Presidential Timber
.HIS seems to be a moment when observers of the American Presidential elections, both those at home and those abroad, cannot do better than remind themselves that they are in the position of an audience at a play upon which the curtain has only just risen. President Truman has now removed himself from the list of potential candidates; but, while this is a startling, and perhaps, as many now feel, a saddening beginning to the first act, its effect is to make the plot harder, and not easier, to predict. There are many in this audience who have a clear and urgent idea of how they would like the play to come out. There are some who think they know how it will come out—or at any rate say so, perhaps with the feeling that if enough people are persuaded that it is going to come out that way the event itself will occur. But the truth is that this particular play has never been produced before, and nobody does know how it is going to come out. The actors themselves do not know, how- ever confidently they may be speaking their opening lines. In the glow from the footlights the first name on the programme is still that of Harry S. Truman, Democrat, President of the United States. It is difficult at the moment to imagine any circumstances in which his decision not to run could be reversed. Even so, he will manifestly wield great influence in the election, and, candidate or not, he is still the most remarkable of all characters in the play. His enemies view him as a little man with a mediocre mind, translated to power by a series of unpredictable accidents, maintained in power by the use of political machinery built by his predecessor, incapable of true leadership and now surrounded by third- raters whose ineptitude has landed the United States into mis- taken and dangerous policies abroad and a mess of govern- mental waste and corruption at home. His admirers regard him as a man of much simple goodness and of conspicuous courage, who has pursued in the face of immense difficulties a course in which generations of Americans yet unborn will take pride, who, more than any other single man alive, has shown the resolution and faith to take the right decisions at the most difficult times, and who may well emerge in perspec- tive the principal architect of a free and just world peace.
There are those who believe—and quote the returns from the initial primary elections as proof of it—that the nation has made up its mind, after more than twenty years of rule by the Democratic Party, that it wants a change, and that Mr. Truman, despite his political experience, his considerable following and the general prosperity he has produced, could not have won another four-year term of office. There are others who believe still that he is the only Democrat who could be sure of winning if the Republican Candidate is to be Dwight D. Eisenhower, General of the United States Army.
The same initial primaries as have indicated something much less than popular enthusiasm at this point for President Truman have shown a wave of popular feeling in favour of General Eisenhower. There is no mystery why. His record as a soldier-statesman during and since the war, his bearing, his personal magnetism and his rugged strength—even if he has not yet specifically enunciated the policies he would follow if he were President—have combined to convince some millions of the American voters that he is a man to whom they would like to entrust the future of the country. This is a magnificent start for any potential, candidate. But it is plainly not the whole battle. What has still to be demonstrated is whether the men who are in effective control of what is usually called the Republican Machine (meaning the Republican organisa- tions in the key States and cities) are going to be sufficiently convinced that General Eisenhower would make the kind of politics-wise President the Party wants. Unless it were to mobilise its strength behind him, the popular support General Eisenhower might rally could conceivably fall short of the total vote he would need to win. And up to the present a substantial part of the Republican machine is showing a greater partiality fiSr Robert A. Taft, Republican, Senator of the United States from Ohio and son of William Howard Taft, a former Presi- dent.
Mr. Taft has an almost fanatical following among the old guard conservatives in the Republican Party, who regard him as a sort of last dike against a flood of ideas and trends that would destroy the America they would preserve. He is a man of great energy, and he has long sought the Presidency. What the liberals in the Democratic Party, and to a less extent in his own party too, have against him is that he has stood against almost every progressive' measure in the last decade or more and that his foreign policy appears to be a mass of contradic- tions and obscurities. So far, however, he has 'satisfied many of the most powerful controlling elements in his party; whereas quite the opposite has happened in the case of Estes Kefauver, Democrat, Senator of the United States from Tennessee.
Mr. Kefauver is a man with a gentle drawl and a well- publicised coonskin cap, amiable and earnest, almost unknown until his Senate Crime Investigating Committee began last year to hold a large part of the nation fascinated before its television sets. Mr. Truman and the Democratic Party are plainly exasperated by his brash and undisciplined bid for public favour as a candidate for the Democratic nomination—and all the more so because he has been succeeding handsomely. Mr. Truman thinks a lot more of Adlai Stevenson, Democrat, Governor of Illinois. He is a liberal with a notable record both as a vote-getter in Illinois and as an administrator who has calmly, quietly and efficiently _reformed the State government in the last three-and-a-half years. Since the President's renunciation the prevailing view in Washington has been that, notwithstanding Mr. Stevenson's present insistence that he is a candidate for governorship and not presidency, he will even- tually be nominated as Democratic candidate with Mr. Truman's hearty blessing.
Meanwhile Earl Warren, Republican, Governor of California —also a liberal—is pursuing a quiet but not necessarily ineffec- tive campaign, and is clearly a man to be kept in mind in the event of an Eisenhower-Taft deadlock at or before the Republican Party's convention in Chicago in July, at which the candidate will be nominated. This possibility is hopefully regarded, too, by Harold Stassen, Republican, one-time Governor of Minnesota and now-President of the University of Pennsylvania. He, like Senator Taft; has tried before to win the Republican nomination. But the view is often encountered now that Mr. Stassen has compromised his liberal standing and that his chances are not very bright.
Not many people are prepared either to bet heavily at the moment on Robert S. Kerr, Democrat, Senator of the United States from Oklahoma, an oil-millionaire and, sunday-school teacher, who intended to withdraw if the President had stood again, but is now a full-blooded candidate. This is a wholly different position from that of Richard B. Russell, Democrat, Senator of the United States from Georgia. He is a popular and highly-respected member of the bloc of Southern Demo- crats who have fought Mr. Truman bitterly and voted against him with the Republicans on issues affecting negroes and trade unions. If there is to be another and perhaps more serious Dixiecrat revolt against a too liberal Democratia candidate, Senator Russell is the potential leader of it.
That leaves Douglas MacArthur, Republican, General of the United States Army. He says that he is not a candidate; but his recent speeches have not made him sound like one, who could never be persuaded to be a candidate. There was not the slightest doubt in the weeks ' after he had been recalled by the President from his command in the Far East that he had huge and emotional popular support. Has he retained it ? If Eisenhower should swamp Taft, is he likely to emerge as the White Hope of tke old-guard Republicans ? Could he be nominated, and if nominated could he be elected ? The pro-. gramme does not say. The only way to find out is to watch what is going on on the stage.
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