Governor Scranton's Amateur Hour
HERMAN, GEORGE E.
THE WAVERING CAMPAIGN Governor Scranton's Amateur Hour By George E. Herman Governor William Scranton is a candidate who says he wants to run an amateur campaign for the Presidential...
...In amusement he gives out with a high-pitched laugh, almost at times a giggle...
...When irritated, Scranton's exclamations come not from the vocabulary he learned in the Army Air Corps, but from the world of the well-bred Scranton women...
...One lady reporter in Detroit described him as a "Gregory Peck bringing you a dry martini...
...Thus the underdog campaign began...
...But he has forcibly reminded the Republicans of the nation that Senator Barry Goldwater is neither the candidate the party majority wants nor the candidate who can win in November...
...But it was all a product of the highly professional politics of Boston, where an amateur is considered some kind of out-of-state nut...
...Unfortunately, not every Republican politico on his side shared that happiness...
...Frequently these speeches are interesting sociological studies...
...So did Dr...
...Politics is, with rare exceptions, a professional's game, and Scranton is playing the amateur...
...To win delegates in sufficient numbers, he must be a man they can respect and trust— a "pro...
...THE WAVERING CAMPAIGN Governor Scranton's Amateur Hour By George E. Herman Governor William Scranton is a candidate who says he wants to run an amateur campaign for the Presidential nomination...
...He was the underdog, he said, with perfect accuracy, but he liked it that way and always did his best under those conditions...
...And his wife, far more outspoken than he, was scorching...
...But for many tastes the martini is a little too watery...
...A Goldwater ticket in Pennsylvania might mean not only Republicans in rebellion, but also Republicans in a minority in the Legislature, and no chance at all for successful leadership by Governor W. W. Scranton...
...The same kind of interaction took place at Des Moines, where an efficient local organization produced a vast crowd which, in turn, produced a vast change in the candidate...
...Scranton says that won't happen...
...Oh heavens," he will say, or "my golly...
...But the feel is not right just yet, and time is expiring...
...Scranton is a man addicted to saying "Let's be perfectly blunt about this . . ." Or, "Let me say with everything that is in me . . ." And even an amateur audience quickly senses the difference between using such phrases and actually being perfectly blunt, or actually speaking with everything that is in a man...
...As a lecture series they might be considered successful and thought-provoking...
...Until the California primary, he was prepared to allow himself gracefully to be drafted once again...
...This worked in Pennsylvania, where powerful Republican figures such as Senator Hugh Scott could lash the politicos into line with the help of the delphic utterances from Gettysburg...
...Scranton's control over Republicans in the Pennsylvania Legislature has been almost without precedent...
...They called her "the Duchess," and it is a cruel joke among Scranton's enemies that he will never be half the man his mother was...
...Good God," said a local politician after one particularly vapid speech, "he's the kind of man who has viscera instead of guts...
...The diffuse intellectual speeches make it appear that Scranton is waging a negative campaign based less on his own merits than his opponent's faults—faults which everybody knows but which must not be discussed publicly...
...When the crowd gave out that unique and deafening roar of approval which so frightens foreigners covering American politics for the first time, Scranton again became for a brief interlude a real tiger...
...Yet every time he scores in this fashion and the crowd roars its approval, he declines to go any further, declines to drive in the blade...
...Amateurism, in fact, was working against Scranton in a vicious circle...
...Some reporters write that the Governor may yet accept a Vice Presidential draft next week at the convention...
...By Thursday he had come to the same conclusion...
...He had to do something or be laughed out of politics and possibly even find it necessary to resign as Governor...
...Whatever the reasons, the Governor's approach toward the man who is his friend and opponent gives a total effect of weakness...
...In the incredible steamy heat of the Boston Arena, a scene from the last century, Scranton sweated and shouted and reacted to the jungle atmosphere produced by the combination of Boston politics and a lack of air conditioning...
...George E. Herman, a member of the CBS Washington bureau and a contributor to The New Leader, is covering the Scranton campaign...
...Speeches grew not sharper but more and more ambiguous...
...And even when he most bitterly denounces Goldwater policies, he admits that if Goldwater is nominated he "will work night and day for his election...
...Yet with crowds he has offered too little in the way of either policy or personality, and with delegates he has been too late as well...
...He was great and they loved him, and he was inspired to new greatness and they loved him even more...
...When it soon developed that the most telling oratorical point against Senator Goldwater was the charge that he shoots from the hip in delicate matters of foreign policy, Scranton declined to exploit this point, no matter how vigorous the reaction...
...State Attorney General Walter Allesandroni, a diminutive ex-marine who is both shrewd and tough, continued to be the nearest thing to a campaign manager...
...But as Scranton's opponents have discovered, often too late, mannerisms do not make the man...
...So did Senator Scott...
...In both his previous campaigns Governor Scranton took a Gaullist attitude of "If you want me, come to me and ask me, unanimously, to serve...
...The somewhat prissy mannerisms are an important fact of life in the strange world of campaigns and image-building...
...The result was the urging and demi-urging of former President Eisenhower...
...It worked twice...
...it is not enough for the present...
...To win the popular support he needs, he must become the real thing—a tiger "burning bright...
...The campaign details remained largely in the hands of local amateur groups, while the professionals waited either for a bid from the Governor or an indication of which way the voters would finally jump...
...He was in the Kennedy social circle, warmly dated Kathleen Kennedy, and has the same intellectual interests...
...Milton Eisenhower, head of the Republican Critical Issues Council...
...And it began bravely...
...He has driven and taxed and cajoled Pennsylvania toward a new, modern and fiscally sounder way of life...
...He has successfully defied the labor unions in Pennsylvania by amending the unemployment compensation laws against their bitter opposition...
...Trembling with excitement, happily encouraged by his wife and his aides, the white knight of Republican liberalism rode into the battle...
...His party leaders in the State Legislature were fuming and rebellious...
...It seems to make no difference that Senator Goldwater and his supporters are not the type to cry "touche...
...That is something for his future...
...Traveling with Scranton, moreover, one observes an odd wavering and uncertainty...
...But he was burning...
...A quiet and intellectual man who busied himself silently in civic and community improvement, the Governor's father avoided the harsh direct line of positive action which dominates American politics...
...The Scranton staff acquired no new persons with experience in national politics...
...To the delight of his backers, Scranton struck out at both Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, at "the dry-rot of phoney liberalism and the slow death of blind reaction...
...After California he knew he had to reach out and make a grab...
...Democrats of a Freudian bent like to speculate that he shows the result of an upbringing by the Scranton women—his mother and three older sisters...
...A good man in an even match might succeed without being one or the other...
...Silently Scranton endured the bitter castigation by Governor Rockefeller which followed, and gave reporters another pre-scheduled news conference performance of evasiveness and non-committal replies...
...And it is true that while the Governor is athletic and courageous, a wartime pilot of skill and daring, a man who is calm under military or political fire and ruthless in both kinds of conflict, his mannerisms smack misleadingly of the effeminate...
...Like every politician, perhaps like every human being, the Governor reacts to crowds...
...The Governor's mother, Marion Scranton, dominated Pennsylvania Republican politics for years...
...Once he makes up his mind, though, he shows a steady and ruthless intensity of purpose— not in manner, but in action...
...Politics is a kind of jungle warfare, and Scranton has not yet shaped himself up into a real tiger...
...His campaign was an amateur affair, he said, and that too made him happy...
...Why, then, has his campaign been so pedestrian...
...He has ousted long-time state Republican Chairman George Bloom and replaced him with Craig Truax, a bright young man of his own stamp...
...Both of these failures stem not only from the continuing deadly apathy of the liberal Republican movement, but also from the strange and complex character of William Warren Scranton of Pennsylvania...
...Scranton's initial bravery consisted of entering a race which was almost lost before he started...
...it is another to campaign like an amateur...
...He hopes he has created the right atmosphere for a dramatic switching of votes by delegates who oppose Goldwater in their hearts yet want to be on the bandwagon no matter which way it is going...
...And he has succeeded in returning the Republican party to its majority position among Pennsylvania voters...
...The Governor says he has a two-part strategy—to win the voters to his side by arousing the rankand-file, and to win over a steady trickle of delegates by face-to-face meetings...
...It is one thing to launch an amateur campaign...
...But Governor Scranton has been trying to win an uphill fight without becoming either...
...His foreign policy statements were vague and seemed to smack precisely of the me-too-ism scarified by Goldwater-supporters awaiting Scranton at every stop...
...She sat sternly in the balcony of the capitol, eyeing Republican legislators to make sure they voted for the legislation she thought necessary...
...The Governor has a cool and controlled temper on major matters and is not given to snap decisions...
...As grim political warfare by an underdog, they miss the target...
...Next day he was back to the old circumlocutions...
...In the heat of his most inspired campaign oratory his voice cracks with the earnest hysteria of a small boy trying vainly to persuade grownups that he is telling the truth...
...He has made his point and apparently that is enough for him...
...And Scranton, apparently convinced by his own successes, which were achieved not only by these outside influences but by his own hard and effective campaigning, was prepared to believe it would work a third time...
...The Baltimore speech was a bravura opening...
...A tour was hastily gotten up, but the amateurs failed for the most part to get out the crowds needed to give a feeling that the voters were turning toward the new candidate...
...By the time they left Cleveland she had decided he had to go in and make a fight to redeem his good name and his selfesteem...
...He also has not convinced many people that Bill Scranton is the man everybody wants and a man who can win...
...The crowds who came to cheer and whoop it up found chilly intellectual comfort in Scranton speeches...
...He has certainly regained the face he lost at the Governor's Conference in Cleveland...
...In speech after speech, statement after statement, the Governor puts the tip of his oratorical rapier against Goldwater's weakspots—on Social Security, on why people are poor, on sending in the Marines to turn on the water in Cuba, on giving control of nuclear weapons to officers in the field...
...As of this writing he is succeeding admirably: His campaign has avoided all the hallmarks of professionalism...
...The Governor's aides say he wants to "remind" the Republican voter of Goldwater's follies without infuriating the Senator's supporters and hopelessly splitting the party...
...The answer keeps on coming back to his personality...
...Women seem to find him attractive...
...What they lack, however, is the Kennedy drive and appeal...
...And it's so damn late in the game it gives me the creeps...
...But the spell did not last...
...He also predicts a Vice Presidential nominee not of the liberal faction but of the Republican middle-of-the-road...
...Scranton reminds one at times of the late Senator John F. Kennedy as a campaigner...
...Even when Scranton released poll figures showing that less than a third of the country's Republicans would support Goldwater, he declined to say Goldwater could not win...
...His speeches, like Kennedy's, touch on a wide variety of important problems facing the nation...
...Ironically, this seems to be a side of Scranton inherited from his father, not from his mother and sisters...
...It would be hard to overstate the extent to which the doings at the Cleveland Governors Conference stung Scranton through his armor of wealth, political success and self-esteem...
...But he took it like a soldier, silently reassuming the evasive artful dodger routine he thought he had cast off forever, dodging the panel on the CBS television program Face the Nation as he idly flicked at the paper on the desk before him—the paper he had expected to read almost up to air time, the paper casting off indecision, assessing a Goldwater candidacy as a blueprint for disaster for the party, and offering himself as a substitute...
Vol. 47 • July 1964 • No. 14
