Dewey Takes Off

Tom Dewey got his carefully planned campaign off to a careful start last week. Everything ticked with the precision of a metronome. From Pawling to Pittsburgh to Springfield, Ill., to St. Louis and back, the schedule rolled efficiently through, each part of the whole falling trimly into place, on time.

Candidate Dewey had divided his first campaign trip into three precisely wrapped parcels. Parcel No. 1 was set up at industrial Pittsburgh, thus giving the Governor a chance to point out firmly that the New Deal has gotten exactly nowhere with the planning vital to reconversion--although "we are electing a President most of whose term will be in peacetime."

Parcel No. 2, at Springfield, enabled Tom Dewey to pay the traditional Republican respects at the tomb of the first Republican President. But Parcel No. 3 was the main show; at St. Louis Candidate Dewey had assembled the 25 other Republican Governors of the U.S. This gave him an opportunity to remind the voters that these Republicans "govern three-fourths of the American people."

The Dewey Plan. Tom Dewey had several objectives, limited but definite. The St. Louis meeting had a broad and carefully designed base. Tom Dewey's first and fundamental job now was to do the very thing which Wendell Willkie had neglected during the key July-August period of the 1940 campaign--to organize, incite and generally set in motion the thousands of state, county and precinct Republican political organizations.

Ever since his return from Chicago as the Republican nominee, Tom Dewey had plugged hard at this task, consulting steadily with the nearby state organizations, ironing out intramural squabbles, quietly dropping dead wood, promoting new blood, stressing his own passion for work, unity, detailed organization, action along planned lines. His strategy was plain. He might not be able to excel Quarterback Roosevelt in gay improvisation, tricky forward passes and dazzling end runs, but Tom Dewey was going to try to win by sheer hard work, detailed planning, and power plays.

"No One Man." At Pittsburgh Dewey had told the press: "The United States simply cannot face another period like the Roosevelt depression, which lasted for eight years, with more than 10,000,000 unemployed continuously from 1933 to 1940, inclusive." At Springfield he had said: "We hold elections in this country in the midst of total war. . . . We hold this election because we know that we destroy the ideology of those we strike. Their strength depends upon one man. Our strength depends upon the American people, and upon no one man."

At St. Louis, he assembled his team of 24 Governors and his right bower, Vice Presidential Nominee John W. Bricker, and put them right to work. If any of the Governors had envisioned his trip to St. Louis as a midsummer junket, full of fun & games, he was sorely disappointed. Candidate Dewey had his class report at 10 a.m. the first day, and the atmosphere was clearly one of Positively No Excuses for Tardiness.

The announced agenda was a discussion of "the areas of responsibility among fed eral, state and local governments." This might have sounded like a flossy intro duction to Old Guard complaints about states' rights. But Tom Dewey was thinking beyond this. In the first place, he wanted to establish clearly that there are a great many real conflicts between local and federal policies, from taxes to high way building. Second, he wanted to show that most of these conflicts are highly in efficient, that they cost U.S. citizens mil lions of unnecessary dollars and thousands of hours of unnecessary legal paper-shuffling. Third, Candidate Dewey wanted to prove that most of these areas of conflict are the result of Washington bungling. Fourth, he wanted it clearly under stood that under businesslike Republican management these numerous areas of costly conflict would be smoothed away.

Milk at Midnight. Beyond these gen eral objectives, Candidate Dewey, in effect, wanted the Governors to produce a new Republican platform, going specifically beyond the generalities of the Chicago document. Beyond that, Tom Dewey wanted to get 26 G.O.P. Governors accustomed to working as a team.

The Governors buckled quickly down to work under the expert, Scoutmasterish management of Tom Dewey. They found all the necessary documents and data piled carefully at hand. They found that the guiding Dewey principle is to get an agreement, a real agreement to which all parties can not only subscribe but for which they can go out and fight. They were held steadily at work all day, with only time off for meals. Then back to work they went until 2:30 a.m. Some were refreshed at midnight with a glass of milk.

Next morning they met again at 10, and again plowed on & on into the night. But when they rose from their labors the second night, they were agreed on a 14-point statement, an optimistic charter expressing their agreement on a broad use of federal power in cooperation with the states, to promote the U.S. economic and social welfare. Wrote Scripps-Howard's Tom Stokes: "He [Dewey] buried, once and for all, the ghost of old-fashioned states' rights." For the agreement forged at St. Louis called for continuing, in the main, all the federal services to which the New Deal has accustomed the people.

To the general public, the 14-point statement was far from being a sensational vote winner. It was long, dry, and on the heavy side. But it would tend to give thoughtful voters the reassuring feeling that Tom Dewey's campaign was solidly based on a working philosophy of government, and not just on the usual ranting opposition to Roosevelt. It did something which scores of Wendell Willkie's speeches had failed to do in 1940: it drew very clear, red-penciled lines between the New Deal and the Republican Party. No one would mistake Tom Dewey for a New Dealer, as some people had sometimes mistaken Wendell Willkie; but now Tom Dewey was also making it difficult for voters to mistake him for an Old Guard Republican.

On this quiet level Tom Dewey had opened his campaign. As a triumphal trip it bore not the slightest resemblance to Wendell Willkie's 1940 beginnings, when voters packed the sidewalks and jammed arenas to hear the big, attractive, tousled, hoarse candidate shout his gospel. Dewey got small crowds, few cheers, and in all probably shook no more than 7,500 hands on the whole trip. But as he returned to Pawling this week, Tom Dewey knew that it was still August. Between now and the last week of October lay much planning, much hard work.

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