Quickly (28 March 1956)
The Village Voice, 28 March 1956; transcription provided by Jerry Lucas; proofread against the source 2026-06-01.
Column Twelve
Yes, it may seem a trifle fantastic at the first approach, but the man I think the Democrats ought to draft for their Presidential candidate in 1956 is Ernest Hemingway.
To begin with, the Democratic Party has the poorest of chances against Eisenhower, and whether it be Stevenson, Kefauver, or some other political half-worthy, the candidate’s personality would suffer from his unfortunate resemblance to a prosperous undertaker. There is no getting around it—the American people tend to vote for the candidate who gives off the impression of having experienced some pleasure in his life, and Eisenhower, whatever his passive vicissitudes, looks like he has had a good time now and again.
Hemingway, I would guess, possesses exactly that kind of charm, possesses it in greater degree than Eisenhower, and so he would have some outside chance to win.
Another of Hemingway’s political virtues is that he has an interesting war record, and that he succeeded in becoming a man of more physical courage than most—and this is no easy nor un-exhausting attainment for a major writer. Whether the Village will like it or not, most Americans like warriors, indeed so much that they have been ready to swallow the bitter pill of an Army General in office. Yet I think they are not so far submerged into the hopeless conformity which plagues us, as to ignore the independent initiative of a General-at-liberty like Hemingway, who came so close to taking Paris in the last war with only a few hundred men.
Again, Hemingway might be inclined to speak simply, and so far as politics goes, freshly, and the energy this would arouse in the minds of the electorate, benumbed at present by the turgid Latinisms of the Kefauvers, the Stevensons, and the Eisenhowers, is something one should not underestimate, for almost never has the electorate been given the opportunity to have their minds stimulated.
Finally, Hemingway’s lack of a previous political life is an asset, I would argue, rather than a vice. Politics has become static in America, and Americans have always distrusted politicians. (Which distrust indeed accounts for a great deal of Eisenhower’s original appeal.) The glimmer of hope on all our murky horizons is that civilization may be coming to the point where we will return to voting for individual men (or individual women) rather than for political ideas, those political ideas which eventually are cemented into the social network of life as a betrayal of the individual desires which gave birth to them—for society, I will argue, on the day I get the wit, is the assassin of us all.
The above is for people who like a point-by-point discussion. What it comes down to by rebel rule-of-Hip is that Hemingway is probably a good bit more human than Eisenhower or the others, and so there might be a touch more color in our Roman Empire. More than that is unfair to expect of any President.
Now, for those who believe that a nominating speech must have a little warmth, and even—I tighten my stomach for this—a little sentimentality, I suppose I ought to go on to say that Hemingway is one of the few people in our national life who has tried to live with a certain passion for capturing what he desired, and I believe he indeed succeeded in earning a degree of the self-respect for which he has always searched, and yet at the same time he was able, with what writing pains only another serious writer (good or not) can know, to write his novels as well; and so no matter what his faults of character, and they must be many, I have the feeling that he probably has achieved a considerable part of his dream—which was to be more man than most—and this country could stand a man for President, since for all too many years our lives have been guided by men who were essentially women, which indeed is good for neither men nor women.
So, to me, Ernest Hemingway looks like the best practical possibility in sight, because with all his sad and silly vanities, and some of his intellectual cowardices, I suspect that he’s still more real than most, you know?
P. S. Since my endorsement can only cause Hemingway various small harms, I promise to any Democratic Party leader who hears of this, and is wise enough to see the political sex appeal of drafting Ernest Hemingway, that I will devote my political time to attacking old Hemingway for whatever small number of voters I will influence by reverse English to vote for him. You see, friends and constituents of this paper, one advantage of being a village villain is that one is always certain of influencing events by arguing the opposite of what one really wants.