OCCASIONAL BIOGRAPHIES: XVH. MR. LANDON
A FTER the Democratic deluge of 1932 one lonely Republican plateau emerged in the American Middle West. The State of Kansas had elected a young, vigorous Republican Governor in the face of the political tide. The inhabitants of the Republican Ark, riding uneasily .upon the New Deal flood, naturally regarded this Mount Ararat with a friendly eye. And when, in 1934, the Governor in question, Alf M. Landon, was re-elected with a resounding majority, he automatically became Presidential possibility.
At the Republican convention in Cleveland Landon was widely represented as "the Kansas Coolidge." - This was a patent misnomer. True, he had balanced the • Kansas budget; though his critics pointed out that he had done so. with the aid of Federal subsidies. True, the label- suggested "Coolidge Economy" to Republicans • embattled against the spendthrift experimentalism of the New Deal. But the tag missed the inwardness of the man. Landon, though frugal, was hardly "weaned . on a pickle." Be is no conservative, as Coolidge was. He has always belonged to the liberal or progressive ;faction of the Republican party in Kansas, which has ever . been at war with the conservatives, or " standpatters," as they are known there. .Coolidge was a regular of regulars. Landon's career in Kansas has been distinguished for independence of the regular, conservative Republican • machine.
As a young, man in his twenties, in 1912, Alf Landon joined the "Bull Moose" secessionist movement away from Taft, when Theodore Roosevelt split the Republican Party. In 1924, when William Allen White came out as an independent candidate for Governor of Kansas, against Paulen, the Republican candidate who was sup- ported by the Ku Klux Klan, Landon openly sinned • against party regularity by supporting White. He has been faithful to the liberal faction in his State, with its vaguely progressive principles, but he has risen above party labels.
. Though not a "Kansas Coolidge," Landon is certainly I" The Man from Kansas." To understand him one must • appreciate .something of the political background of that once turbulent State. Kansas has long been regarded as " queer " and " contrary." It is, however, one of the most interesting States in the American Union. Born in bloodshed of the conflict between the "free- staters," or Abolitionists, and the forces which favoured extending the area of slavery, "Bleeding Kansas " was the battleground of that little war between North and South which preceded the Civil War. There John Brown first shed blood for his principles. Kansas, from the start, embraced its moral issues fervently, to the point of violenee. Its pioneers were mainly of pure New England stock and Puritan morals. To this day, • Kansas derives many of its moral and intellectual urges from the stream of Boston schoolma'aras who first set its taste for plain living and high thinking. In the 'nineties Kansas supported Populism, later fused with the Free Silver crusade of William Jennings Bryan. It was the home of strident statesmen like " Soeldess Jerry" Simpson and Carry Nation, the heroine with the hatchet who aroused sentiment for Prohibition by the direct • expedient of breaking up saloons with her axe. Kansas at once assumed leadership in a cause which it has not . forsaken today. For Kansans believe that laws should . reflect the moral aspirations of the people, rather than the mere actualities.
If the Republicans 'should win in November, it will be because people vote against Roosevelt rather than for Landon. Their candidate is usually represented, therefore, as the antithesis of Roosevelt. This is to be a class election, with the masses well disposed towards Roosevelt and the classes already won for Landon. 1-knee great care is taken by Landon's campaign advisers, themselves homely folk from Kansas, to present him as a " plain American " in shirt-sleeves, in sharp contrast with Roosevelt of Groton and Harvard (ang/iee Eton and Oxford), a descendant of America's royal line who, nevertheless, has become tinged with the pink of intel- lectual parlours. Hence, too, the emphasis upon Landon's birth, of modest parentage, in a small wooden house in Pennsylvania. Removed as a boy with his parents to Kansas, Landon attended the State schools and the State University at Lawrence. His academic record showed competence though not distinction, but he acquired a reputation as a " campus politician," that is, one who achieves leadership through diplomacy.
When he took up his father's trade and entered the oil-fields of Kansas and Oklahoma as an independent operator, . Landon early found himself up against the great interests. If he was to survive as an independent in the highly competitive Mid-continent field, young Landon had to stand up to the big companies. - And stand up to them he did, valiantly, acquiring a modest, though not a great, fortune in the process.
Landon's great gift is a flair for meeting men and get- ting on with all sorts and conditions of them. Put forward as a "plain American," he is representative of the best that the Missouri Valley produces, but is obviously far above average. "The Baldwin of Kansas," while still a fanciful phrase, would have nave meaning than "The Kansas Coolidge." With the aid of a pipe, and a faculty for poking pigs and making .happy utter, -ances about England, Baldwin for years managed to -symbolise a bluff John Bull. So Landon, a man of keen though more limited political understanding, has contrived to impress himself upon the public as a simple American whose success is due to qualities of character rather than of intellect.
_ What sort of President would Landon make ? Few men are obviously of presidential stature. Many Presi- • dents never achieve it, though myths are built up around them. From a world point of view, Landon lacks the breadth and experience of Roosevelt. But he would be a more calculable factor. He would be unlikely ever to provide international leadership on the grand scale, or to disappoint the nations as Roosevelt did at the World Economic Conference. Hobbled by the Republican party's high-tariff platform and general isolationism, Landon might tend to emphasise more than ever America's withdrawal from European imbroglios.
If Landon should not only win but succeed in impressing his modest genius upon America, then the monied interests which have supported him So glibly might receive a shock. In spite of his budget balancing, this Kansas liberal, with his ingrained distrust of monopoly and "malefactors of great wealth," would, in normal times, be the last man to appeal to Hearst, the millionairee Liberty League and the great vested interests. They have backed him because he provided the likeliest club with which to beat Roosevelt the hated. There is always the possibility, of course, that the Man From Kansas might prove a babe in the Washington woods. Powerful forces behind the. Republican party might hold Landon captive, as they held Harding. In that case, Landon's personal tragedy would be greater than Harding's, for he is a far abler and more sincere man. But at least Landon would not capitulate without a struggle. Your Kansan may'lack worldly experience, but, as long as he remains true to the Kansas tradition, he will not
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