craftsmanship in the application of the paint, and also in the pasting of paper in the collage-painting, "Composition," by Robert Price, is just as poor as that done in the framing of the work. One may wonder if the lack of good craftsmanship is a key to the quality of painting done by the students. I think it is.
It could hardly be said that the students are interested in good painting, for good painting requires a strong foundation, not to say anything of thought. These art students, most of them, whose works are being exhibited must not be involved in an intensive study of the art of painting.
Being an art student myself, I know that the University of Kansas has the facilities for teaching the good use of materials and that the students have enough intelligence to learn them. But the students seem to be approaching their work with a lack of seriousness and good sense.
Larry Fowler. Atchison junior
With John Morrissey
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
Read in the paper the other day where a certain organization was sponsoring a "meet your dean week." Now this is a switch. We'd like to go through just one week without meeting our dean.
" WHEN MY MYSTUDENT EXTEND THESE ENTRA LITTLE COURTESIES YOU CAN BET WE'RE GETTING PRETTY CLOSE TO FINALS."
By Calder M. Pickett Associate Professor of Journalism
Today's university students know Tab Hunter and Fabian and the Kingston Trio and the other heroes of 1960. Few of them know about, or care about, Charles A. Lindbergh. This reviewer is a bit older, old enough to recall the flight of the Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris (the first news story I remember), and the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932 as one of the next big news events.
Bill Vaughn of the Kansas City Star commented in 1957 that Warner Brothers studios was sending Tab Hunter around the country to tell people who Charles A. Lindbergh of "The Spirit of St. Louis" was. "Who's Tab Hunter?" Vaughan asked.
THE HERO, CHARLES A. LINDBERGH AND THE AMERICAN DREAM, by Kenneth S. Davis, Doubleday, $4.95.
"Lindy" was a magic name in those days, perhaps the biggest name in America. He could do no wrong. The flight of the boyish pilot captured the imagination of the world. The kidnapping tragedy was made more poignant by the allure attached to the name of Lindbergh.
Kenneth S. Davis, formerly of Kansas State, has done a remarkably fine job with this biography of Lindbergh. If it does not capture the essence of Lindbergh as American Hero it still captures Lindbergh the man, and is a sturdy, thorough biography, carefully documented, written with style and flavor.
The young Lindbergh was a combination of introvert and joke-playing extrovert (a pitcher of ice water dumped on the naked body of a sleeping buddy). He left college (the University of Wisconsin) in time to be saved from a wild plan of riding a motorcycle down a ski lift. Life was always a challenge, but not just the challenge of recklessness, for Lindbergh was of a scientific bent, and he would calculate the possibilities of danger in each crazy stunt he attempted.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Spirit of St. Louis" he tells himself, in splendid prose, of the years as a stunt flyer, of flying the mail in the primitive 1920's, of the great flight to Paris. Davis tells the story again, and goes considerably beyond it.
Here is the surging Paris throng, ripping at the fuselage of the Spirit of St. Louis, stealing the flier's precious log book. Here is Myron T. Herrick, American ambassador to France, blandly unaware of the historic role he himself would play when the Minnesota boy landed in Paris. Here is Dwight Morrow, man of another world and another generation, who provided both a bride and additional fame for the man who became a legend in May 1927.
In the horrible details of the kidnapping is found much of the drama of this biography. For even in time of tragedy the flier could find no escape from the crowds. This is the story that occupied so much newspaper space in the 1930s—Jaspie Condon, the nurse Betty Gow, and Bruno Richard Hauptmann.
And the rest of the story of the hero is one of continuing tragedy. So taken was Lindbergh with the scientific precision of the Nazi experiment that he could not see beneath it, to the horrors of Dachau and Belsen, even then a-building. He was not warning America against the horrors of Fascism; he was telling America that Fascism would triumph.
His name became associated with the names of Father Coughlin and Gerald L. K. Smith and William Dudley Pelley, not with responsible isolationists like Taft or Norris. The splendor of his accomplishment of 1927 dimmed in the dark days of 1940 and 1941, and even his record of heroism as unsung pilot in the Pacific in World War II could not blot out the days when The Hero fell from national grace.