White-Haired Boy

(See Cover)

When a certain train out of Chicago paused in Crown Point, Ind. last week, a tall, robust male of 47 who looked like a white-headed Indian chief descended to the station platform. With a moment-of-destiny air he announced to the reporters present: "I want to put my foot on Indiana soil."

Last week Indiana's soil, as distinct from its station platforms, was dotted with shocks of new-cut wheat. Young green corn was two to three feet high, and high-legged hogs stood up to their chocolate-colored rumps in lush, weedy meadows. Wild hollyhocks and roses splashed the fence lines with color, but nowhere bloomed a fairer flower for Hoosier politicians to gaze upon than their radiantly handsome master, Paul Vories McNutt, returning home to do some hoeing in his own back row. For Paul McNutt's Presidential hopes, carefully nursed through many a long winter, were at last up knee-high with the corn.

In Indianapolis, McNutt-for-President headquarters in the Claypool Hotel have been humming since last winter, in constant touch with the High Commissioner to the Philippines in Manila. That office and Paul McNutt's friends were ready with an efficiently stage-managed homecoming celebration. The timing was just about perfect. Now was the season for political bands, bunting, oratory, ballyhoo. Here was a candidate who could stride upon the national stage like a handsome Ulysses returning from labors abroad to hurl fear and respect into the hearts of Democracy's home-hugging suitors. It mattered not that the welcoming party was synthetic, that the Candidate's welcome to Indiana was rather warmer than its welcome to him. Now was beginning one of the earliest, boldest, most determined campaigns ever made for a major U. S. nomination. Paul McNutt, with truly towering modesty, declared:

"What happens to me is not important, but what happens to all of us is very important!"

Beef Trust. In 1928, two big men, Frank McHale and Bowman ("Bo") Elder journeyed to the American Legion convention in San Antonio. (McHale weighs 290 Ibs., Elder 310 Ibs.) Frank McHale was a Logansport lawyer who had played mighty football for Michigan (where his scrawny little brother in Sigma Chi, Frank Murphy, hero-worshipped him), and Bo Elder was the Legion's national treasurer. To these two it was important that they get the handsome, prematurely white-haired young dean of the University of Indiana Law School elected national commander of the Legion. They did so by shrewdly lining up the second-choice votes of other candidates' backers. They took Commander Paul McNutt back with them to the Legion's national headquarters in Indianapolis and then began planning to make him President of the U. S.

Paul McNutt had a Harvard law degree, a model record among educators as the youngest (34) dean of the Indiana Law School. During the War he became a major of Field Artillery, was never sent overseas. He could make a speech that lifted Legionnaires (or voters) right out of their seats. As national commander, he strode up & down the land making speeches, pumping hands, pounding backs, remembering names, flashing his magnificent smile.

In 1932, his two weighty friends, McHale & Elder, ran interference for Paul McNutt in Indiana's State election. He went across as Governor by a plurality of 118.642 votes. Franklin Roosevelt was elected President that same day but could not take office until two months after Governor McNutt got going. What McNutt and his Beef Trust did to Indiana was a masterpiece compared to what Franklin Roosevelt and his Brain Trust were to do to the U. S.

"Action!" At five o'clock one morning in the Indianapolis Club they completed drafting a State reorganization plan. By noon that day, before a single legislator could have read it, it was law. They ripped out and streamlined expensive departments and bureaus, making many an office appointive. They wrote social security and labor laws a la New Deal, slammed on a "gross income" tax which, although tough on small retailers, eased taxes on farmers and homeowners, supported the schools, carried a lot of the Relief load. They backed up Indiana's fiscal year-end from August to June to avoid a first-year deficit. When he left office, they had piled up a $17,000,000 surplus. They let cities skip the election of 1934, to let Democrats get better entrenched. They put their political cards face up on the table, caused the Legislature to exempt from the corrupt practices act a Two Percent Club through which State employes paid that portion of their salaries into a McNutt war-chest.

"Action!" was the McNutt watchword. He gave so much of it that even in politically feverish, Klan-ridden Indiana some people called him a dictator. He quelled strikes with the militia. When the Legislature legalized bottled beer but forgot draft, Governor McNutt fixed things up instanter with a proclamation, let the Legislature approve his action more than a year later. Presumably brewers and others were duly grateful. The McNutt war-chest today is reputedly far greater than the Two Percent Club's collections, estimated at $75,000 to $200,000 a year.

Interregnum. No man can succeed himself as Indiana's Governor. In 1936 it became necessary for Paul McNutt to have another, better job. The Philippines post, which Frank Murphy had just held, was ideal. It was out of the New Deal limelight. From it Taft and Henry Stimson and Frank Murphy had returned as candidates for greater glory. Frank Murphy was a help in securing it for Frank McHale's handsome friend. Before Paul McNutt went to the Philippines, McNutt & Co. elected as Governor (by way of contrast) Maurice Clifford Townsend, a homely, fish-catching farmer.

Many times in the months that followed the High Commissioner, breakfasting in Manila, picked up the telephone and talked business with Frank McHale who was having supper, the evening before, in Indianapolis. But they bided their time until January 1938, when Frank McHale stepped in for Tom Taggart Jr. as National Committeeman for Indiana. This was followed by the amazing McNutt boom dinner in Washington (TIME, March 7, 1938). So premature did this performance seem that a reporter asked Paul McNutt: "Have these friends put you out on a limb?"

"My friends never have placed me on a limb," smiled confident Paul McNutt.

Friends & Enemies. Besides McHale, Elder and Townsend, the Indiana gang behind Paul McNutt now included Sherman ("Shay") Minton, whom they sent to the Senate in 1935; Edmund Arthur Ball of Muncie, member of the rich glass-jar family; and Fred Bays, a dapper, saturnine oldtime dancer and circus man. Him they made Democratic State Chairman, to handle ballyhoo. Besides banners, bands and buttons, Mr. Bays uses tap dancers, a singing cop, contortionists. When the McNutt campaign gets going nationally, the country may see something remarkable.

If Paul McNutt is on a limb, it is not his friends' fault. It is Franklin Roosevelt's--or McNutt's own for trying to block Roosevelt at Chicago in 1932. Ever since then Paul McNutt has been polite to the New Deal, but also ever since then Jim Farley has called McNutt a platinum-haired so-&-so, a feeling which is mutual.

Another man who will be no great help to McNutt is Indiana's senior Senator, Frederick Van Nuys. When the New Deal called for a purge last year, McNutt & Co. tried to read Senator Van Nuys out of their party. When they found Mr. Van Nuys too tenacious, they had to read him back in again, which shamed and embittered Governor Cliff Townsend, who was told off to do both readings.

Assets of Paul McNutt for the Presidency begin with his physical appearance and vigor. He is handsome to a Hollywood degree. Women flock to see him. He has a Texas wife (Kathleen Timolat of San Antonio), as wise as she is charming, and a good-looking, 18-year-old daughter, Louise. He has false teeth but able Dentist B. K. ("Kirk") Westfall of Indianapolis sees to it that they do not impede his public speaking, which is of the best. He can pour it out so dynamically that his eyeballs pop. His radio voice is not pale, even beside Franklin Roosevelt's. Consciousness of his mastery over men gives him a dignity which might be ludicrous had he not also a dazzling smile and the ability to throw his head back, laugh uproariously, especially at embarrassing questions. When asked last week if he would discuss 1940 when he sees Franklin Roosevelt, he roared: "Why not? I always have."

His American Legion connections are nationwide, and the Legion membership is now in its political prime. He has an executive record uncomplicated by such national issues as Relief, Money, Neutrality. Above all he has absolute mastery of Indiana through a machine that is as old-fashioned in its efficiency as it is modern in its setup. Indiana has only 14 electoral votes to offer, only 28 delegates in the National Democratic Convention. But Paul McNutt can count on delivering these white chips with greater certainty than even Cordell Hull can be sure of Tennessee or Jack Garner of Texas. At this stage of the 1940 game, no other candidate except Roosevelt has even one white chip.

Liabilities of Paul McNutt begin with a masterfulness so driving it is sometimes repellent. Basic equation of his national political career will be whether he can overwhelm more people than he offends. His autocratic tendency was seen in his "execution" of pleasant Emory ("Pleas") Greenlee, his popular secretary, whom he dismissed abruptly for aspiring to succeed him as Governor. Labor views him with some alarm because he called out the militia. Many Legionnaires feel that he exploited his national commandership too brazenly to build up a personal following; they are now reminding each other of the Legion's rule against official partisanship. Also reports that New Deal investigators are snooping into the finances of their machine, are not reassuring to the McNutters, even though old friend Frank Murphy is Attorney General.

Should Paul McNutt overstride these obstacles and win the Democratic nomination for President, he would undoubtedly make a stirring campaign. But between him and the White House one other obstacle would remain, unfair and unfortunate, but essentially American: the name McNutt. Cartoonist Reuben Lucius ("Rube") Goldberg's moronic, shock-headed character "Boob McNutt" has been retired from the comic strips for six years, but he lived in them for 15, and not for nothing did Cartoonist Goldberg, student of the U. S. funnybone, choose that name. It is a heavy cross for even so magnificent a crusader as Indiana's white-haired boy to bear.

Crippled Elephants & Pawpaws. Last week Paul McNutt spent the night before his homecoming party at Bo Elder's $100,000 mansion at Traders Point. When they motored into Indianapolis next morning, the sun was as bright & hot as in Manila. Most of the townspeople went about their regular business but perhaps 25,000 from town and country thronged Monument Circle to hear Fred Bays's bands (theme song: "Back Home Again in Indiana"), to see his well-disciplined county delegations of farmers, housewives, Legionnaires, and clowns disguised as crippled elephants. For the benefit of the crowd around the Soldiers' & Sailors' Monument President Edward Charles Elliott of Purdue University welcomed the McNutts "back to the homeland of the pawpaw* from the faraway land of the papayas." Quite a few hearers drifted away as Paul McNutt, preserving the proprieties by speaking as High Commissioner to the Philippines, not as a candidate for President, urged that the U. S. keep the Philippines for their wealth/- and to preserve peace in the Orient. Indianapolis was not greatly stirred about Manila.

Program. Candidate McNutt was to go to Washington this week, to report to "my chief." An early sound-off spot is arranged for him at the Institute of Public Affairs (University of Virginia). Just when he will openly avow his candidacy was not announced last week, but not before resigning as High Commissioner to the Philippines. First big stop for his bandwagon will be the Young Democrats' national convention at Pittsburgh in August.

Strategy of the McNutt drive for nomination will be precisely the same as at San Antonio eleven years ago. Already emissaries have poured out of the Claypool Hotel to friends of other States' favorite sons, cheering those sons on and inviting second-choice votes for Paul McNutt. With the President ahead of him and Jim Farley against him, Paul McNutt's only possible chance of nomination is in a deadlocked convention, like the Republican one out of which an Ohio gang brought Warren Harding. If he gets up enough steam beforehand, he may help create the deadlock.

Last week he had got nowhere near that objective. He was thoroughly vexed because his friend Senator Shay Minton had blurted out last fortnight: "Our whole [McNutt] campaign is based upon the assumption that President Roosevelt is not going to be a candidate." Paul McNutt is an able politician who can cover a lot of ground, and if he is to have a chance in the Democratic convention of 1940 he has a lot of ground to cover. Last week he may have regretted that he has been so long out of sight and out of mind of the U. S. electorate.

*Referring of course to the custard-apple. In some parts of the world the papaya, a tropical tree with melon-like fruit, is also called pawpaw.

/-Philippine business interests are reported ready to back McNutt-for-President with $1,000,000, to keep the islands within the U. S. tariff and defense walls.

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