"Arrangements" Were Made

When the 46 members of the Republican Convention arrangements committee settled down in Chicago's Conrad Hilton Hotel last week, the committeemen who like Ike knew that they were outnumbered. The only question was how far the Taft majority would go in naming Taftmen to key positions in the national convention. How far they went was apparent a moment after the session ended. Ikeman Ralph H. Cake, Oregon national committeeman, stomped out of the meeting room and growled: "Yes, they have rigged us, but good."

In the rigging, the Taftmen picked:

P: For keynoter, Taftman Douglas MacArthur, thus breaking a not-very-solid tradition of neutral keynoters.

P: For the speaker on the night before the balloting begins, Herbert Hoover, who is assumed to be for Taft.

P: For permanent chairman, Massachusetts' Representative Joseph Martin, no Taftman, but the next thing to it: a devout MacArthur man.

P: For the vital post of temporary chairman of the convention, Walter S. Hallanan, manager of the successful Taft campaign in West Virginia.

P:From there on down to the doorkeeper, there is not a branded Eisenhower supporter on the list. Nearly all are out & out Taft workers.

"The Grass Roots." When the Ikemen raised the cry that the committee's action was more Taft steamrollering, Ohio's Representative Clarence Brown smoothly replied that what they were seeing was just the "grass roots" at work. Then he amplified: "When the Willkie crowd--the gang that's now behind Eisenhower--did this to us in 1940, they explained it was grass roots from the American people.* When the Dewey crowd did it to us . . . in 1948, they explained it was more grass roots. So what we've just seen is the finest grass roots, in the best Willkie and Dewey tradition."

The blow that struck the Ikemen hardest was the committee's choice for temporary chairman. Traditionally, the keynoter is the temporary chairman, but everyone agreed that General MacArthur's lack of experience with political conventions made him an unlikely choice. So the Taftmen's choice was West Virginia's Hallanan.

A wealthy Charleston oilman (Plymouth Oil Co.), Hallanan has been the tough, domineering boss of West Virginia Republicanism for a quarter of a century, has served 24 years on the national committee. A close friend of Wisconsin's Senator Joe McCarthy, he lets Joe fly around in his company's DC-3.

Hallanan has not always been a trusted Taft lieutenant. Just after Taft was defeated by Dewey in the 1948 convention, one of Taft's most important and consistent supporters gave this description of the West Virginian: "Hallanan was a double-crosser. He double-crossed Frank Knox in 1936. He double-crossed us in 1940. We didn't trust him, but he had a hell of a row with Dewey in 1940, and we thought that would hold him. This time he went through to the last day, and then, when the going got tough, he went over to Dewey with West Virginia."

"Shyster" & "Spoiled Child." The delegate-hungry Taftmen, obeying the Biblical injunction to forgive their enemies seventy times seven times, have clasped Hallanan to their bosoms once more, and this time they expect him to stay clasped. As temporary chairman, Hallanan will take the gavel a few moments after National Chairman Guy Gabrielson raps the convention to order on July 7, and will preside until after the keynote. He will be in charge when the convention adopts rules and seats contested delegates, when his rulings might be disastrous to the Eisenhower forces. Theoretically, a ruling of the chairman can be reversed by a majority of the convention; practically, what the chairman says goes, nine times out of ten.

Although they were cautious in comments about Hero MacArthur, the Eisenhower high command let fly at Politician Hallanan. Pennsylvania's Senator Jim Duff roared: "As an umpire we'll have a man who is already a player in the game." Campaign Manager Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. speculated that he might take a megaphone to Chicago, in case Hallanan refused to let Ikemen use the microphones. Taftmen on the arrangements committee, said Lodge, had used "shyster tactics."

Hallanan shouted right back, called Lodge "a completely spoiled political child." "You are obviously having a political nightmare," he said. "Even your rights as a delegate to the convention will be fully preserved and protected."

Ikemen wanted to do something more than shout about Hallanan, and they began to study the possibilities. When his appointment as temporary chairman comes before the convention for confirmation, they can nominate someone else from the floor and try to get their man in. But that would involve a serious risk. If Hallanan won that fight, wavering delegates might take it as an indication that the Ikemen could never muster enough votes to win, and a stampede to Taft might start.

At week's end Eisenhower supporters had not decided whether they would take the risk of a fight against Hallanan.* Telephone lines from the Ike headquarters in Washington carried a steady flow of long-distance calls to delegates. The Ikemen realized that the Taft "arrangements" in Chicago would have their greatest effect on delegates who want only to be with the winner. They might get just the impression that the Taftmen wanted them to--that Taft cannot be stopped.

On the busy telephone lines, and in every other way they could, the Eisenhower men were trying to turn the Taft weapon against the Taft machine. Their argument to delegates: Taft is trying to push you and everybody else around; this steamroller will disgust the voters so much that Taft can't possibly win in November.

* In 1940 Minnesota's wonder boy Harold Stassen was keynoter and temporary chairman, then startled Taftmen by becoming Willkie's floor manager.

* Only once in Republican history has the party organization's nominee for temporary chairman been defeated by a nominee from the floor. That was in 1884, when foes of James G. Blaine put John R. Lynch of Mississippi in the chair instead of Blaine's man, Powell Clayton of Arkansas. The man who led the battle for Lynch: Massachusetts' goateed Henry Cabot Lodge, then 34 years old, grandfather of Ike's campaign manager. The night before the convention, Lodge and young (25) Theodore Roosevelt scurried around Chicago hotels convincing delegates. Next day they climbed on chairs to rally the anti-Blaine forces on the convention floor. Lodge's victory, however, was temporary: Blaine was nominated.

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