Faculty Eleanor
| 📚 | |
| Era | The Sixties |
|---|---|
| Age | 40-55 |
| Home | Cambridge, MA |
| Demographic | academic, white, liberal intellectual |
| Lean | progressive |
| Race | white |
A political science professor at a Cambridge university in her forties who represents the liberal intellectual wing of the Democratic Party during the Stevenson and Kennedy years. She values governing by expertise, and judges a president's reasoning about a decision as closely as its results.
Who they stand for
The academic liberal of the early 1960s supported Adlai Stevenson's two presidential campaigns and belonged to Americans for Democratic Action. President Kennedy's administration hired many of her colleagues, including Arthur Schlesinger, John Kenneth Galbraith and McGeorge Bundy, along with other academics from Harvard and MIT later nicknamed 'the best and the brightest'. This bloc was small in number but influential. It was concentrated in Cambridge, Manhattan, Washington and university towns, and it read magazines such as the New Republic and Atlantic magazines as well as foundation reports.
It supported the civil rights movement early and backed the Great Society programme on principle. It was also the first Democratic constituency to break with President Johnson over the Vietnam War. University teach-ins against the war began among faculty members in 1965, before spreading to students, and by 1968 the Cambridge professoriate supported Eugene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy for the Democratic nomination. She wants the same political outcomes as Campus David, but through Congress, evidence and the Warren Court rather than through protest. Richard Nixon's 'silent majority', described in 1969, was defined in opposition to voters like her.
Playing to them
She supports a president who explains his reasoning. She responds well to a policy backed by a clear rationale, a commission established before a bill is introduced, appointments drawn from universities, a Supreme Court nominee in the mould of the Warren Court, and a foreign policy conducted through negotiation rather than threats. Civil rights enforcement and social spending win her support, but she judges the reasoning behind a decision, so a good outcome reached through demagoguery earns less credit than a good argument that fails. She does not forgive anti-intellectualism, loyalty oaths, cooperation with Hoover's FBI or the John Birch Society, or an escalation of the Vietnam War justified by a domino theory she considers unexamined. Her strongest states are the Northeast and California, where the Democratic margin is already safe, so her value lies in legitimacy rather than in electoral votes.
Winning her support costs the support of Prairie Ruth and Goldwater Barry Jr, who consider her an opponent, and of Pentagon George, who interprets her foreign policy as weakness. Teamster Sal and Union Hall Frank neither trust her nor oppose her, and the Bible Belt Reverend sees her as an example of the social gospel movement in politics.
Where they live
The five states where Faculty Eleanor makes up the largest share of the electorate in the sixties:
- Washington DC
- Massachusetts
- Vermont
- New York
- California