U.S. facing many challenges
(Local editorials from 50 years ago are being reprinted every Monday and Tuesday in this column. This editorial appeared in the Valley Independent on Dec. 13, 1966.
Gov. Scranton made a characteristically wise and thought-provoking speech before the Pennsylvania Society in New York City last Saturday evening. So significant do we consider his observations that we are printing excerpts elsewhere on this page today.
We are inclined to think the governor may be right when he says President Johnson’s concepts of a national “consensus” and a Great Society are really just some remnants of the liberalism of the Roosevelt New Deal, which he says represents a mistaken analysis of today’s America and today’s world.
“This consensus is now cracking,” said Gov. Scranton, “not under the pressure of old ideologies but from the weight of new aspirations and concerns.”
He interprets the recent national elections as “a vote of no confidence in the policies and techniques which have governed America for the past 30 years — and an announcement of a willingness among the electorate to try new answers.
“The answers,” he added, “were not necessarily provided by the election. The victorious candidates were distinguished more by a willingness to learn and to grow than by any ready-made solutions that they placed before the public.”
Essentially what the governor seems to be saying is that, for all its superficial prosperity, this is a troubled country. The people are troubled by the nation’s failure, even in good times, to make its cities livable, to control inflation, to build a secure peace, to insure civil rights and preserve order.
Gov. Scranton doesn’t pretend to have pat answers to any of this. He even admits that there may not be good answers to some of the nation’s problems.
But he does say that the people have lost confidence in the old theories that everything can be solved by the great federal government if it just has money enough and programs enough. This, he says, instead of producing a new Golden Age, is producing “the worst muddle of confused administration and overlapping bureaucracy since the construction of the Tower of Babel.”
Gov. Scranton suggests that the people may be ready for different answers, having discovered that “this is simply too big and too complex a nation to be run efficiently from the top down.”
He feels this is bringing “a healthy revival of interest in state and local government.”
This is a perceptive analysis, in our view, and thoughtful citizens will want to consider it. Some in Pennsylvania may find themselves regretting once more that Gov. Scranton has decided that he will never again seek elective office.
The nation needs political leadership which is not afraid to break with the past.