Always Leave 'Em Laughin'

Genial old Alben Barkley packed up a stock of his best political pleasantries and was off last week by chartered airliner, explaining everything to the voters. From Oshkosh, Wis., through the farm belt and up along the Pacific Coast, the 72-year-old campaigner hustled from airport to auditorium, from speech to banquet to rally, always leaving them laughing.

"When I was in the House," he said before 900 Democrats banqueting at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel, "I was told the difference between the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was that Senators were too old to have affairs. They only have relations. Ever since I got into the Senate, I have been trying to dispel that vile calumny--and not without success."

Man from Kentucky. When someone would shout: "Where's the wife?" the Veep would explain that Mrs. Barkley hadn't come along this trip, but he hoped to bring her soon "and I know you will fall in love with her the way I did--but I hope the result won't be the same." Every time he was offered the customary glass of water at a speaker's rostrum, he would spurn it, remarking: "I don't drink water, I'm a Kentuckian." He even had a line for school youngsters he encountered. "You can't vote this year," he would say, "but you will be voting before I quit running for office."

But the Veep's voice sometimes seemed to falter when it came to calling off the names of local candidates. He usually had a list in his hand, and read from it. In California, where Jimmy Roosevelt is running uphill against popular Republican Governor Earl Warren, Barkley acknowledged his "great respect" for Warren and said that he did not intend to attack him. The best he could do for Jimmy was to call attention to his background "and the fact that he was overwhelmingly nominated as the candidate of his party."

Woman for the Senate. Even in the California Senate race, where 49-year-old Democratic Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas was finding it hard going (see above), Barkley didn't seem very helpful. To Republican charges that she had left a Communist-line voting record in the House, he replied: "I'm not familiar with all of Mrs. Douglas' votes. I'm quite sure [she] voted her conscientious convictions. The mere fact that she voted the same as Marcantonio I don't regard as of any significance." Then, somewhat confusingly, he added: "The Senate could stand another dose of brains and beauty. Margaret Chase Smith--she's a Republican--but a wonderful, charming woman. We could stand another shot."

The crowds loved it. But the candidates and their party workers laughed a little warily, fearful that the customers might go home asking themselves just what it was that that nice old man was selling.

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