THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Last Column THERE was something more than a little unreal about the Republican National Convention. There, on the platform before us, was a handsome, popular politician who had set his heart on...
...He braced quickly enough and gave the jam-packed hall a smiling greeting that seemed to telegraph its synthetic quality...
...I had barely taken a place on the steps—three feet from the rostrum and battery of microphones—when Mr...
...and Mrs...
...Leaders Sense Defeat I came away from the convention with the conviction that the Republican insiders knew their cause was lost...
...The searing heat did not seem to bother Dewey as he spoke...
...M. H. R...
...Dewey will learn a lot more this Summer and Fall, and that he will pay tuition— in the form of votes—which might turn out to be prohibitive...
...The perspiration rolled copiously from his face as the Klieg lights beat cruelly on him, but he was not noticeably uncomfortable...
...For just a moment Dewey seemed a man bewitched...
...His speech was surprisingly short...
...And while he talked, 900 miles away a man who had insisted all along he wasn't even a candidate was polishing up his acceptance speech and ordering a special plane to rush him to Chicago to accept the nomination...
...From where I sat in the steaming stadium, the cries of "No...
...Dewey were swept onto the platform...
...Bricker was off to too late a start, and Sen, Robert Taft, also of Ohio and one of the most widely respected of Republican leaders, refused to step into the contest...
...Roosevelt...
...The Stassen boom was never much more than a mild squeak, while the MacArthur drive was stopped by the General's voluntary withdrawal from the contest shortly after Willkie was forcibly ejected...
...There, on the platform before us, was a handsome, popular politician who had set his heart on being the Republican candidate for President...
...The rank and file had had their hearts set on getting rid of Wendell Willkie, whom they mistrusted as the slick Wall Street smoothie whose nomination would give the nation another "fixed fight...
...I compared notes with more than a score of seasoned political correspondents and delegates, and found most of them in solid agreement that Bricker was the hero of the convention, if it can properly be said to have had a hero...
...His ferret-like eyes ranged quickly around the audience, measuring reaction to this statement and that promise while his mind seemed to tuck away the information for future reference...
...This curious situation in which things were not what they seemed and men did not mean what they said or say what they meant was present throughout the three-day convention...
...Nor did he seem disturbed over the lack of applause...
...The frying heat did much, of course, to rob delegates of energy and enthusiasm, but there could be no mistaking the more fundamental lack of faith in the political future that was looming up in the months ahead for the Republican Party...
...He delivered it with the proper gestures, with the cool competence of a man who has been trained to make the most of his vocal gifts...
...He has learned a lot, they thought, but many a seasoned correspondent could not help but feel as he filed out of the room that Mr...
...Those who are in the business of making comparisons agreed that he will provide Mr...
...No...
...There was a sudden, confused, and poorly directed search for a substitute for Dewey...
...which swept through the hall when Bricker announced he was withdrawing in the interest of a unanimous nomination of Dewey sounded more genuine than the half-hearted whoop-dee-do which greeted the icy Dewey when he took the platform during the last hour of the proceedings...
...There was no contagious enthusiasm, no burning anxiety to rush home to begin selling the new candidate and platform...
...It was my first glimpse of the Ohio Governor in action, and although I don't think we'd agree on any major issue, I must say that he struck me as an able, clean-cut, energetic, hard-working politician and public servant...
...effective, and far more • responsive than newspaper men had thought he might be...
...Prohibitive Tuition I was not greatly impressed by Mr...
...I had never seen the man close up, so, armed with press credentials, I wriggled my way through the steaming crowd which jammed the aisles until I reached the steps of the main platform...
...His eyes, bright with excitement, seemed to stare through everyone and everything before him...
...Roosevelt with far more competition as a radio voice and personality than his three predecessors...
...Dewey as a person, although I do think he will be a clever and resourceful antagonist for Mr...
...At his press conference the following morning he was calm, poised, friendly, affable...
...John Bricker was there telling the strangely restive crowd not to vote for him, or even to nominate him—although up until that moment he had been the hardest-working contender for the nomination...
...But Gov...
...When alert Wisconsin tossed Willkie out of the race in April, the carefully managed momentum in behalf of Dewey was hard to stop...
...Many a delegate who voted for Dewey felt he had been trapped into the New Yorker's camp...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 28
