"Jim" Reed

This steelyeyed, iron-jawed playboy of the Senate, this Voltaire-tongued bastinado of the uplifters, this Rabelais-reading Jeffersonian --this James A. Reed of Missouri--what a sizzling presidential campaign he would hammer out! From stump to stump across the land, he would blast the imbecilities of the age. Sometimes his tongue would snarl, sometimes it would ripple with a silvery metaphor; then people would know why the Senate galleries were filled when "Jim" Reed spoke.

Last week, four Congressional districts in Missouri, unable to restrain their fervor, began to boom Senator Reed for President. In Livingston county, where once the name of Mr. Reed was anathema, they said: "The most commanding figure in the greatest deliberative body in the world, we indorse him as Missouri's candidate for President of the U. S." In his home town (Kansas City), they said: "He has a horror of corruption."* Democrats from coast to coast perked their ears, pondered on that impressive 64-year-old figure of Senator Reed. They thought of the year 1928; remembered that William Gibbs McAdoo was a back number in presidential politics that Governor "Al" Smith was waning in the West.

Meanwhile, an excited reporter called Senator Reed on the telephone. The answer came: "I am not responsible. ... I do not know the situation." Perhaps, as Mr. Reed clicked down the receiver, his grey-blue eyes lighted up with dreams of 1928 . . . from stump to stump across the land.

* The past summer gave Senator Reed his golden opportunity to bay after primary slush funds in Pennsylvania and Illinois (TIME, June 21 et seq.). Republicans accuse Mr. Reed of sheer Administration baiting. People wonder what pressure could have been brought to bear to terminate, suddenly, his probing of Samuel Insull and other Illinois "angels."