Choosing Our King - Powerful Symbols in Presidential Politics 0025907204

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��*•� -EVERY FOUR YEARS, AMERICANS ELECT A KING Not simply a King, but a High Priest and Prophet. Our president personifies causes, institutions, administrative processes. He symbolizes our national ideals and goals. We react with passion to what he represents. Our personal feelings are affected by our perceptions of him. Michael Novak chooses the election of an American president as the means to explode the symbols of our national life and politics, exposing many as fraudulent perceptions of American realities. Brilliantly, with damning clarity, he shows us that the American pres­ ident mirrors the people that elect him. For the people seek and choose a man with whom they can identify-as they are and as they want to be. In the election of 1972, as in few presidential elections before it, basic symbols were in open conflict. With razor-sharp insight, Michael Novak interprets the campaigns of the major candidates, revealing the manner in which Richard Nixon became the primary incarnation of the nation's self-understand­ ing. For Richard Nixon understood better than the others the power of certain symbols over the American electorate. Michael Novak builds throughout his book to a radical plan for the reformation of the presidency. The president's power over "reality" must be diminished, he says. Novak envi ages a mature, realistic American Dream -a dream which would bring our national symbols into closer harmony with the moral reality of life as we live it and liberate the energies of all our people.

Other Books by MICHAEL NovAK A NEW GENERATION THE OPEN CHURCH BELIEF AND UNBELIEF A TIME TO BUILD A THEOLOGY FOR RADICAL POLITICS THE EXPERIENCE OF NOTHINGNESS ASCENT OF THE MOUNTAIN, FLIGHT OF THE DOVE ALL THE CATHOLIC PEOPLE THE RISE OF THE UNMELTABLE ETHNICS A BOOK OF ELEMENTS

(with Kare11 Laub-Novak)

Fiction: THE TIBER WAS SILVER NAKED I LEAVE

CHOOSING OUR KING

CHOOSING OUR KING POWERFUL SYMBOLS IN PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

MICHAEL NOVAK MACMILLAN PUBLISHING CO., INC. New York

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Novak, Michael. Choosing our king. I. Presidents--United States--Election-1972. 2. Presidents--United States. 3. Symbolism. 4. National characteristics, American. I. Title. JK526 1972.N68 353.03'2 73-11835 ISBN 0-02-590720-4

Copyright

©

1974 by Michael Novak

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 866 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022 Collier-Macmillan Canada Lt--: d

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Choosing Our King

mature dream holds that evil lurks in the heart of our own goodness and is never more triumphant than when it dons the trappings of morality. We have no more urgent symbolic need than to revise the dream of American goodness. I do not mean by this an orgy of breast-beating, which is only a disguised method of pro­ claiming one's innocence. We need simply to take an accurate account of the lashes visited upon the backs of Negro slaves, the death marches of Indian tribes, the violence of our industrial life (maiming even today eighteen hundred persons every week) , the destruction of neighborhoods and family life in the name of "modernization," the staggering bombardment of distant na­ tions, and other plain realities of our history. Upon this innocent nation, this "new world," this "new para­ dise," this "new order of the ages" descends day by day the necessity to confront the evil within us. Our world is not a "new" world. It is the same world as Europe ever was or is, as Asia ever was or is, as the human world ever was or is­ a world not only of loyalty, beauty, compassion, but also a world of bloodshed, violence, and tragedy. Too long we have strug­ gled to blind ourselves to the dark side of our history, the dark side of our daily reality. Our nation is not a "good" nation. It is a nation like others. We are human like others. Even in the caves of 50,000 years ago, men could love one another---or kill one another. There is a temptation in American life for each of our major political groups to imagine that its own policies, principles, and partisans are the source of good. Each group notes the violence in the hearts of others and neglects the violence in its own heart. Thus, liberals sometimes talk as though they themselves are the bulwark of reasonableness, calm, and restraint in our so­ ciety. They think of science, enlightenment, civil liberties, and urbane discourse as uniquely the product of their own politics. They forget that, along with social justice and democratic creativity, they have also introduced into modern life bureauc­ racy, rules and roles, abstract and alienating schemes of social order, and all the ambiguities-even horrors---of technology. En­ lightened, educated, humanitarian people often believe that

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"unassimilated" working men and woman are the source of violence and untrustworthy passion in our society, and they fear the "unenlightened." They conveniently forget the violence that the uneducated discern in the ruthless efficiency of the en­ lightened. From universities and scientific laboratories have come "body counts," antipersonnel bombs of exquisite cruelty, na­ palm, and the impersonal force of justice disconnected from personal contact. Urbane men, believing in civil rights and social justice, introduce a violence into human life that raises screams of pain from others, though they themselves know not what they do. Radicals once believed that our best hope lay in the gentle­ ness of our new youth-in their freer sexual lives, their experience with marijuana, their rejection of the uptight discipline of clean­ liness, formal dress, ritualized manners. Yet others saw in pre­ cisely the same manifestations the very source of unchecked passion, wild violence, and orgiastic fantasy that have brought us, in every generation, such manifestations as political assassi­ nations, Hell's Angels, and the Charles Manson murders. One group accuses the straight-laced, short-haired, courteous fraternity boys of repressing their personal rage behind the guise of patriotism and Boy Scout pieties. Underneath this repression, they say, seethes the violence of American life not only in Vietnam, but in the KKK, in police brutality, and the rest. One group sees violence in the music of "Up with People." An­ other group sees violence in rock and roll. Everybody blames everybody else. Everybody fears every­ body else. Each finds his own group gentle, courageous, and good. Each fears the violence latent in other groups. Each sees his own group as a kind of political savior. Thus, for example, the attempted assassination of George Wallace transcended the categories George Wallace was fond of using to describe our national life. It is not true that America, left to itself, swept clean of "outside agitators" and "trouble­ makers," or even cleansed of "bureaucrats" is healthy and whole. Ours is a human nation, and "human" means irrational as well as rational, bloody as well as compassionate, savage as well as civil.

Choosing Our King The attempted assassination transcended, as well, the cate­ gories of George McGovern-trying to lead our nation in the paths of justice, reason, and peace. It transcended the optimism and bouncy joy of Hubert Humphrey. It transcended the self-con­ gratulation that President Nixon visits upon our nation by call­ ing us so frequently "a good people." For we are an ordinary people, neither good nor evil, bound in a common humanity with all others on this planet, bound in a complex tissue of greed and generosity, trust and hate. Our hubris has been great. Our humiliation will necessarily be long. Fifth, the adolescent dream of America exalts the solitary individual, individual achievement, individual self-fulfillment. Such exaltation is out of harmony with human interdependence. Millions of educated persons, jealous of their personal individ­ uality, rights, originality, and independence of mind are, from an anthropological point of view, astonishingly alike. What they share in common is far more significant (in all but rare in­ stances of genius) than how they differ from one another. The ideas they cherish are common creations. The opinions they hold are to an impressive extent predictable from their status, economic position, and educational history. The moral qualities they praise-authenticity, honesty, sincerity, autonomy-are to a remarkable degree born of a social and rather transitory ethos. These values are, moreover, mythical in form rather than de­ scriptive. Authenticity, for example, becomes elusive the more one tests it, and such autonomy as humans attain is so heavily dependent on social learning and continuing social supports that one ought, perhaps, to call it socio-autonomy. We have come, it seems, to a contextual understanding of in­ dividualism. The individual organism exists only as part of a social and cultural network through which language, history, methods, and skills are mediated. The individual organism de­ pends, as well, on a fragile support system arising from the ecology of this planet. Our image of ourselves is undergoing pro­ found shifts. We are not so much the rugged stranger, walking on the earth, but rather a organism living in the tiny band of the biosphere at the surface of the earth. We swim as in a sea

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of life-supports, by our behavior feeding the system upon which we draw. We "participate" in it; it "participates" in us. We are not separate from earth. We are earth, living in it and it in us. The same is true of our social belonging. The basic trust by which we act upon our surroundings, accepting them not as hos­ tile but as hospitable to our action, is a gift to us from our par­ ents or parent-surrogates. All through the course of our de­ velopment we depend for intellectual stimulation and emotional support on the generosity of others. We could not think or talk without drawing on the creation of language down through count­ less generations. Our inner lives are communal, not solitary. The human community feels and thinks through us; therefore, we are. Thus the adolescent dream of solitary self-fulfillment, in which an attractive spouse and handsome children are adornments, yields to a communitarian dream. Each of us is a "we." Chil­ dren, in particular, depend on stable communities of trust. De­ spite all the brave promethean talk about self-reliance and in­ dependence, even adults require stable communities of trust. Traditionally, families have provided a context of conflict and reconciliation, love and hate, understanding and passionate ac­ cusation, within which persons have been known and accepted; friendship, by comparison, has been a rarer and more transient support. The isolated nuclear family, its members segregated by age and rendered unhappy by the modem quest for individ­ ual "fulfillment," has put enormous stress on women. Thus, one of the first practical requirements of the mature American dream is to find ways to strengthen the networks of communitarian support which the adolescent dream foolishly cast aside. If women's liberation were to seek for women the solitary individ­ ual fulfillment falsely promised to men, it would not radically alter the adolescent dream. It would merely extend its range, pouring oil upon the fires that now devour us. Fortunately, there are signs of profound groping toward a more mature dream, which represents human beings as the communal beings we truly are. Women and men from non-Anglo-American stock may, at long last, be able to lead the way in articulating some of the

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needed forms of community. The presence of great-grandpar­ ents, grandparents, uncles and aunts and cousins at the decisive moments of life, and as often as possible in the normal course of life, is both enormously enriching in its own right, and im­ portant for the coherent vitality of society at large. Those who remain close to their families gain two advantages. They remain involved in the concrete irrationalities and vicissitudes of ordin­ ary life ( often families span several social worlds, class strata, and levels of educational attainment) , and they retain a sense of rootedness and connectedness with the larger society in its harsh variety. There is a romantic notion abroad that to love humanity one should break with the parochial world of the family. The truth is the reverse. Family life ordinarily involves us with persons very different from ourselves, yet so intimate to us we encounter them on many involuted and entangling levels. If we break away from our family, by contrast, we tend to surround our­ selves with persons like ourselves, on less dangerous and inti­ mate levels, in rather more "rational" engagement. As G. K. Chesterton slyly pointed out, it is considerably easier to love humanity than to get along with one's own family. In loving one's own family one meets humanity in concreteness and inti­ mate complexity; in escaping from one's family one best avoids the reality of humankind. It is important to our own moral de­ velopment to "go home again," and perhaps never thoroughly to leave. To bring our national symbols into closer harmony with the moral realities of our actual lives, political leaders face a huge symbolic task. It is indispensable that human beings live ac­ cording to a dream. A morally realistic dream ennobles its par­ ticipants and offers genuine liberation. An unrealistic dream leads down self-destructive paths toward disillusionment. The original American dream, in its adolescent form, sells short this planet's cultural diversity. It neglects excellence of spirit and the tragic quality of every human life. It knows too little of the ambiguous involvement of the self in evil and of the com-

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munal nature of humankind. It is, indeed, an unworthy dream and we are well rid of it. It is not deserving of our faith. The mature American dream to which we are called promises us a less tractable world; no more than dubious "success"; trag­ edy; a full share of evil; and the check of the common good and the public interest upon individual fantasies of "fulfillment." It is, in all these respects, a dark faith. For exactly that reason, it has the ring of truth. It promises an obscure joy, that joy which springs from connection to the unfathomable mysteries and terrors of human life. The persons we choose to be our priests, prophets, warriors, kings will have to forge for us public symbols of such new faith. Otherwise they leave us to our emptiness.

35 The New Dark Civil Religion

There are those who despise the notion of a civil religion, out of fear that symbols of transcendence will be perverted to the uses of the state. Whether we Jike or dislike the notion, however, every national state generates a civil religion. For a state is not solely a pragmatic, administrative agency. It is also, necessarily, a symbolic agency. The chief officers of the state perform priestly and prophetic roles, conduct huge public litur­ gies, constantly reinterpret the nation's fundamental documents and traditions, furnish the central terms of public discourse. There is, then, no question whether we will have a civil re­ ligion. The only important questions are what kind of civil re­ ligion it will be, and what resources of criticism and opposition are publicly accessible for reforming and redirecting it. An additional word is necessary about the pretended neu­ trality of the state in a "secular" or "pluralistic" society. The disestablishment of the churches, as by the First Amendment, does not guarantee that the state will thereafter be strictly 301

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neutral. Quite the contrary. Precisely because a church no longer furnishes the basic symbols of transcendence in the state, a symbolic vacuum is created which the state itself inexorably fills. The disestablishment of the church is a moral gain both for citizens and for the church. But the enormously swollen symbolic power of the state requires checks and balances to which the benign secularism of the Founding Fathers led them to pay too little heed. Many Americans, for example, are adamantly opposed to granting federal aid, even indirectly, to religious private schools. Yet the same state taxes all citizens to support the secular-sup­ posedly "neutral"-schools. Inevitably, schools tacitly, symboli­ cally, and sometimes even expressly convey to students not merely information or skills but a way of life. The public schools are not a vacuum of neutrality. They are powerful instruments of "the American way of life," often in its most chauvinistic and benighted form. The state, therefore, is not symbolically neutral. It is active and even coercive in enforcing a national, homogeneous "way of life" mediated through the schools. The flag is present in every classroom. The "pledge of allegiance" constitutes a sort of classroom prayer. The world view is shaped by the adolescent form of the American dream. Why should parents be coerced into sending their children for this quite secular sort of religious indoctrination-in the civil religion of the United States? Political life is unavoidably symbolic life, affecting our inner selves as well as the outer arrangements of the economy and the social order. We must, therefore, be vigilant about the litur­ gies, the language, and the images through which our political leaders shape the nation. The civil religion of the United States should be disciplined, for example, so that it meets at least the following four criteria. Political leaders who make these criteria powerful among us will work toward the moral liberation of us all, and toward the realism of our nation's future course. First, the civil religion must explicitly and publicly in every symbolic expression point beyond itself, and hold itself under moral criticism. For example, the phrase, "under God," is in-

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tended to make plain that the state does not stand in command over human conscience. No president and no commanding of­ ficer, whether of civilian or of military life, has power to order citizens to disobey their consciences. It is true that the common good, public order, and other considerations sometimes limit expressions of private conscience. But so great has the physical and the symbolic power of the state become that traditional in­ citements to the faithful accomplishment of professional duty and to simple civic loyalty are now dangerous both to citizens and to the state. Strong national symbols must reinforce the obligation of public officials and private citizens to look first to their consciences, before agreeing to serve the state. Unless this obligation is heeded, the state loses moral sensitivity, and citizens lose moral responsibility. This criterion entails that the benefit of the doubt in moral matters must no longer be given immediately to the state. The oaths of office which public servants and military men pronounce should now be reworded so that the state itself makes plain its dependence on the free, informed conscience of its officers. Pro­ cedures for conscientious dissent should be built into every chain of command. Symbolic emphasis should be tipped more to the side of conscience, away from needs of state, until a more ade­ quate balance is obtained than the nation has enjoyed during the past twenty years. Cabinet officers, the White House staff, officers of government departments, and military men should be given symbolic reinforcement of their duty to attend to con­ science, to raise moral issues for internal and even for public debate, in the development and execution of policy. Govern­ ment activities are not merely administrative; they are symbolic and affect the whole of human life-which is to say, they fall un­ der the judgment of personal and communal conscience. The second criterion for an adequate civil religion for the United States is that it explicitly embrace planetary pluralism, and frankly reject the pretensions inherent in our own ethno­ centric "universals." The symbolic values of the nation-justice, liberty, civil rights, and the like-arc rooted in our own culture, are finite and imperfect in their concrete expression, are not suitable models for the rest of the planet. No doubt analogies

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of these values are to be found in other cultures. But no doubt, too, there are forms of human polity, justice, liberty and social harmony from which, were we attentive, we still have much to learn. The many cultures of this planet are various, and their variety is vital to the planet's social health. In Chinese thought, Peking is the central city of the human race. Japanese scholars find American scholars ethnocentric, as our scholars find theirs. The parochialism of separate cultures must be broken down. The world ought to be imagined as having many significant centers. Each way of life ought to be regarded as an essential variation on the human theme. The identity of the United States will be locked away, hid­ den, obscured until the identity of the Chinese, the Russians, the Latin Americans, the Japanese, the Indians, the Africans, and others are more fully known to us. Only in clearly recog­ nizing others as they are, other, do we come to know the out­ lines of our own concrete humanity. The full significance of the United States in world history, therefore, is not yet apparent. It is our destiny to be one of a family of cultures-to be our­ selves, and yet able to respect and to learn from others. The symbols of power politics, plainly, are not adequate to the realities of cultural difference. Political leaders must, for reality's sake, establish the diversity and the beauty of other cul­ tures firmly in the public consciousness. They can, for example, dramatize not only relations of power but also those of culture: inviting artists of other cultures to perform in our own cities, calling attention often to significant differences in cultural un­ derstanding among the peoples with whom the United States is engaged, commenting frequently on the world's diversity. The gap between the reasons that presidents make the foreign policy decisions they do and the reasons they offer to the public is in­ tolerable. The public must incessantly be led to notice the hard realities of diversity, in order to be prepared in advance for decisions that will one day have to be made. President Nixon, by all accounts, acquired over the years a storehouse of fas­ cinating lore which he seldom if ever shared with the people. The third criterion for a new civil religion is that it reflect all the cultural traditions of our own nation, that it draw on all

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the moral resources available in our own people. The nation is far richer in moral potential than our public symbols have yet expressed. In our public rhetoric, for example, we tend to speak of blacks as "poor," "disadvantaged," and "culturally de­ prived." We do not celebrate the equanimity, family strength, and even joy that enabled blacks not merely to survive in America but to find in their hearts tranquillity and charity and song. Some resources of spirit in black culture, particu­ larly the resources of quiet sensivitity and gentleness, have been thrust into the background by the media's preoccupation with militance and anger. Traditions of gentle emotional perception have been nourished for too many generations in Africa and here to be much longer overlooked. The nation needs public symbols that encourage such strengths throughout the population. The millions of Spanish-speaking Americans, who have come to be one of the largest cultural groups in our midst, will per­ haps furnish us with strengths the philosophy and art of Spanish culture have long provided: a profoundly personal attitude to­ ward words and speech, a wrt of reverence for whole personal worlds, a tragic sense, a deep skepticism about a society based on money, a contemplative and even mystical tradition, a passion for life different from that of other traditions. From descendants of immigrants from Ireland, from Poland, from Italy, and from other nations of southern and eastern Europe, perhaps the nation is already learning new symbols of morality and realism. An almost hardened, sometimes even cyni­ cal response to the cant of political reformers and moralists is one such symbol. This symbol is dangerous if it merely erects a formidable defense around an unnecessarily corrupt status quo. It is an asset if it suggests that one must examine the power and the interests served by "reform" and "morality," for these are symbols that often merely reinforce established powers. To a large extent, the descendants of Catholic and Jewish immigrants are still "outsiders" with respect to the major civil religions of the nation. A reinterpretation of all the nation's basic symbols from the point of view of their experience of America nourishes both intellectual and political creativity. This nation is morally

A New and Dark Faith and intellectually larger than Anglo-American conceptions al­ low. Historians and commentators who interpret such basic no­ tions as justice, the individual, community, tradition, freedom, and morality in classical Anglo-American terms are often far more ethnocentric and narrow than they imagine. The writings of James MacGregor Burns, for example, so admirable in other respects, effectively exclude the symbolic life of a majority of Americans; the justice that John Rawls writes of is Anglo­ American. When a trustee of Yale University, to cite another example, speaks of civil rights, it may never have occurred to him to look at himself and the tradition whence he comes from the per­ spective of the Italian Catholic families of New Haven, who have observed the concrete bearing of such words upon the Italian experience in that city for some four generations. It is not probable that they look upon him as he looks upon himself, or that they accept without skepticism the noble ring be gives his words. Their eyes are likely to be fixed rather more steadily than his on underlying and fundamental disparities of wealth, status, power, and generational succession. Their view of the realities of Connecticut politics is likely to be quite different from his. Many regions of the United States are underrepresented in national consciousness and national symbolism. The people of Appalachia, the poor whites of Alabama and Georgia, and many others are known through stereotypes rather than through nuanced investigation and illuminating drama. Women, above all, are underrepresented. When the shouting and tumult of the recent rebirth of feminism have faded a little, as they already have begun to do, ideas will slowly emerge for making more visible to ourselves the actual life of women in our national culture-and perhaps, particularly, the lives of women of working-class families. Understandably, highly educated women will speak for themselves. (The 350,000 subscribers of Ms. magazine, for example, have a median age of 29.2 and a household median income of $ 1 7,774; 89.8 percent of them have gone to college or beyond. ) To recover the history, suffer-

3 08

Choosing Our King

ings, and excellences of the relatively inarticulate will require especially sensitive efforts. If a nation is a religion, then all citizens need to be nourished by that religion. All need to see reflected in its liturgies and symbols a confirmation of the meaning and worth of their own lives. The most visible civil religion of the United States is re­ markably snobbish and limited in the range of its official symbols. It mainly confirms the Northeastern elite in its image of itself. The fourth criterion of a new civil religion is that it be rooted and concrete. The American civil religion ought to be an Ameri­ can civil religion; it ought not to pretend, falsely, to be universal. It grows out of a searing, spirit-forming, finite history. It is linked to a unique land-to recognizable mountains and coasts and plains, to vividly distinctive sights and sounds and colors. There is no contradiction between being both rooted and also planetary in one's vision (between this criterion and the sec­ ond ) . It is altogether human both to be oneself, no other, and yet to be open and generous in response to other human cul­ tures and individual persons. It is altogether human to have roots in one place, to love one land above all others, to be grateful for the nourishment ( however partial and incomplete) provided by its institutions, to be, in a word, fiercely patriotic -without closing one's soul against the rest of the world. Indeed, the obverse may be a stronger way to make the point. To attempt to be open to all other cultures, without hav­ ing roots of one's own, is almost certainly to misperceive the otherness of such cultures. It is, perhaps, even to be incapable of culture. For culture is a kind of rootedness. The word itself suggests the patient cultivation of a living, growing plant. To have culture is to be shaped by a social tradition, shaped will­ ingly and joyously so that the shaping is appropriated as one's own, and so that the culture, as it were, becomes alive in one­ self under one's own direction. One does not choose the culture into which one is born ; but one may choose to go as deeply into it as one can, to realize every human potential it affords. Para­ doxically, it is through the route of becoming particular that one finds, at the depths, genuine universality.

A New and Dark Faith

A president of the United States presides over the adminis­ trative organs of the state. He is also the high priest of the symbols and liturgies of the nation's self-understanding. A president who takes up his symbolic duties with conscious and explicit attention can institutionalize a new self-understanding of this nation's identity among the other nations of this world, this nation's limitations and historic evils, this nation's plain real­ ity. Then a fresh wave of liberated energy will sweep through the entire body politic. What vast relief would flow if our public discourse actually described the nation as it is-if the constraints that stifle us were soon released! Such a president will free the nation's wings. The symbol maker of a nation holds back the public's ener­ gies, or invites them to unfold. His role demands most careful scrutiny, most sober vigilance, most swift and judicious exercise. Let those who nominate the candidates take thought. Let those who wish to be elected king take years to learn their skills and steep themselves in traditions that give life. Let those who choose a king choose wisely. Were this book to have the shape demanded by the American sense of reality, its ending would be upbeat, lyrical, and practical. In violation of the expected ritual, as a testimony to the new darkness, it closes incomplete.

A Select Bibliography

Ahlstrom, Sydney E., ed. Theology in America: The Major Protestant Voices from Puritanism to Neo-Orthodoxy. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1967. Alley, Robert S. So Help Me God: Religion and the Presidency; Wilson to Nixon. Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1972. Anderson, Charles H. White Protestant Americans: From National Origins to Religious Group. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice­ Hall, Inc., 1970. Arnold, Thurman. The Symbols of Government. New York and Burlingame : Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1935. Bailey, Thomas A. Presidential Greatness: The Image and the Man from George Washington to the Present. New York: Appleton­ Century, 1966. Barber, James David. The Presidential Character: Predicting Per­ formance in the White House. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. : Prentice­ Hall, Inc., 1972. Barone, Michael; Ujifusa, Grant; and Matthews, Douglas. The Al­ manac of A merican Politics: The Senators, the Representatives -Their records, states and districts. New York: Gambit, 1972.

JII

312

A Select Bibliography

Bellah, Robert N. Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Tradi­ tional World. New York, Evanston, and London : Harper and Row, 1970. --- "Evil and the American Ethos," from Sanford, Nevitt and Comstock, Craig, eds., Sanctions for Evil. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., 1971. Berger, Peter L., and Neuhaus, Richard J. Movement and Revolution: On A merican Radicalism. New York: Anchor, 1970. Binkley, Wilfred E. President and Congress. New York: Random House, 1962. --- The Man in the White House: His Powers and Duties. Balti­ more: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1958. Broder, David S. The Party's Over: The Failure of Politics in America. New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, 197 1, 1972. Buchanan, Patrick J. The New Majority. U.S.A. : Girard Bank, 1973. Burns, James MacGregor. Presidential Government: The Crucible of Leadership. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. --- Uncommon Sense. New York, Evanston, San Francisco, Lon­ don, 1972. Cherry, Conrad, ed. God's New Israel: Religious Interpretations of A merican Destiny. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971. Corwin, Edward S. The President: Office and Powers 1787-1957. New York, New York Untversity Press, Fourth Revised Edi­ tion 1957, Third Printing 1962. Cousins, Norman. "In God We Trust'': The Religious Beliefs and Ideas of the American Founding Fathers. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1958. De Vries, Walter, and Tarrance, V. Lance. The Ticket Splitter: A New Force in American Politics. Grand Rapids, Mich. : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1972. Dewey, John. Individualism: Old and New. New York: Capricorn Books, 1929, 1930, 1962. --- Liberalism and Social Action . New York : Capricorn Books, 1935. Duncan, Hugh D. Symbols in Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Dutton, Frederick G. Changing Sources of Power: American Politics in the 197o's. New York : McGraw-Hill, Inc., 197 1 . Edelman, Murry. The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana, Ill. : Uni­ versity of Illinois Press, 1967.

A Select Bibliography

3 13

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. English Traits. New York : Hearst's Inter­ national Library Co., 19 14. Evans, Rowland, and Novak, Robert. Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exer­ cise of Power. New York : The New American Library, Inc., 1966. --- Nixon in the White House: The Frustration of Power. New York: Random House, 197 1 . Fackre, Gabriel J . Liberation in Middle America. Philadelphia: A Pilgrim Press Book, 197 1 . Free, Lloyd A . , and Cantril, Hadley. The Political Beliefs of Ameri­ cans: A Study of Public Opinon. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1968. Gaustad, Edwin S. A Religious History of America. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. Guthman, Edwin. We Band of Brothers: A Memoir of Robert F. Kennedy. New York, Evanston, London, San Francisco : Harper & Row, 197 1 . Henderson, Charles P., Jr. The Nixon Theology. New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London : Harper & Row, 1972. Herberg, Will. Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Re­ ligious Sociology. Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday & Co., 1955. Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition. New York: Vintage Books, 1959. Hudson, Winthrop S., ed. Nationalism and Religion in America: Con­ cepts of A merican Identity and Mission. New York, Evanston, London: Harper & Row, 1970. Lerner, Max. America as a Civilizat:on: Volume One: The Basic Frame. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957. --- America as a Civilization: Volume Two: Culture and Person­ ality. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957. Koenig, Louis W. Bryan: A Political Biography of William Jennings Bryan. New York : G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1971. Laski, Harold. The American Presidency, a n Interpretation. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940. Levy, Mark R., and Kramer, Michael S. The Ethnic Factor: How America's Minorities Decide Elections. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Raab, Earl. The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America 1790-1970 ( 1970 ADL B'nai B'rith) . Harper Torchbooks, Inc., 1973. Litt, Edgar. Beyond Pluralism: Ethnic Politics in America. Glenview, Ill. : Scott, Foresman and Co., 1970.

3 14

A Select Bibliography

Mailer, Norman. St. George and the Godfather. New York : New American Library, 1972. Marty, Martin E. Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America. New York: The Dial Press, 1970. Mazlish, Bruce. In Search of Nixon: A Psycho-historical Inquiry. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1972. McGinniss, Joe. The Selling of the President 1968. New York: Pocket Books, 1969. Mencken, H. L. Chrestomathy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949 . Moynihan, Daniel P. The Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan. New York : Random House, 1973. Myrdal, Gunnar. A n A merican Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1 944. Napolitan, Joseph. The Election Game: A nd How to Win It. Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday & Co., 1972. Neustadt, Richard E. Presidential Power. New York: Mentor Books, 1964. Niebuhr, Reinhold. Christianity and Power Politics. U.S.A. : Archon Books, 1969. --- Moral Man and Immoral Society. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932, 1960. --- The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960. --- The Irony of American History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952. --- The Self and the Dramas of History. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955. Neustadt, Richard E. Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1964. Nixon, Richard M. A New Road for America, Major Policy State­ ments, March 1970 to October 1971. Preface and Commen­ taries by Richard Wilson. Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1972. --- Six Crises. New York : Pyramid Books, 1962, 1968. Osborne, John. The Nixon Watch. New York : Livcright Publishing Corp., 1970. Peirce, Neal R. The People's President: The Electoral College in American History and the Direct Vote Alternative. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1968.

A Select Bibliography

315

Polsby, Nelson W. , and Wildavsky, Aa ron B . Presiden tial Elections: Strategies of A merican Electoral Politics. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 19 64, 1968, 1 971. Pomper, Gerald M. Elections in America: Control and Influence in Democra tic Politics. New York, Toron to : Dodd, Mead & Co ., 1 970. Reedy, George E. The Twiligh t of the Presidency. New York and Cleveland : The World Publishing Co. , 1970. Rennie, Eric ( text ) , Duffey, Joseph ( postscript ) . A Cam paign A lbum . Philadelphia : United Church Press, 1973. Reston, James. Sketches in the Sand. New York : Vintage, 1 9 67. Robinson, Ll oyd. The Hopefuls: Ten Presiden tial Campaigns. Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1966. Rossiter, Clinton. The A merican Presidency. New York and Scar­ borough, Ontario : New American Library, 1 956, 1960. Sandeen, Ernest R. The Roo ts of Fun damen talism: British and A meri­ can Millenarian ism 1800-1 930. Chicago and London : The University of Chicago Press, 1970. Scammon, Richard M., and Wattenberg, Ben J. The Real Majority. New York : Be rkley Publishing Corp., 1970. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Age of Jackson. New York : New American Library, 1 945. --- The Coming to Power: Critical Presidential Elections in Amer­ ican History. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney: Chelsea . House Publishers in association with McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1971, 1972. Sennett, Richard, and Cobb, Jonathan. The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. Shadegg, Stephen C. How to Win an Election: The A rt of Political Victory. New York : Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc., 1964. Smith, Elwyn A., ed. The Religion of the Republic. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 197 1 . Stark, Rodney, and Glock, Charles Y. American Piety: The Nature of Religious Commitment. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London : University of California Press, 1968. Stout, Richard T. People. New York, Evanston, London : Harper & Row, 1970. Streiker, Lowell D., and Strober, Gerald S. Religion and the New Majority: Billy Graham, Middle A merica, and the Politics of the 7o's. New York : Association Press, 1972. Warner, W. Floyd. American Life: Dream and Reality. Chicago and London : The University of Chicago Press, 1953, 1962.

316

A Select Bibliography

Whitney, David C. The American Presidents: Biographies of the Chief Executives from Washington through Nixon. Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday & Co. Inc., 1967, 1969. Wicker, Tom. /.F.K. and L.B./.: The Influence of Personality upon Politics. Baltimore, Md. : Penguin Books, 1968. Williams, William Appleman. Some Presidents: From Wilson to Nixon. New York: New York Review, 1972. Witcover, Jules. 85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert F. Kennedy. New York: Ace Publishing Corp., 1969. Wilson, Woodrow. Constitutional Government in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press, 1908.

Index

Abzug, Bella, 275 Adams, John, 2 1 , 150 Adams, John Quincy, 22, 1 35 Age of Reform, The (Hofstadter) , 64 Agnew, Spiro, 33 , 254, 255 Alley, Robert ., 1 35, 1 36 America a.r a Ci vilization (Lerner), 1 14 American Broadcasting Company, 1 87 Ame rican Con ervative Union, 207 American Dilemma, A,1 (Myrdal ) , 119 Ame rican Indepe ndent a rty, 207 American Journal, The, 274 American Presidency, The (Laski), 26 American Pre idency, The (Ross i­ te r), 239 Ame ric n P rotective Assoc iation, 89 Ame ricans for Democratic Ac tion, 191 Apple, R. W., Jr., 177, 195 319

II

A rrogance

of

Po wer,

The

(Ful-

bright) , I I 7 Arthur, bester A., 136 Ashbrook, John, 207 Azbell, Joe, 1 86 Badillo, Herman, 275 Ba iley, John, 1 95, 206 Baird, Robert, 15 1 Barber, James David, 6, 7, 24 Bartlett, Joseph, 177 Bazelon, David, 64 Be llah, Robert N., 16, 17, I06, 123, 124, 138, 139, 141 , 142, 143, 144 Bentham, Jeremy, 156 Berger, Peter, 277 Berrigan, Daniel, 91, 141 Beveridge, Albert J., 152 Diaggi, Mario, 234 Binkley, Wilfred, 21, 22 Bond, Julian, 207 B remer, Arthur, 202, 229, 130, 13 1 B rewster, Kingman, 267 Brezhnev, Leonid, 263, 265

320

Index

Brinkley, David, 167

Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol

(Trachtenberg) , 142 Brown, Edmund, 247 Bryan, William Jennings, 63, 64, 133 Buchanan, Patrick, 86 Buckley, William F., Jr., 1 1 8, 124 Bundy, McGeorge, 1 3 1 Burke, David, 26 Burns, James MacGregor, 272, 307 Bushnell, Horace, 1 5 1

Caddell, Pat, 215 Camp, Billy Joe, 187 Carmichael, Stokely, 186 Carswell, Harold, 254 Cash, Johnny, 226 Castro, Adrian, 181 Chafee, John, 1 3 1 Chavez, Cesar, 9 Cherry, Conrad, 106 Chesterton, G. K., 105, 107, 300

Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, The (Niebuhr) , 94

Chiles, Lawton, 132

Christian Century, The, 153

Churchill, Winston, 283 Cleveland, Grover, 136 Clines, Francis X., 271, 275 Coffin, William Sloan, 272 Cogley, John, 91 Coll, Ned, 174, 175 Columbia Broadcasting System, 177 Committee to Re-elect the President, 241 Common Cause, 2 1 3 Connally, John, 124, 149, 281 Coolidge, Calvin, 136, 242, 281 Cox, Archibald, 138 Daley, Richard J., 84, 190, 191, 193, 206, 223 Davis, Angela, 97 Dean, John, 24 1, 255, 263 Dewey, John, 106, 156, 157

Diffusion of Power, The (Rostow) ,

153 Dirksen, Everett, 18 Dole, Robert, 169 Duffey, Joseph, 15, 219 Dulles, John Foster, 70

Eagleton, Thomas, 224, 236 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 3, 26, 30, 34, 65, 70, 76, I 12, 132, 135, 234, 235, 252, 267 Elliott, George P., 274 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 138 English Traits (Emerson) , 138, 139 Erlichman, John D., 236, 241, 242 Ervin, Sam, 246, 248 Fairlie, Henry, 1 17, 141 Fall, Bernard, 75 Family of God, The (Warner), 140 Farenthold, Sissy, 91 Faulkner, William, 112 Federalist, The, 27, 49, 264, 265 Fire in the Lake (FitzGerald), 1 2 FitzGerald, Frances, 12 Foley, Gene, 179 Folsom, Jim, 207 Ford, Henry Jones, 19 Franklin, Benjamin, 138 Fulbright, William, 1 17 Gandhi, Indira, 200 Gardner, John, 186 George III, 20

God and Man at Yale (Buckley) ,

us

God's New Israel (Cherry), 106

Goldwater, Barry, 25, 124, 246 Gore, Albert, 132 Graham, Billy, 94, 124, 132, 133, 147, 149, 150, 224 Graham, Katherine, 256 Grammer, Billy, 187, 204, 205 Grant, U. S., 136 Greening of A merica, The (Reich), 1 06, I 1 8

Index Gribbs, Roman S., 2 1 3 Halberstam, David, 74, 75, 208 Haldeman, H. R., 236, 241, 242, 245, 247, 255 Hamilton, Alexander, 264-65 Hanna. Mark J ., 63 Hanrahan, Edward V., 195, 196 Harding, Warren G., 136 Harriman, Averell, 267 Harrington, Michael, 64, 90, 91 Harris, Fred, 132 Hartke, Vance, 174, 175 Hayden, Tom, 91, 186 Haynsworth, Clement, 254 Heath, Edward, 108 Hefner, Hugh, 223 Henderson, Charles P., 149 Herberg, Will, 106, 123, 124, 126 Hiss. Alger, 64 Ho Chi Minh, 77 Hofstadter, Richard, 64 Hoover, Herbert, 34, 136 Hoover, J. Edgar, 255 Human Events, 207 Humphrey, Muriel, 180, 184 Humphrey, Hubert H., 48, 72, 76, 132, 133, 134, 158, 163, 168, 177, 183, 184, 187, , 189, 206, 2 1 1-12, 216, 227, 253, 298 Independent Voters of Illinois, 190 In Search of Nixon (Mazlish), 33 Irony of American History, The

(Niebuhr), 94 Irving, Clifford, 201

Jackson, Andrew, 22, 136 Jackson, Henry, 169, 189, 213 Jackson, Jesse, 191 Jay, John, 27 Jaycees, 182 Jefferson, Thomas, 21, 135, 138, I SO, I S i John XXIII, Pope, 90 Johnson, Andrew, 135

321

Johnson, Lyndon B., 18, 23, 24, 32, 33, 41, 44, 74, 90, 91, 132, 136, 195, 223, 233, 254 Jones, Kirby, 176 Kefauver, Estes, 132 Kennan, George F., 1 12 Kennedy, Edward M., 26, 42, 67, 91, 92 Kennedy, Ethel, 23 1 Kennedy, Jacqueline, 23 1 Kennedy, John F., 3, 18, 29, 33, 52, 67, 68, 70, 71, 76, 84, 90, 91, I I3, I I4, I I S, I I 6, 136, 140, 141, 142, 144, 163, 168, 170, 177, 223, 234, 235, 252, 253, 254, 270 Kennedy, Robert F., 29, 30, 70, 71, 72, 91, 97, 176, 194, 223, 23 1, 252, 281 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 8, 67 Kleindienst, Richard, 248 Khrushchev, Nikita, 234 Ku Klux Klan, 297 Laski, Harold, 26, 236 Leaves of Grass (Whitman), 106 Lefko, Bob, 203-204 Lerner, Max, 42, 1 14, 1 16, n 9 Lewis, Anthony, xiv Liberalism and Social Action

(Dewey), 156

Life, I I 2

Lincoln, Abraham, 135, 145, 146 Lindsay, John V., 42, 90, 131, 189, 201-202, 2 13, 275 Lippmann, Walter, 109, 1 1 2 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 155, 207 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 1 3 1 Loeb, William, 170, 171 Long, Huey P., 230 Lowenstein, Al, 71 McCarthy, Eugene, 4, 8, 42, 71, 72, 76, 91, 133, 141, 177, 19�6. 197-201, 206, 215 McCarthy, Joseph, 26, 141

322

Index

McCloskey, Pete, 201 McGovern, Eleanor, 216, 227 McGovern, George, 4, 16, 26, 42, 48, 51, 57-62, 64, 67, 71, 91, 92, 93, 97, 102, 134, 158, 164, 165, 168, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 181, 189, 190, 192, 195, 213, 215-16, 217-28, 235, 245, 275, 279, 295, 298 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 270 MacIntyre, Carl, 94, 147 McKinley, William, 63-64, 136, 154, 273-74 MacLeish, Archibald, 118 McLoughlin, William G., 149 Maddox, Lester, 132 Madison, James, 49 Magruder, Jeb Stuart, 241, 272 Mailer, Norman, 60, 105 Making of a Counterculture, The

(Roszak) , 245

Making of a Quagmire, The (Hal­

berstam ) , 74 Mangum, George, 187-88, 205-206 Manchester Union Leader, 170, 172, 177, 178 Mankiewicz, Frank, 176, 216 Mansfield, Mike, 76 Manson, Charles, 297 Mao Tse-tung, 208 Marx, Karl, 200 Mazlish, Bruce, 33, 34, 80 Mead, Sidney, 106 Meir, Golda, 200 Melville, Herman, 126 Mencken, H. L, 38, 147, 148, 149 Mill, John Stuart, 156 Miller, Perry, 137 Mitchell, John, 241

Moral Man and Immoral Society

(Niebuhr), 94 Morley, Lord, 270 Mott, Stewart, 233

Movement and Revolution (Berger) ,

277 Ms. magazine, 307

Muskie, Edmund, 13; 42, 48, 87, 158, 167-78, 180, 181, 184, 187, 189, 192, 196, 206, 211, 213-15, 216, 221, 234, 236 Muskie, Jane, 170 Myrdal, Gunnar, 106, 107, 113, 115, 1 19, 121 Naughton, James, 184

New Majority, The (Buchanan ) , 86 New Republic, The, 10, 91, 170, 171 Newsday, 165 Newsweek, 13, 170 New York Daily News, 226 New York Post, 42 New York Review of Books, The,

IO, 249

New York Times, The, xiv, 32, 37,

57, 108, 112, 177-78, 184, 254, 271, 295 New York Times (Sunday) Maga­ zine, The, 10, 117 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 94, 95, 100, 154 Nixon, Richard M., xiv, xvii, 3, 4, 15, 18, 23, 24, 26, 29, 31, 33, 34-46, 52, 64-65 , 68, 15, 11, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 9 1, 93, 96, l02, 108, 1 26, 133, 135, 138, 143, 149, 155, 160, 163, 164, 171, 177, 199, 208, 209, 217, 220, 221, 230, 233, 234, 237, 238, 24 1, 243, 2 44, 247, 248, 250, 253, 254, 255, 265, 284, 287, 298, 305 Nixon's Theology (Henderson) , 149 Nixon Watch, The (Osborne ) , 34 Osborne, John, 34

Other America, The (Harrington ),

90

Our Country (Strong) , 151

Peale, Norman Vincent, 147

Philosopl1y and Public Affairs (Wal-

zer), 270 Pierce, Franklin, 136 Playboy, xvii

Index Politics of Promise, The (Fairlie), 141 Politics of Unreason, The (Lipset and Raab), 155 Port Huron statement, 186 Pendergast, Thomas Joseph, 230 Presidential Character, The (Barber ) , 6 Price, Ray, 44-45, 47, 49 Protestant, Catholic, and Jew (Her­ berg ) , 123 Prussian, Karl, 205 Pucinski, Roman C., 2 1 3 Raab, Earl, 1 55, 207 Rawls, John, 307 Reagan, Ronald, 35 Reedy, George, xiv Reich, Charles, 65, 106, I 1 8 Religion and the New Majority (Streiker and Strober), 149 Reston, James, 247 Reynolds, Frank, 1 8 1 Richardson, Elliot, 138 Rockefeller, John D. III, 267 Rockefeller, Nelson, 1 3 1 , 281 Rolling Stone, 226 Romney, George, 42, 175 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 24, 33, 136, 170, 171, 233 Roosevelt, Theodore, 1 36 Rossiter, Clinton, 20, 230, 236 Rostenkowski, Daniel, 2 1 3 Rostow, W. W., 153 Roth, Philip, 33 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 123 Rusk, Dean, 272 Russell, Jane, 176 Salinger, Pierre, 2 1 6, 221 Sandburg, Carl, 145 Santarelli, Donald E., 248 Savio, Mario, 90 Schaff, Philip, 151 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 221

3 23

Self and the Dramas of History, The (Niebuhr), JOO Seward, William, 23 Shields, Mark, 184 Sheed, Wilfred, 91 Shriver, Sargent, xii, 90 Singer, William, 191 Smylie, John E., 106 Snyder, George, 187 So Help Me God (Alley) , 135 Some Presidents (Williams) , 33 Spectator, The, 1 1 7 Spellman, Francis Cardinal, 176 Spock, Benjamin, 2 1 8 Stanbery, Henry, 20 Stans, Maurice, 247 Stevenson, Adlai E., 68, 267 Stone, I. F., 248 Streiker, Lowell D., 149 Strober, Gerald S., 149 Strong, Josiah, 151 Swados, Harvey, 157 Trachtenberg, Alan, 142 T. R. B., 170, 111 Truman, Harry S., 22-23, 70, 135 Twilight of the Presidency, The (Reedy), xiv United Auto Workers, 203 Valery, Paul, 276 Variety, 226 Walker, Dan, 195-96 Wallace, Cornelia, 187, 1 89, 23 1 Wallace, George, 9, 22, 25, 42, 68, 132, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 165, 179-89, 202-10, 2 1 5, 2 16, 221, 229-32, 251, 252, 295, 297 Wallace, George, Jr., 206 Wal/ace Labor Action, 204 Walzer, Michael, 270 Warner, W. Lloyd, 140

324

Index

Washington, George, 20, 21, 136, 138 Washington Post, The, 32, 37, 246, 254, 256 Weicker, Lowell, 219 Weil, Gordon, 67 Wetzel, Gregory, 205 What I Believe (Wallace) , 157 White, Theodore, 34 White Jacket (Melville) , 126 Whitman, Walt, 87, 106

Williams, Robin, 125 Williams, William Appleman, 33, 34, 74 Wills, Garry, 91 Wilson, Woodrow, 27, 135 Women's Wear Daily, 170 Yarborough, Ralph, 132 Yorty, Sam, 175 Zeigler, Ronald, 24 1

Also by Michael Novak : The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics Michele Murray, The Washington Post: "Myself the grandchild of immigrants, I find Novak's analysis of the self-doubt and self-hate generated in ethnics through their schooling and the public media to be ab­ solutely accurate." Newsweek : "A tough-minded provocative book . . . could well signal an important change in American politics." Time: "There is a great deal yet to be dis­ covered about America, Novak concludes. He has, in fact, attacked the American Dream in order to open up a possible second chapter for it."

MICHAEL NOVAK is consultant in the humanities to The Rockefeller Foundation. He has been professor of philosophy and re­ ligious studies at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, and at Stanford University. In the presidential primary of 1968, he campaigned for Robert Kennedy in Oregon and California. In 1 970, he cam­ paigned with R. Sargent Shriver for con­ gressmen in thirty-nine states. As a journal­ ist, Mr. Novak covered the election of 1972 for Newsday until July, when he joined the staff first of Senator George McGovern and then of Sargent Shriver. He has written sev­ eral highly acclaimed books, including The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics. Jacket design by Bob Antler

MICHAEL NOVAK

Choosing Our King Anthony Lewis of The New York Times:

"Brilliant and exasperating-profound in its view of American symbols and American character, penetrating in its thesis of the president's symbolic priestly role . . . . It should be read." '•

Peter Bellerman Advance man for the 1 972 Muskie and McGovern campaigns:

"As a person involved with the 'mechanical' aspects ( advancing, sched­ uling, and political advice) of campaigning, I consider Michael Novak's book to be an immensely practical discussion . . . . As useful as all the current 'this-is-the-way-it-was' accounts are, Novak's book tackles more complex subjects, and succeeds in making a far more lasting contribution to our understanding of the presidency."

Daniel P. Moynihan U.S. Ambassador to India:

" . . a superbly useful book. It kept me up until three this morning and was worth all the mild misery of the day that has followed."

David Burrell Chairman, Department of Theology, Notre Dame University:

"Novak's genius lies in exciting our imaginations to pursue the subtle paths behind events . . . an advance beyond Niebuhr in relating morality to politics, especially in the section on dirty hand� . . . in­ cisive . . . timely . . . the most astute writing of Mr. Novak's to date."

Will Herberg Professor of Philosophy and Culture, Graduate School, Drew University :

" . . . a fascinating analysis of the overall cultural situation . . . . I would most heartily urge everyone I can reach to ponder this work for its insights and wisdom." JK 526 AC 1 1 I AN PU Hi I Il l C CO .. I N68 86 I h ml Avenue, N w Yor k , ,

• r uo u