Smite 'Em!

The Democratic high command passed up a chance to do some political back-scratching when it picked the convention keynoter for 1956, instead settled on a man judged to be the party's liveliest young speaker: Tennessee's 36-year-old Governor Frank Clement. Frank Clement, student of the great orators, youthful master of the spread-eagle style of public speaking, clutched the assignment like a vice-presidential nomination, checked out his ideas with party leaders, e.g., Missouri's Harry Truman, Georgia's Richard Russell and Texas' Lyndon Johnson, as he whipped up his speech. He made dry runs on Kinescope film to test his delivery, buffed and polished each polysyllabic pearl of syntax and rhetoric before his pretty blonde wife. This week he was ready with a keynote speech that was charged with a rare potential of metaphor, simile and alliteration, borrowed liberally from orators ranging from Cicero to Daniel Webster to Billy Graham.

Sideshow Scramble. "How long, O how long," he cried, "shall these Republican outrages endure? How long, O how long will Americans permit the national welfare to be pounced upon at home and gambled abroad? How long, O how long will Republican roustabouts engage in a sideshow scramble for power and privilege?"* He dedicated the Democratic cause to the Greater Glory of God, invoked shades of Woodrow Wilson ("that great humanitarian and idealist") and Franklin Roosevelt ("He sat there in his wheelchair taller than his critics could stand"), called upon Americans to "rise up as one man and smite down those money-changers who have invaded and violated the people's temple of justice."

The Democrats were met in Chicago, said Clement, to plan for the happy hour when the "party of privilege and pillage passes over the Potomac in the greatest water-crossing since the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea." The evacuation "will be an astronomer's dream of shooting stars, for this trek will have generals to the right of them, generals to the left of them, and generals in front of them as these old soldiers fold their tents and just fade away." Clement conjured up florid images of Eisenhower, a genial, glamorous and affable general who had joined the Republican Party after he had reached the age for retirement from the Regular Army, and of Richard Nixon, "the Vice-Hatchetman slinging slander and spreading half-truths while the top man peers down from the green fairways of indifference." Dwight Eisenhower, cried Clement, "cannot Jim Hagertize his way through this whole campaign."

Giveaways, Grab & Greed. Clement bowled alliterative strikes on the Republicans in all alleys. He attacked Ike's haphazard conduct of foreign affairs "while Foster fiddles, fritters, frets and flits." He accused the Administration of "corruption in high places, involving an unprecedented spree of giveaways, grab and greed." He said U.S. agriculture had been "devitaminized by the G.O.P. and Bensonized by Ezra B.," and he called out to the farmer: "Come on home before it's too late. Your lands are studded with the white skulls and crossbones of broken Republican promises."

And, as was natural, fitting and proper for the nation's foremost political evangelist, Clement wound up with a plea and a prayer. "Whoever you are--wherever you are--whether you consider yourself a Democrat, a Republican or an Independent--be you Catholic, Protestant or Jew--of one race, creed, color or another--this is your fight; and the least you can do is get down on your knees in your own way and pray to the one God for guidance ... As loyal Americans, lovers of freedom, [we must] engage in this campaign to restore the people to power in Washington, chanting in unison the hymn of inevitable victory." The hymn:

Precious Lord--

Take our hand--

Lead us on!

* Cicero in the Roman Senate, 63 B.C.: "How far will you abuse our patience, Catiline? How long will this madness of yours make sport of us? How far will your insolence carry you?" etc., etc.

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