PROP STOP
THE trouble with this guy is he can't make a speech'— conclusion of an anguished but affectionate newspaper man on the world's leading political egghead. The candidate's aeroplane had disgorged its party into the blue and gold afternoon of Idaho—a surprisingly amateur coterie of friends and very un-Tammany-like organisers. The crowd in bright cottons and loose shirts laced with children and superintended by a couple of State police out of a Tom Mix film look curiously towards the gangway. It suddenly dawns on everyone that the figure at the back in a mackintosh already starting down the steps is the Democratic candidate for what he himself (with some tact) describes as 'the greatest temporal office on earth.' There is a friendly cheer. A camera- man shouts to him to look up and wave. He does. His curious eighteenth-century face with the twisted nose and prominent blue eyes smiles with a rather hunted look like a small boy caught tryirig to sneak out of his own birthday party.
He is hurried on to the platform. The band plays 'Happy days are here again.' Six drum-majorettes pirouette. A score Of 'Adlai and Estes' boards and a cardboard donkey are waved. The crowd is happy and relaxed. Also, although this is the depressed farm belt, it looks about twice as prosperous as a Conservative fete at Cheltenham—but much more uninhibited.
A 'mom' Democrat full of sparkle of both eye and ear-rings unrolls an immense 'Licence to kill one elephant' (this is a hunting State). The joke goes well. The candidate beams. Then the hunted look returns as he is presented with an elephant rifle and pith helmet. He is delightfully embarrassed with an embarrassment which communicates itself, not unbecomingly, to everyone around him. He makes some suit- able rejoinder. He puts on the helmet. It falls down his nose so that for a moment- he is left gesticulating blindly to the sun with the ridiculous rifle. A senator restores him to day- light and the speech starts, starts indeed excellently.
The cracks are not really at all too highbrow. 'Get the government away from General Motors and give it back to Joe Smith' is plain enough. The good-humoured criticism of the President and his relationship with the Republican Party goes well—`They are content with a part-time President, but they find they cannot stand a part-time candidate.'
But the Governor remembers he has a manuscript. Down goes his head and away apparently wanders his mind. `As I face the Rockies across this lovely green valley—a brown desert meets the sky-line ahead.' Ah, thank goodness, out of the corner of his blue eye the candidate catches a glimpse of some mountains behind him. But the inability to hit his punch lines or indeed to read coherently has gripped him. `The difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties is that the Republicans assume office with anxiety over change, the Democrats with hope and certainty.' No, that can't be right, you can see him thinking : 'The Democrats with hope about what they can achieve.' He ends his speech unexpectedly and diminuendo.
Off he goes to face another three weeks of high-school bands, Red Indian braves and teenagers whose hats proclaim that they are 'Madly for Adlai.' Three weeks of exasperating the press to whom he will not talk and photographers at whom he will not look. But in spite of all this lack of professionalism, people are devoted to him. Will he win? Opinion says 'No.' He is said to be a bad candidate and to run behind the Democratic ticket. Everybody says everybody else likes Ike. But when you ask them directly quite a few are not so sure that they themselves don't like Adlai better. His meetings are smaller but perhaps warmer. He has no Nixon tied round his neck and his suggestion that nuclear tests might be stopped is popular. Knowing very little about the broad situation 1 would be inclined to put a little money on him as a long shot. One thing we can be sure of, if he wins he may not turn out as great a President as some of his supporters predict. but power won't corrupt this poor man's millionaire : and if he loses a part awaits him as the hero in a film about a presi- dential campaign directed by Rene Clair.
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