Booms

Mr. Coolidge. The suspenseful drama of to-be-or-not-to-be, created and acted about the unresponsive figure of President Coolidge by his fellow Republicans, progressed last week as follows:

Republican National Committeemen arrived in Washington for their first real caucus of the 1928 campaign. Some of them were said to have heard President Coolidge say: "I wonder who could beat 'Al' Smith if I didn't run?"

The Republican town committee of Sudbury, Mass., voted almost unani- mously (6 to 1) to "use every art and effort" to draft President Coolidge, advising the U. S. to double his salary and re-elect him for life.

Philip M. Tucker, the Boston banker who last fortnight started and then obediently stopped a chain-letter boom for the Coolidge renomination (TIME, Dec. 5), could not refrain from say- ing: "The response to the petition sent out by me was like the bursting of a dam which held back the expression of the people looking for some outlet to show their faith in Calvin Coolidge. . . ."

Rentfro Banton Creager walked into the White House. Here was news, perhaps. Rentfro Creager comes from Brownsville, Tex. They call Rentfro Banton Creager "the red-headed rooster of the Rio Grande." He was a customs collector under Presidents Taft and Roosevelt and a gubernatorial nominee in 1916. He has been State Republican Chairman of vast Texas since 1921 and he was asked by Presidents Harding and Coolidge to be Ambassador to Mexico. Rentfro Banton Creager is esteemed.

It boded news--perhaps--when Mr. Creager walked into the White House last week, because early in November, when the Coolidge "choosiness" was at its foggiest, Mr. Creager was reported to have promised, in a characteristically red-headed moment, to walk right into the White House some day and "pound on the desk" and ask President Coolidge "just exactly what he meant by choosing not to run." People on the Rio Grande wanted to know, and the red-headed rooster thereof would find out.

But--National Committeeman Creager issued from the White House last week very calm and newsless. "All this furor about what the President meant," he said, "is in the minds of the people generally. But those who know Mr. Coolidge know what he meant . . . that if he can have his way about it he will not be a candidate."

Republican National Committeemen prefaced their caucus with pros and cons as to whether "he can have his way about it."

Mr. Dawes. Vice President Charles Gates Dawes called at the White House within a few hours of his return last week to Washington. Newsgatherers flocked. Pacing nervously, he dictated a statement in which he 1) "assumed" that President Coolidge was not a candidate; 2) declared he himself was not a candidate; 3) declared his candidate was Frank Orren Lowden.*

*State Senator Clarence F. Buck of Illinois, manager of the Lowden boom, last week quoted Vice President Dawes as having said: "Anyone who questions my sincerity in backing Lowden, questions my integrity."