Almost six million people are unemployed, with all sorts of public work that needs to be done. Meanwhile, the steel industry operates at little more than fifty per cent of capacity, and the automobile industry turns out products that drink gasoline and are designed to become obsolete a year after manufacture.

Clearly, the system is out of joint, and neither Mr. Nixon's statistics nor Life's bright photographs can prove otherwise. Eight years of Eisenhower non-government have left an imposing backlog of business unfinished or never begun, and Mr. Nixon seeks to forestall any real action now with the shibboleth of "state and local initiative" and the bogeymen of "socialized medicine" and "Federal control of education." He points with pride to statistics showing Republican accomplishments in, for instance, school and hospital construction, but accomplishments are meaningless except in relation to needs, and the needs have not been met, despite Mr. Nixon's smug assurances to the contrary.

The Republicans say that they have costed out the Democratic platform to meet these great domestic needs, at an additional $16 billion in Federal expenditure--quite a feat for economists who cannot figure their own budget accurately and who, in order to give their fiscal 1960 budget an appearance of balance, had to postpone payment on certain items from June 30 to July 1 (the first day of a new fiscal year).

Economic Timidity

Still, it is clear that the proposals of the Democratic platform will cost money. But it is equally clear that the money is better spent here than on Detroit's planned obsolescences, and that the nation has the resources to pay for the housing, schools and hospitals it needs, be it from economic growth, the closing of tax loop-holes, or higher taxes. After all, as Lyndon Johnson has said, perhaps it is the Republicans who are down-grading America in preaching economic timidity, in saying that necessary programs will "spend the country into bankruptcy."

Senator Kennedy and the Democratic Party are committed to programs that will, in his words, "get America moving again," enable the public sector of the economy to catch up to the population it is intended to serve, and give millions of underprivileged Americans the material ability to enjoy a free society. They will make the Presidency what it should be--a seat of moral leadership in the battle for civil rights. The Democrats promise a systematic attack on the country's needs, the Republicans only the minimum that will appease the dogs when the barking gets too loud.

Nixon's road of economic timidity means the nation's turning its back on the great contradictions of unemployment, slums, depressed areas and inadequate schools--in the face of unprecedented consumer prosperity.

Although Mr. Nixon and the Eisenhower administration have done their best to hide the fact, this is a time of great danger and great need. The country needs responsible government willing to tell it the truth; it must choose the road of courage, not the road of timidity and self-indulgence. The choice on Tuesday is a vital one, and the choice of Senator Kennedy is the right one. It is a question not only of survival in the contest with the Soviets abroad, but of survival at home as a free society; not of prestige, but of self-respect.