A Plunge into Eyewash

When an impulsive Democrat entered Harry Truman's name in the New Hampshire presidential primary without consulting the White House. Truman gruffly announced that he would withdraw it. All these primaries are just eyewash and don't mean a thing when the national conventions meet, he huffed. Last week, just five days after he made that statement, Truman did a full back flip and plunged into the eyewash.

"I Shall Not Ask." In a letter to the New Hampshire secretary of state, the President wrote: "My statement last week was intended to explain that such primaries do not bind the delegates. Not only do I not object to such primaries, but I have long favored a nationwide presidential primary,* so that the voters could really choose their own candidates. However, I had thought it would be better for my name not to appear on any ballot at this time as a candidate for President until I am ready to make an announcement as to whether I shall seek reelection. But the chairman of the Democratic National Committee and many good Democrats in New Hampshire are of the opinion that my name should be left on the ballot . . . I shall not ask you to take my name off . . ."

Washington pundits immediately began peering into political corners for more convincing reasons why Truman took the plunge. Their eyes quickly fell on the coonskin cap of Senator Estes Kefauver, already in the New Hampshire race. A lively theory evolved: worried regular Democratic leaders had convinced Truman that it is time to muffle the formidable Kefauver boom; he decided that New Hampshire is the place to thrash bold Estes.

Racketeers & Stalin. This week the Tennessee Senator demonstrated that the President hadn't scared the boldness out of him. He stood up before a New Hampshire audience and allowed dryly that he considers the primary good democracy, not "eyewash." Then he took a swing at Harry Truman's foreign policy. Said he: "For a long time now, it has seemed to me, we have based our foreign policy substantially on what Russia might or might not do. Just as we in the United States do not gauge our domestic policies on the whims of racketeers, so we should not gauge our foreign policy on the whims of Stalin."

But it was something else Crime-Buster Kefauver said that made Democratic ears stand out. Philosophizing about morality in government, he said: "The ordinary course of a man up the political ladder in the United States is by successive steps from the locality. Ordinarily, he takes an interest in his county, or ward, or city election, perhaps seeks office there, and then may or may not proceed to the state or national level of office and politics. In the locality, however, the moral tone of his later service -- as Governor, Senator, Ambassador or President -- has usually been set . . ." That sounded like a slap at Harry Truman's early career in Boss Tom Pendergast's locality. With this prelude from Kefauver, the stage seemed set for a fascinating campaign season among the Democrats.

* Another Truman self-contradiction, the record showed. Last Aug. 2, United Press Correspondent Harry Frantz asked Truman for his views on a presidential primary. Truman replied that he thought one presidential election was enough.

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