The Way West

In a DC-6 equipped with desks, typewriters and mimeograph machine, Adlai Stevenson, wearing a most un-Western Homburg. set out last week to conquer the West. This is a critical battleground, for the ten states which Stevenson plans to visit have 83 electoral votes, and though nine of the states went Democratic in 1948 most of them were very close.

In Denver, the first stop on his tour, Stevenson was greeted at the airport by Colorado's Republican Governor Dan Thornton, who was sporting an Ike button. In a dinner speech, Stevenson delivered a graceful rewrite of Harry Truman's Labor Day strictures against the

Republican battlecry, "It's time for a change." One new element was present in the Stevenson speech: a sharp personal attack on Eisenhower. Stevenson resented Ike's charges that a Stevenson Administration would be no more successful than the Truman Administration in routing corruption. Said the Democratic candidate: "I had not expected that from the general, and I will not repay him in kind. But I would thank him to read more carefully what I don't believe he would write himself. Moreover you'll forgive me if I gag a little when Republican politicians don the ill-fitting mantle of self-righteousness and deliver holier-than-thou sermons on morality."

No Issue. Later that evening, before the 8,000 people who crowded Denver's auditorium, Stevenson again lashed out at Eisenhower's statements on "the mess in Washington." Said he: "For some time I have been wondering whether [Eisenhower] was going to find something to say that would not offend one of the Republican parties. Now at last I think he found it. In recent days he has come forth with a fine, free-swinging attack on that old bogey, corruption . . . There is no issue between him and myself on corruption. I am not only against it, I have actually done something about it. I was elected in Illinois to clean out one of the most corrupt regimes that ever inflicted itself on the state. And it was, by the way, a Republican regime ... I will stack up my record against that of any other man who has faced the problems of corruption in real life, and not just from the political rostrum."

Next day Stevenson backtracked to Kasson, Minn, to outline his farm policy (see above). Then, pushing West again, he flew to Cheyenne, Wyo., devoting 20 minutes of the flight to drafting notes for a speech. When he arrived at the auditorium, however, Stevenson discovered that he had forgotten the notes. In five minutes the governor hastily scribbled down his outline, oblivious to the throng of onlookers. The result was a neatly phrased blend of reminiscences of previous trips to Wyoming, praise of the Democratic record on development of natural resources and hammering at what is becoming a major Stevenson (formerly a Taft) theme: Ike is a "me-too" candidate. Said Stevenson: "There is room for such a distinguished hitchhiker on the Democratic platform ... It is just those one-eyed guys with knives in their teeth who are scrambling aboard with him that make me a little uncomfortable."

Up an Alley. The final phase of the Stevenson invasion of the West--his swing down the Pacific Coast--began with a speech to a newspaper and radio men's luncheon in Portland, Ore. An ex-newspaperman himself (the Bloomington Daily Pantagraph), Stevenson took the opportunity to get in some digs at the heavily Republican U.S. press. Said he: "It would seem that the overwhelming majority of the press is just against Democrats. And it is against Democrats, so far as I can see, not after a sober and considered review of the alternatives, but automatically as dogs are against cats. As soon as a newspaper--I speak of the great majority, not of the enlightened ten percent--sees a Democratic candidate, it is filled with an unconquerable yen to chase him up an alley."

With his nine-day Western tour nearly half over, Stevenson was still going strong oratorically. He was miles above the U.S. speech-making average and well ahead of Ike in platform effectiveness. The governor's quips were as witty as ever, and his gibes even more biting. Nevertheless, some of his listeners were beginning to get the numb feeling induced by too many hours of Bob Hope or Milton Berle. Others found the Kasson farm-policy speech just plain dull. To the latter criticism, Stevenson supporters had an answer reminiscent of Republican assertions that Ike's slow start was a matter of "pacing." During September, explained Stevenson proponents, the governor would concentrate on expounding his platform. October would be the month for whipping up the crowds.

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