Masculinity and Modernization in Democratic Party Politics during the 1950s

Abstract

This chapter addresses the impact on Democrats of a dominant postwar political framework that demanded a certain ideal of robust manhood in response to international and domestic circumstances. This rediscovered emphasis on toughness had its roots in the upheaval of World War II and the rise of totalitarian ideologies, leading liberal Democrats to revamp the entire way they viewed the world in the early Cold War years. During the same period France was led by a series of seemingly weak, unstable Fourth Republic coalition governments. This fed American perceptions of French decadence and irrationality to the point that they grew into fears that France was undermining Washington’s efforts to win the Cold War. Liberal Democrats were on the defensive, attacked for their privilege and softness by McCarthyites and right-wing conservatives. McCarthyism had strong lingering effects on Democrats into the 1960s, prompting party leaders to adopt an exaggeratedly tough approach just as Kennedy was beginning to make his mark in American politics. Kennedy had already concluded that France was an obstacle to American defense of the “free world,” while many of his fellow Democrats concluded that offering strong public support for any French position in international affairs was political suicide.