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<text id=93HT1015> <title> 52 Election: Republicans:The Glory of Making Sense </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1952 Election </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> July 21, 1952 THE NATION The Glory of Making Sense </hdr> <body> It was a great convention--one of the greatest in U.S. history--and great in a particular way. Not in the level of its oratory, which can be appraised by noting that its best speech was made by Elder Statesman Herbert Hoover. Nor in its platform, which will never be mistaken for resonant prose. Nor in unity. The 1952 Republican Convention was great in that it fulfilled one of the highest duties of a party (or a man): to make sense. The convention made political, moral and dramatic sense. Drama & Debate. This generation of Americans tends to view politics as a sordid and (worse) senseless contest <qt> <l>...on a darkling plain,</l> <l>Swept with confused alarms of struggle</l> <l>and a flight,</l> <l>Where ignorant armies clash by night.</l> </qt> To the extent that this view of politics prevails, democracy lacks respect and, by that lack, health. At Chicago, a new medium, TV, met a situation that has been recently missing from U.S. politics. Television and the U.S. press reported a struggle whose terms could be understood at every level, from the most abstract principle of popular government down to the concrete situation in the Louisiana district where, on a night last April, John Jackson's followers held a rump meeting under a live oak tree. Schoolboys can be found in the U.S. today who understand the practical politics of the Taft-Ike fight in Louisiana, and how that relates to "governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The convention opened with that valuable rarity in contemporary American political life--a tense but sense-making debate where most of the speakers stayed reasonably close to the point. It moved on to the never irrelevant detail of the credentials-committee argument and rose to a climax with the Wednesday-night vote on Georgia. The vote by which Eisenhower was nominated on Friday confirmed the Wednesday-night vote. It tied the moral issue of the contested delegates back into the overriding political issue: Ike was the better man to nominate because Ike was more likely to win. Principle or Nostalgia? This political issue runs deeper than expediency. The New Deal revolution can be halted, modified or turned into better channels. But it cannot be rolled back to 1932 or 1928. To the end of the Chicago fight there were 500 delegates who seemed untouched by this argument, who stoutly refused to trade out their viewpoint. At a time when circumstances call urgently to the Republican Party to make a winning fight, this firm stand of 500 seemed a mixture of nostalgia and conviction. The majority held that only Eisenhower's kind of fight--an approach by the Republican Party to the people--could be won. Only be thwarting the will of the people in the delegate contests could Ike's bid for the nomination have been stopped. The plot and subplot meshed in the pre-convention first act, and the convention played out both without missing a line. At the final curtain, the delegates might have marred the lesson by flubbing the vice-presidential nomination with a futile compromise to "bind up the wounds." They did not flub it, Richard Nixon, progressive fighter against Communism and corruption, fits the logic of the Monday vote, the Wednesday vote, the nominating ballot--and the struggle for victory on Nov. 4. That struggle will be tough. The Republican Party is still the minority party and Ike is no magician--only a man who made sense, nominated by a convention that knew what time it was. Chairman Joe Martin summed it up in the convention's final session. He looked up at empty seats in the galleries. "Open the doors," he said, "and let the people in." A Strategist's Battle Before the battle started at Chicago, its shape was clear, though the result was in doubt. On the main strategic decisions, both sides had passed their points of no return. Cabot Lodge, Ike's campaign manager, made many a pre- convention tactical error, but on his basic analysis of the contending forces and on top strategy, he was dead right. Taft was "Mr. Republican," his following was zealous, experienced and in control of the party machinery. Taft's best chance was to impress wavering delegates with the idea that he could not be stopped at the convention. On Dwight Eisenhower's side was the arithmetic of November election prospects; any Republican who faced the figures could see that Ike had a better chance to win in November. Arithmetic, however, kindles no flames. The Ike forces lacked an exciting issue until Taft handed them one: the grab of Southern delegations. Lodge recognized it, jumped on it instantly, and kept jumping. The Taftmen had committed themselves, and kept grabbing. When, five days before the convention opened, their national committee took the Georgia delegation, the Taft campaign reached its high-water mark. That was Gettysburg. The same day, 23 Republican governors, meeting in Houston, signed a statement taking the Eisenhower side on the contests and warning that the nominee must have "clean hands." Specifically, the governors were against letting contested delegates vote on other contested delegates, a point that could be seen as critical five weeks before the convention opened. The first floor vote came on this question. When the Taft forces lost that, they lost initiative and momentum and never regained it. That they held together to the last was evidence of the strong emotional charge in the Taft campaign; it was not due to brilliant organization or leadership. In addition to the electoral arithmetic and the moral issue, the Ike forces wound up with superior organization and generalship, both at the strategic and the tactical level. The Men Who Did It The man who masterminded the Eisenhower convention tactics last week never got to the convention hall. Herbert Brownell Jr., a quiet, precise Manhattan lawyer who is an old hand at political campaigns (Republican national chairman in 1944-46, Dewey-Warren campaign manager in 1948), pulled his strings from an office in the Conrad Hilton Hotel. Brownell picked Ike's floor manager, New Hampshire's Governor Snerman Adams. Brownell chose Ike spokesmen on key committees and in floor fights. Brownell kept the master list of delegates, and spoke with the most authoritative voice on what arguments should be presented by whom to which delegates. Up the Stairs. Once a day Brownell went to see Ike, usually ate with him. So that the press would not herald his daily visit, he went from his office on the eleventh floor of the Conrad Hilton Hotel to another Ikeman's room on the fourth floor of the Blackstone Hotel. Then he would slip up the stairs to the Eisenhower quarters on the fifth floor. Another Ikeman who played a key role got to the convention just once--the day Ike was nominated. He is Charles Wesley Roberts, a tall, relaxed Kansan, a former country editor turned publicity man. It was Wes Roberts who engineered one of the best Ike maneuvers: the statement from the Republican governors taking Ike's side in the contested-delegates fight. Roberts knew that the politically sensitive governors were strong for Ike. In late May he telephoned ten governors he was sure of, got them to sign a joint statement for Eisenhower. "More Sensitive." In the two weeks before the governors' Conference in Houston, Roberts was on the phone again, talking to 15 governors, suggesting that some kind of joint statement be issued. By the time they got to Houston, 18 governors were ready to go. Tom Dewey at first opposed the plan, fearing unfavorable publicity if some governors talked him out of that fear. Nebraska's Val Peterson explained why the governors set to work with such a will: "The governors are more sensitive (than national committeemen) to the political situation, and they certainly do want to win." One excellent play was hatched in the mind of a rising Republican who was not on the Ike GHQ team. California's Senator Knowland, publicly committed to Governor Warren and no other candidate, heard Brownell's plan for the Monday fight on the "fair play" amendment and proposed a change. Brownell wanted to bar all contested delegates from voting on other contests. Knowland suggested barring only those delegates whose seats were contested by at least 20% of the national committee. This would take care of the Taft argument that the "fair play" amendment would encourage future contests and might make it impossible to hold a convention. Brownell instantly accepted Knowland's change, but amended it to 33 1/2%. Last week, as the exodus from Chicago began, Herbert Brownell didn't seem to be taking much credit for what happened. Said he: "Well, they (the Taft forces) had it in their fingers and threw it away." The Men Who Didn't If the Taft tacticians had been brilliant at Chicago, they might have wormed their way out of the corner in which they had been placed by their own pre-convention strategy and the Brownell-Lodge counter-strategy. The Taft tacticians were anything but brilliant. Wrong Time & Issue. Before the convention was two hours old, the Taft managers let themselves be maneuvered into the position of testing their strength at the wrong time and on the wrong issue. They were not sure whether they had the votes to win that first test. They did not even carry out their agreed plan. When the Eisenhower forces were about to offer their resolution to prevent contested delegates from voting on other contests, a Taft strategist suggested that they could raise a point of order because the motion included seven Louisiana delegates, whose cases had been settled by the state committee. In a hasty conference, the Taftmen decided to raise the point, and to let Guy Gabrielson, then presiding, uphold it. Then, if the Ikemen wanted to seat their seven from Louisiana, they would have to appeal from the ruling of the chairman. Any assembly is reluctant to overrule "the chair." Ikemen would have had a much harder time arguing against the chair than for what they deemed their rights. Said Taft's able Floor Manager Tom Coleman: "We would have won that vote." The Taftmen's signals jammed. When Coleman got back to the floor, Ohio's Senator John Bricker had moved to adopt the 1948 rules, and the Eisenhower forces had offered a substitute motion--the no-celebrated Langlie amendment (providing that delegations contested by more than 33 1/3% of the national committee might not vote on other contests). Who told Bricker to make his motion? Chairman Gabrielson, who at that point was apparently thinking about routine, not about Taft tactics. Things were happening so fast that Coleman had to pick the nearest Taftman available to raise the point of order. That was Ohio's paunchy Representative Clarence Brown, who had badly managed Taft's 1948 floor fight. A Taft Gasp. On his own, Brown then decided to change the strategy. He offered a motion to amend the Eisenhower forces' amendment. Brown later said that he got the impression that Gabrielson, worried about criticism, might overrule a point of order. If Gabrielson sustained Brown's point, the convention might overrule the chair, and old Politico Brown didn't want that to happen to a friend. Aside from the fumbling execution, the original decision to let the Langlie amendment pass and instead to fight for the Louisiana seven was fantastic. The Langlie amendment was a serious blow to Taft's numerical strength, and might have been worth the risk of a roll call. But in no sense were the votes of seven delegates on one issue worth such a risk. When Televiewer Bob Taft saw 1948's Brown trundling up to the rostrum to take over, he gasped. Taftmen in the convention hall were confused by Bricker's motion and Brown's switched parliamentary maneuver. Thereafter occurred the dramatic two-hour debate on the merits of the whole rule proposal; the chair put Brown's amendment to a vote. The Taft side lost it by a thumping 110-vote margin. From there on, the Taftmen's floor tactics improved little. They fought the Georgia case, although the Monday vote should have convinced them they had little chance of winning it. They gave up on Louisiana after they had passed the point where the convention would give them any credit for the concession. At that point, the victory-scouting Ike forces would not conceivably have compromised, yet Clarence Brown, looking back on the convention, blames it all on Cabot Lodge's insatiable greed for delegates. "He wanted to take it all," Brown mutters, "he wanted to take it all." Most unhappy of the Taft leaders is Paul Walter, a Cleveland lawyer and an able organizer, who had developed an amazing communications network among pro-Taft delegates. Some of these were hidden in predominantly pro-Ike delegations, such as New York. Walter claimed that he had 644 votes for Taft--but these could only be delivered on an actual nominating ballot, and only if Taft looked like the winner on that ballot. Walter's hidden delegates were of no use on the two early ballots, and these ballots convinced the hidden delegates that Taft was not the inevitable winner. A Candidate's Education Until he came to Chicago, Ike Eisenhower had never been within buttonholing distance of a national political convention. But he caught the fever almost from the moment he forted up in his suite at the Blackstone Hotel on Saturday before the big show began. And like anyone else at his first convention, Ike discovered that some mighty odd characters are swept along by the human tides that flow noisily in & out of political headquarters. Crackpots hustled in by the dozens to give him the benefit of grandiose schemes for victory. One announced that he was the man solely responsible for the victory of Calvin Coolidge--given proper power, he wanted to do the trick for Ike, too. But most of his ilk were politely turned away by pretty, blonde Sally Pillsbury of the famed flour family, a volunteer worker who toiled at the Eisenhower reception desk. A scourge of drunks arrived too, and were yanked out to fresh air by Chicago policemen. Ike rose each day at 6, and usually made a point of breakfasting with a state delegation. "I am not important," he told a group from Nebraska. "It is the basic belief that is important." To half a hundred Missouri delegates and alternates he used brisker language. "As long as we are in this thing," he said with a grin, "let's stick in it together and throw the stove lid at anything that gets in our way!" "I don't," he told men & women from Oklahoma, "make promises that a bottle of ointment will cure you of everything from poverty to flat feet." At times he came close to being nonplused. One of three Alaskan delegates--a small, weatherbeaten man named Gerrit Snider--strode up to him, clutching a bundle wrapped in newspapers. "Would you appoint a native Alaskan, a real sourdough governor of Alaska?" the visitor demanded. Startled, Ike paused a moment, and then said yes. Snider immediately unwrapped the parcel and yanked out a two-skin sable choker. "What," Ike gulped, "is this--mink?" It was sable, Snider announced. He added proudly that he had trapped it himself. "Mamie will love this," the general said, accepting the gift, "but remember now, this is no political deal." Life with Ike In the years since her husband became a famous man, Mrs. Mamie Eisenhower had steadfastly refused to hold a formal press conference. Last week she finally agreed to one. The affair turned out to be interesting, but not quite what the reporters had anticipated: Mamie spent almost all of her 35 minutes talking about Ike, not about Mamie. "I'm not a very interesting person to write about," she said. "I never seem to find time hanging heavily on my hands, but I haven't any special talents or any hobbies. Now, take Ike--fishing, golf, cooking--and then all of a sudden he started this painting and he's good at everything." Her husband's painting career began, she confided, at Fort Myer, Va. (when he was on duty at the nearby Pentagon after the war). He just called for "a rag, thumb tacks and a board." The rag turned out to be a dish cloth on which he painted an oil portrait of Mamie. "I just don't know the word for it," she said. "He's not very successful with me," she said, "and he's sort of given me up." Landscapes, she thought, suit his talents better. But for all that, the original painting had not gone into the trash can; it was jealously claimed and is now treasured by New York Artist Thomas Stephens. "Mr. Churchill's good (at painting)," Mamie added, "but he's had instruction. Ike hasn't and he's really wonderful." "Ike's a much better cook than I am," she went on. "I'm not very good in the kitchen. He has a steak thing. He broils the steak over charcoal with a light butter sauce seasoned with garlic powder--everything he does has garlic. The steaks get burned-looking and you wonder if they'll be any good. They are." Did she think the general would be elected? "Certainly!" Would she campaign with him? "I hope to go every place that my husband goes." Would she make any speeches? "No, I'm not planning to." She laughed and added, "You know that word `no.' You can't ever be that final. I might be doing it yet." How was the general feeling? "Oh, Ike's as fresh as a daisy." And Mamie? "And me--?" she said. "Well, I'm all right." The Ancient Warrior At the first notes of California, Here I Come, the big, restless evening-session crowds came to their feet on the floor and in the galleries. Politicos on the platform turned, beaming and clapping. And there was former President Herbert Hoover, walking with an old man's slow and careful step. About him burst a deafening roar of applause. It went on & on. Night Among Friends. The old gentleman smiled a cautious smile, lifted a hand in greeting, and stood holding himself stiffly erect, almost as if overwhelmed by the sound. Herbert Hoover was 77. Time had whitened his hair, turned his cheeks a flaming pink, and softened the lines of his face. For 20 years he had suffered, with dignity and without complaint, an auto da fe of criticism such as few men, even in public life, have ever endured. But this was his night among friends, his night for the homage due an ancient warrior. The uproar lasted for 13 long minutes. "That," he said finally, and in heartfelt tones, "was some welcome... "But," he went on in his dry and unemotional voice, "from the inexorable course of nature, this is likely to be the last time that I shall attend your convention." A long-drawn "No-o-o" burst from the crowd. But a subtle change came over the hall. The audience reacted less like a crowd listening to a political speech than a big family affectionately assembled to hear a patriarch warn them, as old men will, about the pitfalls of a world they thought they knew better than he. His text: that the "words and spirit (of the Constitution) have been distorted and violated" during 20 years of Democratic administrations, and that the freedom of men--an issue "which transcends all transitory questions of national life"--stands at stake in 1952. He criticized the Administration for "tax and tax" at home and "spend and spend" abroad. He made no bones over his conviction that American efforts at arming Western Europe might result in "the bankruptcy which is Stalin's greatest hope." Although this is markedly different from General Eisenhower's view of Western Europe, even Ike' delegates on the floor joined in the applause. Rattlesnake Strategy. "I do not propose," Hoover went on, "that we retreat into our shell like a turtle." Then his old gift for the precisely wrong word asserted itself: "I do propose the deadly reprisal strategy of a rattlesnake." To do this "within our economic capacities," he asked for an end of great U.S. ground armies. "The sure defense of London, New York and Paris is the fear of counterattack on Moscow from the air." He was interrupted 71 times by applause, yells and cheers. When he finished his speech--"I pray (to God) to strengthen your hands and to give you courage"--a second great ovation burst out in the auditorium. Crowds in the gallery behind the speaker's stand whistled and shouted until he turned toward them. The ovation was in marked contrast to the reception of MacArthur's speech of the night before, which somehow failed to stir the convention. When National Chairman Guy Gabrielson approached Hoover, amid the clamor, to present him with a gold medal of appreciation, tears started in the old man's eyes. Finally the sound died down, the convention went on. Mr. Hoover walked slowly to the rear of the platform, his medal pinned on his coat, and eased himself down on a chair with the air of a man whose work is finally done. The Politic Generalities Colorado's Senator Eugene Millikin stood at the rostrum reading the 1952 Republican platform. A buzz of conversation rose from the convention floor, and the aisles were filled with milling delegates. Permanent Chairman Joe Martin, accustomed to a high degree of buzz-buzz while platforms are being read, decided that this was too much. He whacked down his big wooden gavel and shouted: "The convention will please come to order. this is an important document...The delegates should at least know what they're going to vote on in a few minutes." Through the Shoals. The delegates' inattention was not necessarily evidence that they did not care what was in the platform. They knew that the resolutions committee had, as usual, compromised, steered through the shoals and employed politic generalities. Before the platform got to the floor, the drafters had planed off rough spots which might have caused serious fights on three planks: foreign policy, national defense and civil rights. Now there was nothing to argue about. The chief planer of the foreign-policy plank was John Foster Dulles, who had begun the task more than two months ago. He talked foreign policy with Dwight Eisenhower in France last May, and returned to the U.S. ready to come out for Ike. But about that time, Bob Taft called to say that he had read Dulles' foreign-policy views in LIFE and generally agreed with them. Dulles and the Eisenhower forces decided that he should stay publicly neutral to work out a foreign-policy plank that would avoid a party split on that issue. Said Dulles, just before the nomination: "The Eisenhower people told me they felt this was more important than my coming out publicly for their man." When both Taft and Ike agreed that he should draft the plank, Dulles went to work. A week before the convention began, he arrived in Chicago with a 1,000-word document. Last week, after Dulles had shuttled between the opposing camps, he had a plank which both sides approved with comparatively minor reservations. Millikin's resolutions committee edited it (mostly to put in such barbs as "betrayed," "flouted" and "tragic blunders" when referring to the Truman Administration's foreign policy). Foreign Policy. In its final form, the plank charged that Democratic administrations had lost the peace, traded away victory at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, retreated before Russian encroachment in Europe, betrayed China to Communism and bungled into the Korean War. Looking forward to a positive Republican policy, the plank pledged: "We shall encourage and aid the development of collective security forces there (in Western Europe) as elsewhere, so as to end the Soviet power to intimidate directly or by satellites...In the balanced consideration of our problems, we shall end neglect of the Far East, which Stalin has long identified as the road to victory over the West...We shall support the United Nations...We shall not try to buy good will. We shall earn it by sound, constructive, self- respecting policies and actions." John Foster Dulles had produced a realistic, knowing, crusading plank. Although the national-defense plank was not in his realm, Dulles had a hand in it, too. When he learned that the original draft leaned toward air-power-only policy, which Ike opposed, he suggested that it be rewritten. Result: a plank which called for "the quickest possible development of...completely adequate air power and the simultaneous readiness of coordinated air, land and sea forces..." Civil Rights. While Elder Statesman Dulles was steering the foreign-policy course, one of the convention's youngest and prettiest delegates was the central figure in a struggle over civil rights. Mrs. Mildred Younger, a 31-year-old Los Angeles housewife, presided over the civilrights subcommittee with an intelligent, calm hand, asked witnesses piercing questions which showed that her political experience extended far beyond the chicken-patty circuit of most women politicians. The daughter of a California lobbyist for pubic-school teachers and the wife of a lawyer, she was no stranger to proceedings of this kind. Said she: "I was two years old the first time I went on the floor of the legislature at Sacramento." The subcommittee was bitterly divided. Mrs. Younger and two other members wanted to call for a federal agency (she avoided the explosive initials FEPC) to push civil rights. The two other members were violently opposed. As a result, Millikin's full committee got majority and minority reports, and came out with a plank that each side could construe as it wished: "We believe that it is the primary responsibility of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions...However, we believe that the Federal Government should take supplemental action within its constitutional jurisdiction to oppose discrimination against race, religion or national origin." The Orange Crate. On other issues, the platform said about what it could be expected to. It attacked the Administration's "appeasement of Communism at home and abroad," and pledged an overhauling of U.S. loyalty and security programs. It condemned the "wanton extravagance" in Washington, and promised tax cuts. After pointing out that "fraud, bribery, graft, favoritism and influence-peddling" had come to light in the Truman Administration, it vowed to "oust the crooks and grafters." When Senator Millikin had finished reading the 6,000-word platform, the convention adopted it by voice vote, without a murmur of dissent. It was a workman-like piece of fast political carpentry--and, except for the foreign-policy plank, about as inspiring as an orange crate. Only in one field had the framers of the document agreed to a simple proposition, stated clearly, without fear or favor. "We pledge," said the plank, "a more efficient and frequent mail-delivery service." "Keep It Clean" Daunted by the outraged uproar which followed their decision to ban TV from national committee hearings, Taftmen did not make the same mistake again. When members of the credentials committee assembled in the rococo Gold Room of Chicago's Congress Hotel on the second day of the convention, they were agreed to work under the eye of the television camera. Through that eye during the next two days millions of Americans saw political infighting in its most instructive form, a moral issue interwoven with highly technical politics. "The Supreme Court." The first important case history presented was the Georgia delegates contest. Taft members of the credentials committee based their case almost entirely on the decision of a Democratic judge in Georgia. Chief Eisenhower spokesman on the committee was the state of Washington's lanky young (32) Donald Eastvold, a former state senator who is his party's candidate for attorney general. Eastvold asserted that the convention was its own supreme court in party matters, and both the 1944 and 1948 Republican Conventions had recognized Georgia delegations led by W. Roscoe Tucker, who now headed the pro-Eisenhower group. Nevertheless, the Taftmen, by a vote of 30 to 21, recommended that the pro-Taft faction be seated at the convention. Evidence & Audience. The fight put up in the committee by Eastvold and his colleagues was a warning to the Taftmen of what was to come on the convention floor. On the next case--Louisiana's 13 delegates--the Eisenhower group put up another strong argument. Backed up by an impressive array of charts and witnesses, John Minor Wisdom, chief of the pro-Eisenhower delegation from Louisiana, asserted that John Jackson, head of the Taft delegation, had set up rump meetings and then rigged the state credentials committee so that it was worse than a kangaroo court. Cried Wisdom: "A decent, respectable kangaroo wouldn't be caught dead in such meetings." Wisdom ended his testimony at 3:45 a.m. When the committee convened again after breakfast, several normally pro-Taft members, doubtless mindful of the television audience, seemed ready to vote with Ikemen on the Louisiana issue. Moving swiftly to convert a rout into a display of generosity, Ohio's ponderous Clarence Brown, leader of the committee's Taft forces, offered to do some trading. He called the leader of the Eisenhower forces, Massachusetts Congressman John Heselton, into a nearby kitchen. Huddling under a wall sign which read "Keep It Clean," Brown offered a two-part deal: 1) the Taftmen would vote in favor of Ike's Louisiana delegation if 2) the Ikemen would accept Senator Taft's 22-16 split of the Texas delegation. "There will be no deal," replied Heselton. A few minutes later the credentials committee voted unanimously to seat the Ike delegation from Louisiana. The Taftmen then threw their creaking steamroller into high for the last time. By a vote of 27 to 24, the committee recommended seating of a Texas delegation split 22 for Taft, 16 for Ike. "Down the Road." That evening the credentials committee's recommendations were submitted to the full convention for final approval. As soon as Oklahoma's Ross Rizley moved acceptance of the committee's ruling in favor of the pro-Taft group in Georgia, Ikeman Eastvold was on his feet with a counter-resolution proposing seating of the pro-Eisenhower delegates. Again attacking the Taftmen's argument about the Georgia judge, Eastvold said that there is a saying among lawyers: "Beware a young man with a book." Then he held up a law book and cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that the party convention should make the final decision in delegate contests. Eastvold's chief opponent was Illinois' oleaginous Senator Everett Dirksen. His pitch: that the members of the convention did not know enough about the Georgia issue to pass on it and therefore should follow the committee majority. This familiar argument overlooked the fact that the delegates could hardly admit that they did not understand a case which millions of Americans understood through the press and TV. Then Dirksen worked smoothly into a bitter diversionary attack on "my good friends from the Eastern seaboard." Said he: "When my friend Tom Dewey was a candidate, I tried to be one of his best campaigners." His voice rose accusingly: "We followed you before and you took us down the road to defeat." Then, shaking his finger at the New York delegation, where Tom Dewey sat smiling fixedly. Dirksen dropped his voice in a final thrust. "And don't do this to us again," he said. A loud and ugly boo filled the hall-thousands of Taftites booing Dewey. Many another delegate reacted quietly, as the subsequent vote showed, against Dirksen's attempt to hide an issue under a sensational personal attack. Tension & the Towel. When the roll call began, Pennsylvania's Governor John Fine burst on to the speaker's platform almost incoherent with rage. Quivering from head to foot, Fine accused Temporary Chairman Hallanan of breaking an agreement to grant a 45-minute recess in which state delegations could caucus before the vote was taken. When Hallanan reminded him that the convention had just voted down a motion to recess, Fine bounced out of the hall followed by his delegation. By the time Pennsylvania's vote was requested, however, Fine was back and again trying to get his protest on record. Ruling the governor out of order, Hallanan asked if Pennsylvania wished to pass its vote. "Mr. Chairman," shouted Fine passionately, "Pennsylvania will never pass." One by one the pivotal states--California, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania--cast a heavy majority of their votes for the Eastvold motion. When the roll call was complete there were 607 votes in favor of seating the Eisenhower delegation, 531 against. The vote had another effect: just before it was concluded, a little man from Puerto Rico arose and demanded the now famous roll call of the three island delegates. (Judge Marcelino Romany, a solemn, bald, big-nosed little (5 ft. 1 in.) man who had no intention at all of being funny, Romany is known at home as a stern judge and a man of enormous dignity and great political courage. Until last week he was chiefly famous for throwing governor Rexford Guy Tugwell's cabinet in jail for contempt during a court action in 1944.) The comical interchange which followed swept away the acrimony and strain of the long debate. Before another humiliating roll-call defeat could be inflicted on them, Taftmen threw in the towel, proposed that the convention unanimously seat the Eisenhower Texas delegation. With that vote, all hope of regaining the offensive went out of the Taft forces, although they still held to gather with a tenacity and defensive loyalty almost unparalleled in beaten groups at U.S. national conventions. The Nominating Ballot At 9:30 a.m., some 500 Taft delegates met in the Hilton Hotel ballroom for pre-ballot pep rally. Cried Taft lieutenant Paul Walter: "Are we going to stand firm?" Shouted the crowd: "Yes!" Everett Dirksen was on hand, too. "We are gathered here together to hold up each other's hands," said he, recalling how Moses needed two men to hold up his hands so that the Israelites could go on winning. "All hands to the wheel, Bob!" cried Dirksen, in the mixed metaphor of the year. "I am in your corner to the last ditch." Bob himself told the delegates that he had been sitting up most of the night figuring, and he could not see how Eisenhower could get more than 560 votes on the first ballot. Said he: "They're shooting the works for a first-ballot nomination, and if they don't get it, Eisenhower is through." Then the delegates climbed into their buses and drove to the convention hall. The roll-call began. One by one, the voices spoke for the states of the Union: flat Midwestern twangs and Southern sing-songs, quiet voices and hoarsely tense voice, defiant voices and triumphant voices, and voices that tried to cram a message into the simple business of voting. ("I vote for Eisenhower, the winner." "I proudly vote for Bob Taft." "Louisiana casts 13 hard-earned votes for Eisenhower.") Politicians and reporters tensely compared the vote with the roll call that had been taken two days before on the question of seating Georgia. Taft forces hoped that the delegates who then voted on the Eisenhower side would not necessarily do so now. Ike was sure to get 68 new votes as a result of his convention victories in the Georgia, Louisiana and Texas contests. But these would be more than balanced by 68 Warren votes and 26 Stassen votes, which had been with him on the contests, and were now expected to return to their favorite sons. As the roll was called, Ike' gains were minute. He picked up one vote each in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Maryland and Massachusetts, and three votes in Michigan. Meanwhile, Taft picked up one vote each in Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky. Then came Minnesota: Ike 9. Stassen 19. That was the break. Behind this vote was a dramatic story. Early that morning, the Minnesota delegation had met in caucus with Harold Stassen, favorite-son candidate to whom 24 of its 28 members were pledged. The delegation's loyalties, going back to the days before 1948 when Stassen was still a Minnesota hero had become strained. There was strong sentiment for Eisenhower, who had rolled up an impressive write-in vote of 106,946 in the Minnesota primary. It was clear to most delegates that Stassen had no chance for the nomination, but Stassen was sharply disappointed about what he considered defections. When one delegate told Stassen not to rely on him in a second ballot, Stassen said: "Then I don't want you on the first." In the morning caucus, sentimental loyalties to Stassen fought with political realities. Governor Elmer Anderson, Senator Edward Thye and Mrs. F. Peavey Heffelfinger, national committeewoman, asked Stassen to release them so that they could vote for Eisenhower. With tears in his eyes he agreed. Three more delegates asked to be released unconditionally, and again he reluctantly agreed, and added that the whole delegation could switch to Ike if he had more than 580 votes at the end of the first roll call. One of these (Kenneth Peterson, Republican state chairman) decided at the last minute to stick with Stassen after all. But the nine votes for Ike foreshadowed what Minnesota would do at the end of the roll call. Ike picked up one more vote each from New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Washington and Alaska, two votes each in North Carolina, Virginia and Wyoming, three votes in Nevada. This slow seepage of votes swelled Ike's total, but it was apparent before the end of the roll call that he would be short of 604. When it ended, Ike had 595 votes, nine short of the nomination, Taft had 500, Warren 81, Stassen 20, MacArthur 10. Watching the session on his TV set with his chief lieutenants, Robert Taft broke the grim silence in the hotel room and said quietly: "There will be some shifts." The Big Switch. Minnesota's Walter Judd had gone up to the rostrum, tugged Chairman Martin's sleeve and asked him to recognize Minnesota as soon as the roll call was finished. Martin nodded. When the roll call was over, Newell Weed, an alternate, began to wave the Minnesota standard. There was a tremendous cheer from people who knew what was coming. "Here we go," Tom Dewey was heard to say. Pennsylvania's Governor Fine was also trying to be recognized, crying to Chairman Martin: "Joe, look down here, hey Joe, Joe, look here!" But Minnesota got the floor first, and Senator Thye spoke into his delegation's floor microphone: "Mr. Chairman, Minnesota wishes to change its vote to Eisenhower." For half an hour, the convention saw the familiar spectacle of delegates begging for a chance to abandon their former champion and join the winner. State chairmen jumped up & down like little boys who were out trying to catch the teacher's eye. Switch after switch was announced in the stampede. Finally, Joe Martin announced the result: Eisenhower 845, Taft 280, Warren 77, MacArthur 4. On the floor, jubilant Cabot Lodge, Ike's campaign manager, was being mobbed by photographers. Some Taft delegates still were stunned. Ohio's handsome John Bricker, white-haired and white- suited, appeared on the rostrum, sad but scarcely surprised. He had known that morning that Taft was, in all likelihood, beaten, and he had prepared himself for the painful duty that awaited him--the speech ending convention bitterness and calling for unity. In a low voice, in chill contrast to the thumping oratory of previous days, Bricker announced: "Senator Taft has communicated with me...He and General Eisenhower have already met...Senator Taft has pledged his unlimited and active support to elect Dwight D. Eisenhower..." Bricker asked the convention to make Ike's nomination unanimous. The Meeting Dwight Eisenhower watched the balloting on his TV set in his suite at the Blackstone Hotel. He was surrounded by advisers--his four brothers, Paul Hoffman, Senator Frank Carison, Herbert Brownell. Ike was confident of victory, but he nervously fingered two good-luck coins (a Boy Scout coin and a Salvation Army piece). When the Rhode Island vote was announced (six for Eisenhower, one for Taft, one Warren), he asked sharply: "Did we expect more there?" When Pennsylvania's vote was about to be announced, everyone in the room grew tense, relaxed again when governor Fine said: "Fifty-three for Eisenhower, 15 for Taft, two for MacArthur." by the end of the roll call, it was evident that he was in, and when Minnesota switched to Ike, giving him a majority, cheers burst out of the suite. Tears came to Eisenhower's eyes. He leaped to his feet, shook hands with Brownell and Carison. Brownell and his friend Thomas Stephens, another Ike strategist, danced around the room. Eisenhower brothers were embracing all over the place, Ike said: "I want to see Mamie," went into her room (she was in bed with neuralgia). From her bedside phone, without waiting for advice from the experts, Eisenhower quickly called Taft headquarters: he wanted to drop by for a visit. Then Ike asked for a Scotch & water. "I want to have my one & only drink with my friends. I think I deserve one." Across Balbo Avenue in his headquarters at the Conrad Hilton, Taft was also watching the ballot on TV. (Named in honor of Mussolini's Italo Balbo, who set Chicago on its ear in 1933 when he led two dozen seaplanes in a 6,100-mile, 16-day flight from Orbetello, Italy via Amsterdam and Iceland to Chicago, where they landed in perfect formation on Lake Michigan.) In defeat, the man who had tried so long and hard to be President was calm and collected. But all over Taft headquarters, women workers were in tears. Then, out of the elevator into the crowded ninth-floor lobby stepped Ike Eisenhower. He was greeted by cheers and boos. A chant of "We want Taft!" went up. The incident acted on Ike like a slap; he brooded about it hours later. Eisenhower and Taft were alone for five minutes in Taft's suite, came out together to face the TV cameras. Said Taft with a forced smile: "I want to congratulate General Eisenhower on his nomination and say I will do everything possible to assist him in his campaign and in his administration when he is elected President." Said Ike, more ill at ease than Taft: "I came over here to pay a call of friendship on a very great American. His readiness to cooperate in the campaign and afterwards is absolutely essential to the success of the Republican Party." Then Ike went back across the street, battling his way through cheering crowds. Senator Taft, who is 62, announced he would not run again. "I'll be too old," he said. Then he prepared to go fishing. The Others In the column headed "others," no candidacy had any reality. California's Earl Warren got 81 votes, 70 from his own state, and no more were in sight. Before Minnesota made the big switch to Ike, Harold Stassen had 20. What Stassen thought he was doing as a candidate is still a mystery; the best explanation is that failure has gone to his head. Douglas asked his supporters to vote for Taft. But his "candidacy" had caused silly headlines, rumors and demonstrations right up to the balloting. He got the votes of only ten delegates, who had a firm grip on unreality. Wanted: Bright Young Man Eisenhower had some ideas about the sort of fellow he wanted for a running mate: a young, "forward-looking" man, and someone who would help him get along with Congress. Among others, he considered Senators Knowland and Nixon, Governors Warren, Sherman Adams (New Hampshire), Val Peterson (Nebraska), Dan Thornton (Colorado). Brother Milton Eisenhower plugged for Taft, although Eisenhower advisers thought that Taft 1) would be bad for the ticket, 2) would not accept anyway. Eisenhower left the final decision to a meeting of his advisers, presided over by Herbert Brownell, at the Hilton, on the afternoon of his nomination. The meeting quickly settled on California's Richard Nixon. No deal was involved. Nixon was a logical choice for a number of reasons: he is young (39), personable, a vigorous campaigner, vote-getter and money raiser who has inspired thousands of young businessmen in California to work for the Republican Party. He has an excellent record on two of the main G.O.P. campaign issues: Communism and corruption in government. Clear Aims In a yellow Lincoln convertible, at the head of a 17-car motorcade, Ike and Mamie drove to the convention hall through Chicago's grey and bedraggled warehouse and stockyards district. Ike had been ordered not to stand in his car, because the streets were bumpy, but when he spotted a small boy jumping up & down on the curb, trying to see him, the general stood up and waved. When the car bumped across some trolley tracks, Ike was almost thrown, but Mamie reached up and supported him. TV cameras stationed along the way, together with mobile camera units, showed Ike's progress to the amphitheater, followed him through the hall's portals and on to the rostrum. In the floodlighted group around the speakers' platform, an aisle opened and the crowd saw Presidential Nominee Dwight Eisenhower, square-shouldered, striding briskly. The scattered cheering of the crowd rose to a roar, and through it sounded the bouncing blasts of the field-artillery march--The Caisson Song. Eisenhower, trim in a blue suit, was at the microphone waving and smiling, with Mamie Eisenhower at his side. The music changed to Dixie, Mamie threw a kiss to the crowd, and the crowd began to chant "We want Ike." Chairman Martin waited for few minutes, then stepped to the microphone. "If you'll keep quiet," he shouted, grinning, "I'll give him to you." The cheering died down, the band stopped playing, and Eisenhower began to speak. Fighting Road. Tense at first, he soon relaxed and in his first visit to any political convention hall, delivered the best speech of his brief political career. Said he: "I know something of the solemn responsibility of leading a crusade. I have led one...Mindful of its burdens and of its decisive importance, I accept your summons. I will lead this crusade. "Our aims," he said firmly, "are clear: to sweep from office an Administration which has fastened on every one of us the wastefulness, the arrogance and corruption in high places, the heavy burdens and the anxieties which are the bitter fruit of a party too long in power." The crowd roared. Then Ike continued: "Much more than this, it is our aim to give to our country a program of progressive policies drawn from our finest Republican traditions; to unite us wherever we have been divided; to strengthen freedom wherever among any group it has been weakened; to build a sure foundation for sound prosperity for all here at home, and for a just and sure peace throughout our world...The road that leads to Nov. 4 is a fighting road. In that fight I will keep nothing in reserve." Destiny's Moment. Then he proved again the famed Eisenhower ability for fostering harmony. "Since this morning I have had helpful and heart-warming talks with Senator Taft, Governor Warren and Governor Stassen. I wanted them to know, as I want you now to know, that in the hard fight ahead we will work intimately together... "We are now at a moment in history when, under God, this nation of ours has become the mightiest temporal power and the mightiest spiritual force on earth. The destiny of mankind--the making of a world that will be fit for our children to live in--hangs in the balance... "Wherever I am, I will end each day of this coming campaign thinking of millions of American homes, large and small; of fathers and mothers working and sacrificing to make sure that their children are well cared for, free from fear, full of good hope for the future, proud citizens of a country that will stand among the nations as the leader of a peaceful and prosperous world. "Ladies and gentlemen, my dear friends who have heaped upon me such honors, it is more than a nomination I accept today. It is a dedication to the shining promise of tomorrow. As together we face that tomorrow, I beseech the prayers of all our people and the blessing and guidance of Almighty God." It was an adept as well as a heartfelt speech, opening on exactly the right note Eisenhower's campaign as the Republican nominee. NOMINEE FOR VEEP Nominated for Vice President of the U.S. by the Republican National Convention: RICHARD (DICK) MILHOUS NIXON. Parentage: Born Jan. 9, 1913, in Yorba Linda, Calif., a small (present pop. 885), citrus-growing town near Los Angeles, to Frank (Scotch-Irish ancestry) and Hannah Milhous Nixon (Irish- English), who migrated from the Middle West to California in their youth, married in 1908, are still hale & hearty. Father worked as street-car motorman, oilfield worker, rancher, built filling station at Whittier, Calif., later added a grocery store, now known as Nixon's market and run by Dick's younger brother Don. Childhood: Grew up in Whittier, about 15 miles from Los Angeles, worked in father's gas station, delivered groceries. Favorite family anecdote: when Nixon was a boy, he read about the Teapot Dome scandal in the papers, told his mother: "When I get big, I'll be a lawyer they can't bribe." Education: Pubic schools, Whittier college (A.B. 1934), Duke University Law School (LL.B. 1937). Specialized in history, political science, constitutional and administrative law, was good debater. Early Career: Practiced law in Whittier, 1937-42. For seven months, attorney with Washington's Office of Emergency Management, working to unify U.S. rationing rules. Commissioned in Navy, 1942, lieutenant (j.g.). Served in South Pacific as ground officer for combat Air Transport command, 1943-44; commended by Secretary of Navy for administrative work after V-J day; discharged as lieutenant commander, 1946. Political Debut: In 1946, while Nixon was awaiting discharge at Baltimore, Md., a citizen's committee in California's 12th district ran a newspaper ad seeking a young man willing to run against New Deal Congressman Jerry Voorhis. A friend submitted Nixon's name. There were three other applicants. Nixon got the job, beat Voorhis by 15,592 votes. Re-elected to Congress, 1948; elected to Senate, 1950, in bitter campaign against his fellow member of Congress, New Dealing Helen Gahagan Douglas. Record in Congress: Made national reputation as able, dogged, unhysterical investigator of Communism. As member of House Un-American Activities Committee, presented the cases against Gerhard Eisler and Eugene Dennis, 1947; took part in investigation of Communism in Hollywood; co-author of Mundt-Nixon Bill requiring registration of Communists. Was largely responsible for resolute pursuit of Hiss investigation, repeatedly saved the case from being dropped by going out himself and digging up facts. Said Whittaker Chambers in Witness: "Richard Nixon made the Hiss Case possible." Nixon, however, is no McCarthyite (he did not applaud McCarthy's speech to the convention), is favoring legislation giving witnesses at investigations a better break. He has also been active in Senate investigations of government corruption, and publicly called for the resignation of Republican national Chairman Guy Gabrielson when Gabrielson was accused of using his influence to get an RFC loan for a company of which he is president. Foreign Policy: Roughly, with Eisenhower on Europe, with Taft on Asia. Supported Marshall Plan, NATO, military aid program, voted against cutting foreign aid bill. Vigorously attacks Administration's disastrous mistakes in Asia, advocates vigorous pursuit of Korean war or else getting out. Domestic Policy: Describes himself as a moderate conservative, is on record for: Taft-Hartley, voluntary price curbs, FEPC, giving Congress access to secret Government files. Against: the poll tax, socialized medicine, Brannan Plan, federal ownership of the tidelands, Harry Truman's seizure of the steel mills. Family: Married (1940) to Patricia Ryan, 39, petite, pretty, former highschool teacher (business law, book-keeping, typing), who helps Nixon out as an unpaid secretary. (Says he: "My wife was a Democrat when I married her, and didn't become a Republican until after I was elected to Congress.") Two daughters, Patricia, 6, Julie, 4. (Patricia used to have a shine on little David Kefauver, 6 who lives up the block from their Washington home.) Religion: Nixon is a birthright Quaker. His wife, a lifelong Protestant, says: "I go along with him." Personal Characteristics: Hardworking, earnest, generally liked by his senior colleagues in the Senate, deeply religious. Rarely smokes or takes a drink, is a tireless, hard-hitting campaigner, looks good on TV. Says his former football coach at Whittier: "He was a second-string man. He played tackle and he played it well, but the kid was just too light. Weeks would go by and he wouldn't ever play a minute, but he'd hardly ever miss practice, and he worked hard. He was wonderful for morale, because he'd sit there and cheer the rest of the guys, and tell them how well they'd played. To sit on the bench for four years isn't easy. I always figure, especially in the case of Dick, who excelled in everything else, that kids like that have more guts than the first-string heroes. Dick, he would work even if he knew he wouldn't play. He'll be O.K. as Vice President." </body> </article> </text>