ABSTRACT
While politics had determined the final outcome, with every possible Democratic contender for the party’s 1960 nomination, including Johnson and John F. Kennedy, opposing Strauss, Dwight D. Eisenhower had not surrendered his initiative to the fever of the “lame duck.” The Americans for Constitutional Action, formed in 1958 as a right-wing antidote to Americans for Democratic Action, charged in August that both political parties were “being steadily pulled closer together by the strong panaceas offered through all-powerful, centralized government.” In December, the National Liberation Front, although in existence informally since 1954, was established to lead the insurgent forces and become the political arm of the rebellion. The “great crusade” that he had promised in 1952 had been dissipated by the politics of conciliation and appeasement—or, even worse, lethargy. William V. Shannon, in a Commentary article that month, viewed the Administration as a “time of great postponement” that merely presided over the preservation of past gains.
