The Charlotte News
Thursday, November 6, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Havana that a Cuban airliner carrying 28 persons had vanished in eastern Cuba the previous night and was presumed to have been seized in flight by rebel agents. Two other Cubana Airlines planes had been diverted in flight since October 31 by rebel gunmen posing as passengers. One had crashed, killing 17 of the 20 persons aboard. Among the 25 passengers aboard the DC-3 which had disappeared on Wednesday night had been an American listed without address, believed to be a sailor or Marine flying to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Ten women had been on the passenger manifest. The plane had carried a crew of three, one of whom, the steward, had been the son of the military chief of Oriente Province. The plane had been on a flight from Havana to Guantánamo, with stops scheduled at Manzanillo on the southeast coast and Holguin, about 70 miles to the northeast. Although Government soldiers held the latter town, rebel bands were active throughout the area. Rebel leader Fidel Castro had embarked on a systematic campaign to disrupt transportation in an effort to overthrow El Presidente Fulgencio Batista's regime. He also opposed newly elected President Andres Rivero Aguero, the choice of El Presidente, who would take office in February. The first plane to have disappeared had been a Cubana DC-3, seized on a flight from Cavo Mambi to Moa Bay, site of an American-owned nickel and cobalt mining enterprise. That plane had 14 persons aboard, including the crew of three. It had landed at Cananove, where eight of the passengers had been allowed to return to their homes, while the crew and a soldier passenger had been reported to be still held by the rebels. The previous Saturday night, four rebel gunmen had seized a four-engine Viscount turboprop plane on its 45-minute flight from Miami to Varadero Beach, 87 miles east of Havana. All except three of the 20 persons aboard had been killed when the gunmen had forced the pilot to attempt a landing on a runway not big enough for the plane, resulting in a crash.
Vice-President Nixon was taking charge of efforts to rejuvenate the disorganized Republican Party, likely to place the accent on youth in doing so. Although Mr. Nixon would not have any official designation in the party, the President was stepping out of the way to let the Vice-President direct the drive, the aim of which would be to lift the party back into contention for the 1960 presidential race, following the shattering defeat in the Tuesday midterm elections. At his press conference on Wednesday, the President had endorsed Mr. Nixon's call on party members to start presently to campaign for 1960. Returns from the balloting had showed that the Republicans had lost 13 Senate seats while gaining none and had lost 48 House seats while gaining only one. One Illinois House seat remained undecided. The Republicans had suffered a net loss of five state governorships, counting a still-tentative upset in normally Republican Nebraska. The Democrats had increased their margin of Senate control of 49 to 47 to 62 to 34, and in the House, from 235 to 200 to 283 to 151. One side or the other would gain yet another House seat after the official canvass had begun this date to determine whether Representative Charles Vurseli of Illinois or Democrat George Shipley had won a close contest there, with the unofficial returns showing Mr. Shipley leading. The undecided Nebraska gubernatorial race hinged on a count of mail-in ballots, which could upset the lead presently held by the Democrat, Ralph Brooks, over the Republican incumbent, Victor Anderson. A victory by Mr. Brooks would give the Democrats 34 state governorships to 14 for Republicans. Looking toward 1960, Mr. Nixon was expected to bear down in his attempts to obtain attractive, youthful aspirants into races for Congressional and state offices as a means of helping the national ticket. Privately, he was less than enthusiastic about the caliber of some of the candidates for whom he had campaigned in the current year. He knew well that the Republican candidate who had won the most spectacular of the few Republican victories in the midterms, Nelson Rockefeller, in the New York gubernatorial race against incumbent Averell Harriman, had youth and a pleasing personality going for him. Mr. Rockefeller was now the top potential opponent to Mr. Nixon for the 1960 Republican nomination.
On the front page appears a prominent picture of Senator John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, celebrating his re-election to the Senate on Tuesday.
Southern Democrats would retain the bulk of Senate and House committee chairmanships in the new 86th Congress, but Southern conservatives probably would find their influence diluted. With the Democrats sharply increasing their control of both houses in the midterm elections, the top committee posts in nearly all cases would remain in the hands of those who had held them during the 85th Congress, in many instances having been chairmen for years. In the Senate, it meant that nine of the 16 standing committee chairmanships would remain with Southerners, while in the House, Southerners would retain 12 of the 19 posts, the chairmanships going strictly by seniority. The only change in chairmanships forced by the election in either house was in the House Interior Committee, chaired by Representative Clair Engle of California in the present Congress. Because the latter had been elected to the Senate, defeating Governor Goodwin Knight, he would be replaced by Representative Wayne Aspinall of Colorado in the new Congress. The election of many more Democrats from the North and West appeared certain to reduce the power of the South in the committees, which could make or break legislation. That would be particularly true in the Senate, where the Democrats had only one-vote margins on committees for four years. In such a situation, a conservative Southern Democrat often had been a swing vote such that by voting with Republicans, he could help to bottle up or win changes in legislation.
In Budapest, the Municipal Court had sentenced 40 Hungarians to jail for cheating the Communist Government regarding the reparation of damage from the 1956 revolt.
In Algiers, the French high command in Algeria this date denied Tunisian charges that French forces had invaded Tunisia, charging in turn that rebels based on Tunisian soil had provoked many incidents in the border zone.
In Dallas, Tex., it was reported that operating employees had struck the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad this date, but a railroad spokesman had said that a court order was expected to halt the walkout quickly.
In London, it was reported that Guy
Fawkes the previous night had caused the biggest commotion since he
had tried to blow up Parliament 353 years earlier on November 5 in the
so-called "gunpowder plot". British children of all ages
ever since had marked the anniversary with an annual barrage of
fireworks and backyard blazes in which Mr. Fawkes was burned in
effigy. The previous night's celebration, however, had gotten
somewhat out of hand. In London's Trafalgar Square, more than 90 boys
and girls had been arrested in a violent firecracker riot which had
taken more than 100 London bobbies two hours to quell. In nearby
Paddington, a banger lobbed through a shop door had landed on a pile
of fireworks and exploded the lot, with the result that the shop was
burned out. In suburban Hampstead, police had fought 2,000 people
setting off fireworks and chanting rock 'n' roll. ("Great Balls
of Fire"?) At Lewes, Sussex County, 65 people had been arrested
for exploding fireworks in the street. The traditional custom of
burning an effigy of Pope Paul V, who had reigned at the time of the
pro-Catholic gunpowder plot, had run into opposition and there were
running fights between rival factions. A mob of 2,000 youths had
rampaged through a street in the south coast resort of Worthing,
smashing shop windows with bricks and milk bottles, attacking police
and overturning cars. Boys, many of whom sported "Teddy Boy"
ducktail haircuts and Edwardian clothes
In Las Vegas, a 23-year old handyman
from Los Angeles had told authorities that he had slashed open the
throat of a young mother, divorced with a three-year old son, killing
her, because he heard voices compelling him to make a human
sacrifice. He had told the officers: "I sacrificed her. It was
all part of a regular ritual but I can't tell you how I go through
it." For some reason, he had come to the police station the
night of the slaying and submitted a phony robbery report, unable to
explain to an officer why he had done so. After the body had been
discovered, he related his story and was then booked on suspicion of
murder. Such is the way of it sometimes along the road from Los
Angeles
On the editorial page, Marquis Childs indicates that much of what had been said and done during the 1958 midterm campaign had been aimed at 1960, with both Vice-President Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy having been busy improving their stances, as had been other hopefuls looking to the presidential contest. In the face of the troubles which had overwhelmed the Republican Party, Mr. Nixon had added little to his stature, possibly because by its nature, the task to which he fell heir had been an impossible one, that having been to rally the right-wing without giving too much offense to the moderates and the independents.
Mr. Nixon's attacks on Democrats as radicals, reckless spenders and Socialists had revived among the independents trepidation about the "old Nixon" and his chameleon-like ability to change. To be elected President in 1960, he would need the votes of independents and some voters who called themselves Democrats. But in his home state, the greatest damage had been done to his candidacy, as the split among Republicans was so deep and bitter that it was hard to see how it could be rectified. Senator William Knowland's followers on the right would never forgive Governor Goodwin Knight for endeavoring to save himself by refusing to endorse the Senator in the gubernatorial race, when the Governor had made an informal agreement with the Senator not to run for re-election as governor so that instead he could run for the Senate seat, while Senator Knowland would run for governor. The extremist factors employed by the Senator had alienated the moderates among Republicans and large segments of the independent vote. The means by which that vote could be won back in the aftermath of the bitter fracas were not presently apparent. Meanwhile, the Republican Party faced life henceforth without the spell of President Eisenhower, which had been so magical in 1952 and 1956, the type of magic which appealed to the independents who distrusted party labels. The prospect thus was for life without father.
Mr. Nixon exerted nothing of the same sort of spell, in spite of the extraordinary build-up he had received. By his own efforts, he had to try, in the ensuing 18 months, to reshape the party while at the same time restoring the image of the "new Nixon", a job as difficult as the one which had made such demands on his energies during the previous five weeks.
Among Democrats, Senator Kennedy was generally acknowledged to be the front-runner for the 1960 nomination. He and his followers, friends and family had been making great efforts for two years or more toward that end, since the 1956 convention at which he had narrowly been defeated in an open convention for the vice-presidential nomination by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. If the national convention were to be held at present, he would have the largest number of delegates. It remained, however, far from guaranteed that he would obtain the nomination, and the fact that he was the front-runner was in itself a hazard. But he had helped himself in a dozen states around the country by having spoken for Democratic candidates during the midterm campaign.
Looking toward 1960, the Democrats faced problems almost as great as the Republicans. Torn by factionalism, the DNC was so broke that creditors had been trying to attach its visible assets. The conservatives wanted to remove DNC chairman Paul Butler, who had not hesitated during the midterm campaign to take a strong civil rights stand, thereby angering the Southerners and their allies who wanted to keep the issue submerged if possible. The divisiveness of both race and religion could threaten any Democratic unity based on a national stand by the whole party. The viciousness of the attack centered around Proposition 16 on California's complicated ballot, which had proposed taxation of private schools, demonstrating how close to the surface was the feeling over religion. While some Democratic leaders were aware of how old faces from the past tended to dominate the picture, there had been little recognition that the voters might be disillusioned with the same old voices, repeating the same old shibboleths. Former President Truman had a good time giving 'em hell in the tradition he loved, but the question being asked around the country was where were the new voices and faces, the new leadership.
A vote against the Republicans was not a vote for the opposition party and the voters would be looking for a constructive, coherent program from the Democrats during the ensuing 18 months. Failing to get it from a divided party, they might decide that it was safer to retain a Republican in the White House while the Democrats controlled Congress, effectively a vote of no-confidence in the system, itself.
As we have fallen behind, there will be no further comments on the front page or editorial page of this date, as the notes will be sporadic until we catch up.
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