The Next President

Along Philadelphia's bunting-bedecked downtown streets this week, "Welcome" signs blossomed in bar windows and store fronts. At Republican National Committee headquarters in the Bellevue-Stratford hotel, party-workers checked over lists of page-boys, sergeants-at-arms, ushers and doorkeepers for the great National Convention. Candidates' headquarters came to life. Crowded hotel lobbies buzzed with the chitchat and greetings of guests, politicians, camp followers and swarming newsmen.

The whole city, somnolent since the great Willkie push in 1940, throbbed with excitement. Workmen put finishing touches on the $500,000 refurbishing of Convention Hall. Five shapely models, employed by a local restaurateur, patrolled such busy intersections as Chestnut & Broad, sporting large sashes with the provocative inscription: "Ask me anything." City officials passed the word to Philadelphia police that the 2 a.m. curfew was off for the duration.

As the Republican delegates and the party's retinue moved into the world of the political deal and the patriotic cliche, Democrat Harry Truman fought an almost singlehanded battle on the West Coast to convince his party not only that he should be the nominee for President, but that he can win (see The Presidency). The time had come again. The great game of U.S. politics, its deadly seriousness concealed from the unobservant by circus trappings and spread-eagle oratory, was moving swiftly and dramatically toward its quadrennial climax.

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