Planks & Possibilities

A smart President, to be reelected, must not overcapitalize on his office. With so much power and prestige at his command he must lean over backward to create the popular notion that being President of all the People is his first consideration and being a partisan candidate for another term is only of secondary importance. Such was President Hoover's air last week. Outwardly he took no official notice whatever of the fact that his party was assembled in Chicago to renominate him.

Yet Herbert Hoover, private citizen, was thoroughly interested, if not downright excited. Just before the opening gavel Presidential Rule No. 7 (TIME, November 24, 1930) was observed when White House Physician Joel Thompson Boone announced: "Our present national leadership is bearing a greater strain than ever was the portion of any other President. Thank God, our President is a physical rarity. In spite of the incomparable burdens he is bearing. President Hoover is in excellent health."

Mr. Hoover's office was turned into a pre-convention headquarters. One member of the Cabinet after another trooped through to ask him if he had any last-minute instructions, to shake his hand in farewell before starting for Chicago. Lawrence Richey and Walter Newton, White House secretaries, were packed off to Chicago as Mr. Hoover's personal agents. There they took an obscure room at the Congress Hotel which became the real Hoover headquarters, with a telephone line stretching directly to the President's ear. When the convention started, Candidate Hoover was left alone in Washington, with only a Congress preponderantly Democratic and two members of his Cabinet-Navy's Adams, an "independent," and Justice's Mitchell, a onetime Democratic to keep him company. Lonely, he summoned George Akerson, his onetime secretary, to serve as contact man.

What the convention would do about Prohibition even the President did not know. Secretary Richey reported that Chicago was filled with wild talk about a repeal declaration. The Indiana State convention startlingly declared for resubmission of the 18th Amendment. As a candidate for re-election Mr. Hoover had told pre-convention callers that he was ready to run on a platform declaring for resubmission of the question to the people but that he was opposed to Repeal. Senators had submitted sample planks for Resubmission but on none had Mr. Hoover placed his finger and said: "I want this and nothing else." So widespread became the talk in Washington that the President was committed to a specific proposal that the White House issued a diplomatic denial that any plank had been submitted there. This denial was instantly recognized as campaign strategy to preserve the "hands-off" impression. Only if the convention seemed headed unexpectedly toward Repeal were Mr. Hoover's agents instructed to intervene.

The President's position offered his party a serious difficulty. Resubmission, at best, is a weasel unless accompanied by a declaration in favor of a specific outcome. Herbert Hoover is against Repeal, hence favors retaining the 18th Amendment and is therefore rated Dry. What would happen, it was asked last week, if he "resubmitted" the issue to the people and they voted for Repeal?

Prohibition was also an important factor in Nominee Hoover's consideration of possible Democratic candidates. His friends told him that, on a Resubmission plank, he could probably beat Franklin Delano Roosevelt running on a Repeal platform. Newton Diehl Baker or Albert Cabell Ritchie as outright Wets would possibly be harder for him to defeat. Alfred Emanuel Smith, pledged to Repeal, would be far stronger than in 1928 because of economic conditions but it was unlikely that he could win out over the Republican nominee. As the President figured it out alone in the White House, a damp G. O. P. against a dripping Democracy could probably hold enough of the Dry vote and win over sufficient moderate Wets to carry the election.

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