48
PARTISAN REVIEW
liberal and capable, if less appealingly homespun, than Eisenhower.
Even as late as the beginning of 1950, the special political tone of
the Roosevelt era continued to influence public life. We need only
recall the mood of the Democratic Senators investigating McCarthy's
charges of Communist infiltration into the State Department early
that year. The transcript shows them at ease, laughing away Mc–
Carthy's charges, taking it for granted that the country was with
them, or at least could not be aroused against them, and that Mc–
Carthy was another Martin Dies. Four years later, another group of
Democratic Senators sat in judgment on McCarthy. They were tense
and anxious, seeking the protective cover of
J.
Edgar Hoover, trying
to seem just as good Communist-hunters-indeed, better Republicans
- than any of thei.r colleagues. In the last years of Truman, while
many demagogic anti-Communist steps were taken by a reluctant
administration-as well as many effective ones under Acheson's be–
deviled auspices-the general climate of Washington remained com–
paratively easy-going, with Congress a partially manageable menace
and General Vaughan a venial crony who wouldn't know a Harry
Dexter White from an Adolph BerIe and couldn't care less.
Many explanations have been offered for what appears to be a
decisive shift in the American mind. Fear of the Soviet Union
is
alleged by some to be the cause; others blame McCarthy, his allies,
and his victims; others look for cyclical explanations, while still others
think that Americans have abandoned liberal traditions for good and
all. In this article, we attempt to estimate the real extent of the shift,
to delineate some factors, previously neglected, which may be relevant,
and to offer some very tentative interpretations pointing toward the
revival of a liberal political imagination.
Detectable and decisive shifts of political mood can occur,
of course, without affecting the majority. A large proportion, about
half, of the population in this country does not vote at all, and prob–
ably more than half of the rest vote according to inherited party
preference, no matter what.
1
The less educated part of the electorate
1 For data on the negligible influence of political campaigns, see Paul
Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet,
The People's Choice
(Harpers,
New
York 1948).
