"The Boys"

(See front cover)

When Nominee Hoover, who is none too fond of newsgatherers, apostrophized "those invisible millions," the radio audience, it was perhaps with the hope that some day a Nominee's baby-patting, pipe-smoking and flycasting will not have to be overseen by newsgatherers clutching shorthand pads and cinema cranks. Perhaps, some day, contact between the People and their servants can be maintained directly, by colored-wireless-television or something. Then, at scheduled moments during the day or week, the Nominee can simply take off his invisible-silencing-suit or whatever device has been provided for his privacy, and, face-to-face and mouth-to-ear with the whole electorate, can simply say: "Good morning, everybody. I'm feeling fine today. I had a good sleep and prunes for breakfast, thank you. As you can see, the weather's lovely here. I think I'll go fishing this afternoon. Don't forget what I said about intending to help the Farmer and to uphold the sanctity of our fine Constitution. That's about all for now. Goodbye. As everyone knows, I'll be 'on' again at 8 o'clock this evening."

Pending the perfection of such an invention, the People and the Nominees will probably continue making shift with the daily press, which, in politics, has two ends. The People are familiar with one end, the Nominees with both ends. The People find their end lying on millions of white stoops, on thousands of newsstands. The Nominees find their end waiting around in hotel lobbies, anterooms of suites, railroad stations, private car platforms. Their end is "The Boys," as Presidents Roosevelt and Harding used to call their entourage of newsgatherers.

During a Presidential campaign, The Boys are deployed more widely, organized more highly, function more extensively than at any other period in the four-year U. S. political cycle.

"Straight" Reporters. Humblest, because their names seldom appear; most serviceable, because they are instructed to be nonpartisan, to avoid prediction or speculation, to report no anonymous opinions, to report happenings factually and completely; most influential, because their reports reach by far the greatest number of people--are what might be called the Straight Reporters, the correspondents of the big news services. This year the Associated Press keeps two men and a woman, the United Press one man, near each Nominee continually. Writing their cautious, colorless reports, these writers are either unsung heroes or stenographic automata.

The names of these eight outstanding intermediaries between People and Nominees are:

With Hoover. For the Associated Press --James L. West, W. B. Ragsdale, Mary Bainbridge Hayden. For the United Press --Paul R. Mallon.

With Smith. For the United Press--Thomas L. Stokes. For the Associated Press--Paul Frederick Haupert, David Harold Oliver, Martha Dalrymple.

Star Reporters. Following the Nominees far more boldly and self-assertively than the Straight Reporters, asking more questions, thinking up more ruses, consuming more paper and ink, are the special representatives of newspapers who can afford more than the standardized A. P. and U. P. reports. Typical of this class are cadaverous Ray Tucker, who boils around after Hoover for the New York Telegram; James O'Donnell Bennett, a quick-eared conversationalist, who watches Nominee Smith for the Chicago Tribune; and Edwin S. Macintosh, a Southern gentleman, who, representing the arch-Republican New York Herald Tribune, lately got photographed sitting casually next to Nominee Hoover in a campfire circle.

Near-Pundits. One journalistic level above the Star Reporter is the Near-Pundit. A very silly bulletin posted in the offices of the New York World says:

"The news columns of the New York World have no political candidates.

(Signed) "H. B. Swope"

(Executive Editor)

It is a silly bulletin if only because the news columns of the World contain the writings of able Charles Michelson, an oldtimer, whom the World sends around the country to see the Nominees, visit the doubtful states and to write, whenever he can, stories that will boost the Brown Derby. His Republican equivalent is found in Carter Field, thoroughly partisan chief of the Herald Tribune's Washington bureau. The Field despatches deal with anything and everything political, except foreign policy, which until lately has usually been handled by Henry Cabot Lodge (grandson), another Near-Pundit, stalking about on errands of his own. Most Field and Lodge despatches are plastered thoroughly with such expressions as "observers here are agreed," "as a prominent Republican said today," "it is said," or "experts foresee." The anonymity of the "experts," "Republicans" and "observers" does not rob such despatches of interest for partisan readers.-Often-they force issues, precipitate news.

More circumspect in point of partisanship is Richard V. Oulahan (New York Times') than whom no U. S. Journalist is more respected. There is also Arthur Sears Henning (Chicago Tribune).

Pundits. Of real political pundits, few remain in U. S. journalism. They are men who write exclusively interpretative articles along broad party lines using the "spot" news of the Nominees' doings only as texts or pretexts.

Among the Pundits, one of the ablest, Samuel George Blythe, long of the New York World and the Saturday Evening Post, is now retired in California.

Clinton W. Gilbert, still with the New York Evening Post, long iamed for his "Daily Mirror of Washington" (mostly personalities, anecdotes) has grown dull and vague. Perhaps because he is cool to Hooverism, whereas his newspaper is Hoover-hot.

David Lawrence, onetime Associated Press shadow of Woodrow Wilson, has softened his sting and dampened his flair, partly because conservatism becomes the publisher of the neutral United States Daily, partly because he talks on the radio.

Most political pundits write books from time to time. For example, Mark Sullivan, the Great Predicter of the Herald Tribune, has branched out from politics to folklore with a history of the U. S. called Our Times, of which two volumes are published and more being written. His political observations this year have not seemed inspired.

Another book writer is tense, talkative Pundit William Hard. Who's Hoover? he propounded this year in 274 pages of undismayed analysis.- His wife Anne Hard and his daughter, Eleanor, write politics-for-women in the Herald Tribune and Junior League Bulletin, respectively.

And then there is Frank Richardson Kent, perhaps the sharpest of them all. Small, compact, quick, incurably enthusiastic and good-humored, he knows the politicians as few of them know themselves. Exposing their humbuggery, dishonesty, pomposity, spells FUN to him. He probably got his taste for political writing from his uncle, Frank A. Richardson, who from the Civil War until 1910 was Washington correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, in which Pundit Kent's "Great Game of Politics" (column) appears daily and of which he is vice president. He delineates the technology of politics. He has done a history of the Democratic party, f He can applaud as well as he can slam and bang. And he can sympathize because once he knew the life of active politics himself. In 1922 all was arranged for him to have the Senate seat which Maryland's bumbling Bruce now occupies. Pundit Kent turned it down but only, they say, because he felt he could not afford it.

* Who's HOOVER?--William Hard--Dodd, Mead ($2.50). Publlshed by Century Co. ($5).