GOPossibilities (Cont'd)

GOPossibilities (Cont'd)

Auctioned off in Washington this week was the privilege of playing host to the 1936 Republican National Convention. Cried Chicago: "$150,000." Cried Kansas City: "$150,000." Cried Cleveland: "$150,000." Hearing no further bids, the National Committee knocked the convention down to Cleveland for $150,000 and a presumably improved chance of snaring Ohio's 26 electoral votes. Opening date: June 9.

Thus the time and place of theGOPresidential nomination for 1936 were settled. Almost the only certain fact about the nominee remained that he would not be a Chinaman. But with full allowance for hell, high water and the half-year to come, professional Republican politicians and influential amateurs were more interested than ever in three names :Landon, Knox, Hoover.

It is reasonably doubtful that the nation would have voted the 30th and 31st U. S. Presidents into office so enthusiastically if those gentlemen had previously changed their official names to J. Cal Coolidge and Herb C. Hoover. Nonetheless a stream of important visitors, interested in helping make a 33rd President of the U. S., made their way during the past fortnight to the door of the Kansas Governor who was christened Alfred and now calls himself Alf. In the Press the kind of build-up which experienced partisans know how to produce for a favorite made the Landon name loom larger & larger on the list of GOPossibilities for 1936.

Political bird dogs quivered at the scent of a Hoover-Landon deal week before last when John Hamilton, Republican National Committee general counsel, and the following Hoover associates trod on each other's heels at the Governor's mansion: one-time Vice President Charles Curtis; Mark L. Requa, California National Committeeman; Henry J. Allen, Kansas' onetime Governor and U. S. Senator; William M. Jardine, Coolidge Secretary of Agriculture and Hoover Minister to Egypt.

All except Committeemen Hamilton and Requa, officially discreet, departed with puffs for the Landon boom. To the growing picture of Governor Landon as a nickel-betting, budget-balancing Great Economizer, Republican Allen last week added his dab: "In my judgment, the time has come again for a stingy man to be President of the U. S. Governor Alf M. Landon is a stingy man."

Most spectacular Topeka arrivals, aptly symbolizing the kind of backing every Presidential hopeful needs, were two private cars and a chartered Pullman which rolled into the railroad yards of the Great Economizer's capital last week. From one private car descended New Deal-hating Publisher Paul Block. From the Pullman descended New Deal-hating Publisher William Randolph Hearst, who arrived to look for the first time on the homely face of the man he began edging toward the White House three months ago. With "The Chief" was his Columnist Arthur Brisbane. From the other private car descended the editor of the Hearst Washington Herald, Mrs. Eleanor ("Cissy") Patterson. At the ornate, yellow and white Governor's mansion they and a group of Kansas editors and publishers including Senator Arthur Capper, got a warm welcome from black-eyed, young Mrs. Landon II. Hogan, the Landon chauffeur, was summoned from the garage and clapped into white cotton gloves to help serve a sumptuous luncheon of chicken broth, steamed oysters, rice croquettes, a green vegetable, corn bread, pumpkin pie and coffee prepared by Daisy, the Landon cook.

"If the Republican convention were held tomorrow," puffed well-fed Publisher Block when the meal was over, "Landon would receive the nomination easily. . . . He's an even bigger man than I had previously thought."

"Landon can be nominated by the Republicans and elected," puffed Publisher Hearst. "He understands the issues. . . . I think he is marvelous! To say I am favorably impressed puts it very mildly."

"He has a strong chin, which means determination," puffed Arthur Brisbane in his column next day, "and a forehead to balance it." But most of old Columnist Brisbane's enthusiasm was reserved for Nancy Jo Landon, 3. Burbled he: "It is hard to understand why Governor Landon should bother with politics, possessing such a daughter. Nothing in nature is as beautiful as a little girl, and this is a marvelously beautiful little girl. . . . She may be the first woman President."

Still withholding formal acknowledgment of his candidacy, Governor Landon continued last week to play his role of conscientious public servant modestly awaiting a call to higher service. But Wall Street betting commissioners would offer no more than even money against his nomination. Press picture services were ready to bet 1,000 to 1 on the Governor's yearnings when they were furnished with a series of photographs depicting Alf M. Landon at six months in long skirts; Alf M. Landon going on 3 years in sailor straw and enormous kilts; Alf M. Landon at 4 in an embroidered collar; Alf M. Landon at 7 in breeches and sweater with his lop-eared dog (see cut); Alf M. Landon at 10 in long coat and pancake hat.

Meantime another and less traditional way to pursue a Presidential nomination was being demonstrated by Colonel Frank Knox, energetic publisher of the Chicago Daily News. Aspirant Knox was speeding back & forth across the land, making speeches, giving interviews, openly creating for himself the publicity buildup, the indispensable "name & face stuff," which Governor Landon was getting by indirection. Fiscal 1936, Colonel Knox told Worcester (Mass.) Republican women last week, will end with a national public debt of $34,000,000,000.

Promising a complete farm program as soon as the Supreme Court had disposed of AAA, Publisher Knox last week submitted to Republican Senators a tentative platform plank which proposed to pay farmers $6 per acre for 50,000,000 acres to be withdrawn from cultivation for 15 years. Cried one anonymous Senator: "Worse than the AAA!"

Though Illinois' Republican Central Committee had publicly urged him to seek the nomination, Publisher Knox was also last week waiting to fire his formal starting gun. As revealing as Candidate Landon's boyhood pictures was Candidate Knox's action in removing his semi-invalid, childless wife from long obscurity in New Hampshire to a "winter home" in Washington. Wall Street odds against the Knox nomination: 9 to 5.

Against the nomination of Senator William E. Borah, odds were 7 to 5. In the latest poll of the American Institute of Public Opinion, published last fortnight, Senator Borah stood second only to Governor Landon in the list of favored candidates. Borah boomlets were springing up in Ohio, Illinois, California. In the first of a series of radio addresses the 70-year-old Idaho statesman sounded off with equal vigor against New Deal experiment and Republican reaction, establishing himself as a middle-of-the-road progressive chiefly bent on destroying monopoly.

Of the two indispensables for every Presidential aspirant, Senator Borah has always had a plethora of publicity, a paucity of money & organization. Distrusted by GOPartisans for his habitual insurgency, he has a following that is largely the scattered, idealistic kind which attaches to any great personality but counts for little at the polls. That he means to have a large hand in picking the nominee and shaping the GOPlatform is undoubted. But having seen Senator Borah flirt with the Presidency every four years for the last generation, experienced political observers are disinclined to begin taking him seriously now. Wrote Pundit Frank Kent in the Baltimore Sun: "The Borah candidacy is not genuine, the Borah sentiment is not real, and the Borah 'boom' has neither substance nor sincerity. It will not get anywhere, and is not intended to get anywhere."

Since George Washington no man has accepted the U. S. Presidency reluctantly or left it gladly. Therefore speculation as to the intentions of Herbert Hoover last week seemed so much waste space. To the public Mr. Hoover had so far revealed only a bright smile, a new literary style and an unremitting distaste for his successor's personality and policies. But in 60 days he had twice swung across the continent, twice let fly major barrages at New

Deal extravagance and unconstitutionality. Until the fifth, tenth or 15th ballots at Cleveland it seemed highly probable that not even Herbert Hoover would know whether he intended to be a king or a kingmaker. This week, with his ace publicity man Ben Allen, he was in St. Louis to discourse to the John Marshall Republican Club on "The New Deal Further Explored, Including Relief." Listening to this third Hoover barrage, wiseacres credited the fertile wit of onetime Newshawk Allen with the following: "When I comb over these [Relief] accounts of the New Deal my sympathy arises for the humble decimal point. His is a pathetic and hectic life, wandering around among regimented ciphers trying to find some of the old places he used to know."

Meantime Republican outsiders continued hopefully to expose themselves to the lightning. Michigan's Senator Arthur Vandenberg kept mum in Washington, but photographs of the Vandenberg home were beginning to circulate through the Press. In Columbus, Old Guardsman Ogden L. Mills pounded away at "demoralized" New Deal spending. In Manhattan, Representative Hamilton ("Ham") Fish Jr. hazarded an eight-point landing on the Republican platform. In Sacramento, Governor Frank Merriam announced that he was not opposing friends' efforts on his behalf. In Chicago, Publisher Bernarr ("Body Love") Macfadden opened up campaign headquarters.

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