National Affairs: Where I Stand

Harold Stassen has set his sights high. Again last week he made it plain that he would not settle for second prize in the presidential sweepstakes. When he was asked if he would take the No. 2 spot on a Republican ticket headed by Generals Ike Eisenhower or Douglas MacArthur, Stassen said firmly: “No, 1 am running for the presidential nomination.”

This week, to make sure that voters knew he was in dead earnest, he released a book that put Candidate Stassen’s views on most major political issues down in printer’s ink. It was appropriately entitled Where I Stand (Doubleday; $2). Some of the areas where Stassen took his stand:

Labor-management relations, the most critical issue on the home front, is already on the way to solution through the Taft-Hartley Act, which “will be the foundation for a fair, just, and well-balanced labor policy in America.”

U.S.-Russian relations will be eased (Stassen implies) when Russia realizes that U.S. economic collapse is not inevitable and Moscow changes its tune.

Taxes should be cut promptly. Incentive capital should be encouraged by permitting everyone to keep at least 50% of his income. At the same time, a 1½% service charge should be levied on big fortunes “embalmed in bank deposits” or in tax-exempt bonds.

Boom-&-bust should be controlled by lowering tax rates, easing credit controls, starting public works (under private contract) whenever unemployment reaches 6% of the total labor force; when unemployment drops back to 4%, the process should be reversed. Another Stassen weapon: “Officially encouraged voluntary boycotts” against excessively high prices.

Housing should be speeded up by a $1 billion-a-year federal program, in large metropolitan centers, starting with those which agree to help batter down archaic building codes and labor featherbedding.

On some points, Stassen was bound to run into heavy criticism. Builders would insist that his housing program would cut into a materials shortage that is already drum-tight. His Government boycott plan was politically impractical. Those who thought he was too wide-eyed on Russia would still think so. Where I Stand set free-talking Harold Stassen up as a fair target for all comers, but that was the risk he had been accepting all along.